Pictured in this previously unseen photo sometime between 1903 and 1910 is the Covenanter’s Memorial at Bothwell Bridge. It opened to the public in 1903 and of course commemorates the Battle of Bothwell Bridge back in 1679. The photographer is Blantyre man David Ritchie and you can see how new the memorial looks. Dwelling on […]
Mr. Andrew Reid was a Covenanter from Blantyre who was caught and executed at Kirkton, High Blantyre. After the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679, the victorious government army published a list known as the “Fugitives roll.” One Blantyre mans name appeared on it, that of Mr. Andrew Reid, servitor to Robert Smillie at Blantyre […]
There’s a wonderful account written in 1859 about the 1793 church, which used to be located in the Kirkton Cemetery. It reads as follows: “A stone building capable of containing a Congregation of between four & five hundred. It was built about 50 years on the site of the old Ph. [Parish] Church. (Paul writes, […]
There is a reference in the 1885 Annals of Blantyre book to “an old graveyard in Blantyre, covered in daisies and buttercups that had not been disturbed for hundreds of years.” This has always puzzled me, as dead people were being interred in the old Kirkton graveyard not just at the time this book was […]