I was recently thrilled when my good friend and fellow history colleague Gordon Cook gave me a nice gift! I’m now the proud owner of a large map of the underground coal workings of High Blantyre, marked up to show where each victim of the 1877 Pit disaster died. As well as this to accompany […]
This map is of High Blantyre, from the year I was born, 1971. I cant speak from experience about this, so I’m relying on what I’ve heard about this area and of course feel free to comment as always. The area focuses on Main Street and the top of Hunthill Road at Kirkton Cross. […]
Pictured here in 1904 is the Oval Pool (fountain not in operation) at Calderwood Glen. The pool was on the Blantyre side of the gorge and fed from the River Calder itself via a sluice gate and channel. The attached map puts the pool into context, showing it not far from Auchentibber and Calderside Farms. […]
A great little reference map of David Livingstone Centre, that perhaps will interest people of a certain generation. Dating from 1953, this map pinpoints and highlights the places of interest around the centre and its grounds. For example, the playthings, the rose garden, the world fountain. It shows just how much the centre grounds have […]
Andy Man sent me a great link in February 2015 to the Coal Authority website and in particular their interactive online map. It shows all the immediate mine and colliery entry points, itself fascinating due to the number of them within the immediate Blantyre area. However, it was the overlay of the “Development High Risk […]
The Blantyre Mills may have been in decline by the 1880’s, but they still looked absolutely beautiful. Over the last few years, I’ve found a few people saying this picture is NOT Blantyre mills, but it absolutely IS. Taken around 1880, the argument to me has been that there are just too many buildings or […]
Noticing something peculiar on the Blantyre 1747 map, I was intrigued to see a place clearly marked very prominently in Blantyre, that is no longer there. Nothing too unusual about that for there were many houses that are now gone. However, this place wasn’t just a house, but was an AREA of Blantyre that has […]
This section of the 1747 Blantyre map provides a wonderful insight into how sparsely populated Blantyre was at that time. Remember, around this time, the population of Blantyre was merely around 500 people. This was 40 years before the arrival of the mills and at the time of this map, was a very sleepy, rural […]