Village Activities

INDEX

Blanefield Thistle
A true tale of footballing fortunes. Your recently-formed village football club obtains the priceless opportunity to play one of the nearby city’s leading clubs after a good first run in the Scottish Cup against rival local teams. As this is likely to provide good exposure as well as earnings, the team prepares earnestly and enthusiastically…
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Strathblane Cricket Club
In his history of the parish of Strathblane, published in 1886, John Guthrie Smith remarked: “A Cricket Club has been formed in the parish once or twice, but has never succeeded in getting a proper field. There is now a prospect, however, as in the case of the Football Club, of suitable ground being secured.”…
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Strathblane Lawn Tennis Club
On a pleasant summer’s evening back in the late 1990s, Strathblane Lawn Tennis Club president Professor David Hole and a fellow-player headed to Dunblane for a doubles match in the Lawn Tennis Association’s Central Scotland league. Their cheery mood was enhanced when they arrived at the Dunblane courts to find two youngsters in their early…
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Strathendrick Pipe Band
A comforting and familiar sight and sound, the Band is a regular feature of village life, including its stirring playing at the annual Remembrance Sunday service and parade in November. Its weekly rehearsals at the Edmonstone Hall make themselves known to the Glasgow Road neighbours. It was not actually the Blane Valley’s first local music…
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The Blane Valley Players
There have been amateur drama societies in the village on and off since the late 1800s. Current records cover the existence in the 1960s of the Strathblane Amateur Drama Club which produced a number of plays at the Edmonstone Hall, attracting good-sized audiences. One review, in the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald in 1965, of the comedy play…
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Edmonstone Hall

The Edmonstone Hall, built in 1926 THE DONOR Our Edmonstone Hall is 100 years old! Nobody alive here today was present when it opened on 29 October 1926. Yet it is not hard to reconstruct the circumstances that produced it. It was a very different world. The Hall was...

Slavery and the Abolitionists

Introduction How do we remember our past? A common response to the stories of Strathblane's links to the institution of Black slavery is that our ancestors saw the world differently, a world in which racial stereotypes were deeply embedded, and it is not for us to...

Britons: Strathblane and the Britons, AD 400 to 1100

by Dr Tim Clarkson [adapted from a talk presented to Strathblane Heritage on 16 September 2024] This essay takes a look at what was happening in the area around Strathblane in the early medieval period, a span of some 700 years from the beginning of the fifth century...

Jenny Brash

WHO WAS JENNY BRASH? Jenny’s Glen, Jenny’s Burn, Jenny’s Lum: Blanefield locals are well familiar with these names. But who was Jenny? It took a bit of digging but an evening’s research produced a surprising amount of information about her. In his history The Parish...

World War Two – The Home Front

Introduction The Land Mines The Germans are Coming?! Our Super Seniors The School in Wartime What the Papers Said Verse & Worse! VE Day and Welcome Home The Blairskaith Bomber The white building in the foreground is Sunnyside, which was so badly damaged by the...

World War Two – Strathblane Seven

Stories of the Fallen James Callander GNR Royal Artillery Daniel Davidson LAC Royal Air Force Andrew M Maclean Lt Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Archibald MacNicol SPR Royal Engineers Gilbert McKay P/O Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Richard RN Pedder Lieut Col Highland...

Slavery

Introduction How is Strathblane linked to Black slavery? More than we might think. First some context. Two key dates: 1807, the abolition of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people and 1833, the abolition of slavery itself throughout the British Empire. In the past...

Blanefield Smithy

Blanefield smithy is thought to be around 300 years old, though its exact age is unknown. It is certainly one of the very oldest surviving buildings in the parish of Strathblane. It appears on John Grassom’s map of the area published in 1817. It also features on local...

Whisky

A Distillation of Whisky-Making in the Blane Valley As long as there have been humans, there has been alcohol. Production of wine and beer has been dated back 7,000-odd years in Central Asia, according to archaeologists. But the origins of whisky distilling, at...

Blane Valley Burns Club

The club’s own painting of Robert Burns, by local artist Norrie Barclay. Itself a copy of the famous Alexander Nasmyth portrait (above), mysteriously disappeared in the mid-1990s. (National Portrait Gallery) Picture the scene: a snowy January evening at the...

Ballewan

BALLEWAN Painting of Ballewan House, often known as The Ha', by Connie Simmers BALZEOUN Ballewan is an estate in the Blane Valley that was carved out of the earldom of Lennox. For two centuries it belonged largely to the Craig family, culminating in Milliken Craig...

Shops

Local Shops Over the years a surprising number of people have run shops in the community. Some have lasted longer than others, but all have been memorable in their own way. The fortunes of retailers have waxed and waned with the general fortunes of the community....

