Strathblane’s P5 Class Delve into the Lives of Strathblane’s Children in the Past
How much did an eight-year-old at Blanefield Printworks earn per week in the 1820s? Answer: two shillings.

P5 pupils at Strathblane Primary School are all agreed: they would rather be living in Strathblane in 2024 than 1824! The children have been studying local history and their teacher, Miss Allan, asked Strathblane Heritage to help.
Co-chair, Anne Balfour, visited the school on 11 October to share some of the material on the society’s website, using a PowerPoint presentation.
“The girls and boys took a very lively interest in the images and information and had plenty of questions and observations,” said Anne. “We started with a timeline, stretching from the departure of the Romans in the 5th Century to the opening of the Thomas Graham Community library in 2023. Then we looked at four topics: shops, sport, transport and childhood in Strathblane.”
Several pupils turned out to have links with the subjects discussed: for example, one is the great grandson of one of the train drivers who worked on the Blane Valley Railway; another now lives in what was once the United Free Church in Blanefield.
The pupils were especially interested in the subject of child labour and the conditions in which the young workers lived. In the 1820s the local minister complained that children were being sent to the printworks from the age of eight and were paid only two shillings for a six-day week. He added: “When sleepy and worn out with the labours of the day, the little creatures are sometimes sent to an evening class. But they often fall fast asleep.”
We looked at the short life of a boy called John Tennant. In the 1861 Census he is sharing one room in Strathblane with his parents, two sisters and a lodger. Aged 10, he is already working as a “tearer” in the printworks, which involved applying colour to the pad on which the printer’s block was pressed. At 4.30 in the afternoon on 9 September 1864 there was a terrible explosion at the printworks. John was one of seven people killed. He was only 14 years old. Two of the others were also children. They were Charles Ramsay, aged 16, and Patrick Dunnion,12.
We finished by looking at the life and career of Georgina Marshall, one of our senior citizens. She began, aged four and a half, as a pupil at the local primary school in 1949 and remembers getting the belt for looking out of the window during a spelling test! She returned aged 20, in 1965 to join the teaching staff in a school that was by now “bursting at the seams”.
The following year local people came out to watch the pupils walk with their books in a long crocodile from the old school (opposite the end of Station Road, Blanefield) to the then brand new Strathblane Primary School. Georgina taught nearly every class in the school during her long career and retired in 1996, 47 years after starting as a pupil at the school. Now it is up to today’s pupils to create the local history that future generations will study…..!

