You may have seen this photo of former Auchinrath House before, but perhaps not in this clarity. Pictured in 1878 by Thomas Annan, the house was on the site of the proposed Incinerator, (which only recently has been stopped). In the foreground above the gardens next to the Parkburn, is the existing bridge, which leads […]
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 […]
The official Blantyre Parish boundary at the east of Low Blantyre is the Park Burn, a stream which rises at Blantyre Park, further and higher to the south west. Other tributaries like the Red Burn flow into it further to the west and it flows in a north easterly direction towards the […]
Burnbrae Farm was a farm on the Eastern Parish Boundary, next to the Parkburn. It was located within Blantyre but was very close to the Hamilton Boundary. I’ve now started to collect some history on this property. Burnbrae Farm was often associated with a trio of Farms, Bellsfield, Birdsfield and Burnbrae. This was due to […]
Tom Campbell recently contacted me from New Zealand to say, “to the bottom right of this map appears to be Burnside Cottages where I lived as a boy from 1958 until they were utterly destroyed by flooding of the Park Burn ten years later. I recall more than one cottage (at least three) occupied in […]
You may remember reading recently about my visit to the old Auchinraith Curling pond. You can read about that here. http://blantyreproject.com/2014/09/04/lost-at-whistleberry-curling-pond/ Blantyre man Gordon Cook recently read the article and has kindly passed me this amazing photo of the Curling team at Auchinraith. Likely to be taken in the late 1890s, it shows various men […]
Saturday 30th August 2014. I took these photos at Backmuir Plantation / Woods (Auchinraith woods) beside the low Blantyre slipway. The woodland was calm and peaceful and amazing carpets of green ferns. Very beautiful and a great place to walk on the established nature trails. It’s a brilliant place to dog walk and can be […]