Duntreath and the Edmonstones

A Brief History of Duntreath Castle and the Edmonstone FamilyBy Juliet Edmonstone Originally thought to have been of Flemish stock, the Edmonstone family are said to have come to Scotland in the train of Princess Margaret who became the Queen of Malcolm Canmore III...

School (1716 – 1966)

Though the first Strathblane parish schoolmaster was appointed in 1716, it was many years before the school was housed in a permanent schoolhouse. This was finally built in 1781 at Thorn of Cuilt, at Netherton, which is the area now known as Blanefield. This...

Dumbrock Mills and Bleachfields

Stained Glass panel from Maryhill Burgh Halls showing bleachfield workers The abundance of water meant that bleaching and water-driven industries were commonplace in the parish in the 18th century and lasted well into the 19th century. By 1870 most of them had closed...

Romans and Picts Around Strathblane

By Dr Murray Cook As every patriotic Scot knows, the Romans tried and failed to conquer Scotland…the only nation in Europe to resist the might of the Eagles. Unfortunately, this is not really true. The Romans didn’t really try. They just gave up: the cost of...

Mugdock

Mugdock Village Mugdock was at one time the most important place in the Parish of Strathblane. It was "The Towne and Burgh of Mugdock" and the "head Burgh of the Regalitie of Montrose” with a “weekly mercat ilk fryday and two free faires yearlie", granted by a 1661...

Carbeth

Greetings from Carbeth (1930s Postcard) According to John Guthrie Smith’s history of Strathblane, “the compact little estate of Carbeth Guthrie” was constructed between 1808 and 1817 by West Indies merchant John Guthrie. Guthrie was a prominent member of Glasgow’s...

Edenkill/Edenkiln

View from Old Mugdock Road, where a lone cyclist contemplates the grandeur of the Campsies. Edenkill (now Edenkiln) occupied the heart of the community we now call Strathblane and was one of the three villages that comprised the parish, along with Netherton...

Netherton/Blanefield

"Nothing is now left of Old Netherton save the smithy and the school-house, and its very name seems likely to perish, for the factory originally called Blane Printfield has expanded to such ample proportions, and covered its environs with so many workers' houses that...

Blane Valley Railway

RAILWAY MANIA By 8.30 on the morning of Monday 1 July 1867 an excited crowd had gathered in Blanefield near the bottom of the Cuilt Brae to greet the community’s first passenger train. Britain was in the grip of railway mania. The 1861 Blane Valley Railway Act...

Water

Local Workmen with the Water BoardLeft to right : Tom McCulloch, Jimmy Baxter, Tommy Miller, David Getty , John Harkins The Glasgow Water Supply The Blane Valley is the final stage of what justifiably can be called one of the greatest civil engineering achievements of...

St Kessog’s Roman Catholic Church

Watercolour painting of St Kessog's RC Church by Dr HP Cooper Harrison The opening of St Kessog’s Roman Catholic Church in Blanefield on 28 May 1893 was the culmination of much enterprise in the parish. The number of Roman Catholics had increased through many coming...

Blanefield Printworks

The Printworks (from John Guthrie Smith 1886. Photograph by John Coubrough) Block printing is the printing of patterns on fabrics using a carved block, usually made from wood. It originated in India around the 5th century BC but did not arrive in Scotland until the...

Parish Church (1216-1982)

“The church is a beautiful building of modern Gothic, reared in 1803.” Rev Hamilton Buchanan, Second Statistical Account of the Parish of Strathblane, 1841. Strathblane Church, 1897 (Photograph courtesy of Angus Graham) Early History The parish of Strathblane is more...

Free Church

John Guthrie Smith records that the neat little church and manse belonging to the Free Church stands on the site of the old village of Netherton and the first ordained minister was the Rev George Rennie. Early records indicate that by 1864 there was a sufficient...

World War One

Silk postcard sent by gardener Sandy Mitchell, fighting on the Western Front, to his wife Georgina, living in staff quarters at Duntreath. Sandy, a Private in the Scottish Rifles, was killed at Arras in April 1917. He is remembered on Strathblane War Memorial. Boer...

Farming

Blane Valley from the Cuilt Brae Until the mid-20th century farming was very much an integral part of the life of the parish of Strathblane. The school log contains frequent references to children skipping school to help with the harvest. The Blanefield printworks...

Children’s Home Hospital (1903-1994)

“Often a child made a dramatic recovery on the back of good food, fresh air & loving care” - Margaret McIntyre, who worked at Strathblane Children’s Home Hospital for two periods between 1958 and its closure in 1994. Penelope Ker The rapid...

Ballagan

Ballagan House by Frederick Alsop, 1884, from The Parish of Strathblane by John Guthrie Smith, 1886 Strathblane Valley has a long history and Ballagan has been part of it since early times. When a cairn on the estate was opened, a cist containing ashes and a piece of...