Pictured here in April 2016 by Blantyre’s Alex Rochead is a black modern vent pipe, which is inserted into the ground, just off the pavement on Hillhouse Road, High Blantyre, directly across from the Priestfield Cemetery. The pipe serves to vent gasses from the former William Dixon’s Colliery tunnels far below the ground.With the worst mining […]
Redcroft – in High Blantyre land came up for sale in 1863 near the Old Parish Church, called Redcroft. The ad went thus: “To be sold by Public Roup, in the Faculty Hall, Saint George’s Place, Glasgow, on Wednesday, 18 February, 1863, at Two o’clock, afternoon, unless previously disposed of by private bargain. An enclosed […]
Pictured here are the flat roofed homes in High Blantyre at Priestfield. Affectionately nicknamed, the Jerusalem homes, they were built in 1969 and 1970 although this particular photo was taken in 1993, before the installation of pitched roofs. It only took a couple of decades to realise this type of roof wasn’t particularly suited to […]
You may have seen this little colourised photo of Blantyre Blacksmiths on Andy Paterson’s excellent website where he has colorised Blantyre postcards and photos. I thought I’d upload the high resolution black and white original version to show a little more detail, as it doesn’t appear to be anywhere online yet. The photo is taken […]
Mr James B Struthers was a well known spirit dealer at Stonefield and High Blantyre in the 1880s. He was an accountant from Wishaw still living there as late as 1875. On 23rd April 1872 he married Mary Ann Harrison at Cambusnethan and had son, also James in 1875. The couple went on to have other children, mostly […]
In May 2015, I stumbled upon a video about mining and couldn’t believe the first few very short scenes were of High Blantyre. But they were and in particular the exact day was on 6th January 1947, when the Coal Board Nationalised mining. Several of the initial scenes featured scenes of crowds at High Blantyre including […]
The Story of the Blantyre Pit Explosion 1877 by Rev Stewart Wright 1885 published in the “Annals of Blantyre” The annals of our parish would certainly not be complete without some allusion to that catastrophe which so recently brought fish out if its obscurity into a sad prominence before the whole world, we mean the […]