Perhaps inspired by the Royal family’s love of Ice Skating, many towns across the UK in Victorian Times had their own club for the new winter leisure past-time of ‘skating’. Blantyre was no exception, with an Ice Skating club already formed by February 1965. Newspaper reports made announcements when and if the ice was […]
From the book, “Blantyre Glasgow Road South – The Real Story” by Paul Veverka (c) 2017 Merry’s Rows Merry’s Rows or Raws were built in 1876 to 1878 by coalmasters, Messrs Merry & Cunningham to house the workers of their nearby Auchinraith Colliery at Auchinraith Road. A local dialect of that time had them […]
Small travelling fairs are known to have visited Low Blantyre since the 1890’s. Initially, simple games and booths for boxing matches, the fair arrived at Springwells on an annual basis, but was displaced from the ground in the mid 1920’s, with the creation of the greyhound track. A spare plot was utilized across […]
Before Sheriff Mercer, at Hamilton Sheriff Court on Monday 1st November 1926, seven men were charged with forming part of a disorderly crowd of over 700 people in Glasgow Road, Blantyre. This was a time towards the end of the great mining strike and feeling amongst the unemployed miners were still running high, especially to those […]
I can’t quite believe I’ve never uploaded this photo before. It was quite a common postcard and I noticed recently it wasn’t on the site yet. Pictured in 1910 is High Blantyre Main Street looking eastwards. The location is just after Cemetery Road junction. To put it into context where the bushes are on the […]
Although a little blurry, this is one of my favourite photos of High Blantyre, if only as I believe it is perhaps the oldest photo of any Blantyre street. Exclusively put online here for the first time, it was taken in 1869 and shows Main Street looking eastwards. To give you an indication of […]
Mr. Danny McKerrell was the Blantyre man who scored twice in the football Scottish Cup final for lower teir team East Fife in 1938 that went on to win the title. Danny lived at 49 Auchinraith Road, along with Hugh McKerrell, a miner at Auchinraith Colliery. In 1930, according to the valuation roll, they paid […]