A Celtic saint, a royal mistress, an American heiress and eight-year-olds working twelve hours a day for two shillings a week.
All feature in the new Strathblane Heritage Trail, launched on 17 May. The two-mile trail has been created by Strathblane Heritage Society. Seven interpretation boards, beginning at the parish church, draw on material from this website to recount some of the highlights of the area’s rich local history. The trail incorporates a board erected several years ago by Strathblane Community Development Trust to tell the story of the Blane Valley Railway that once ran through the area. It enabled King Edward VII, when he was the Prince of Wales, to visit his mistress, Alice Keppel, at Duntreath Castle.
One board records St Kessog, who was once the patron saint of Scotland. Another recognises the American heiress, Gwendolyn Edmonstone, who donated the Edmonstone Hall to the village 100 years ago. The board in Blanefield’s Station Road is devoted to the vast calico block printing works that once employed hundreds of men, women and children as young as eight.
Anne Balfour, co-chair of Strathblane Heritage, said: “It’s been a long haul but we are delighted with the result. We’re very grateful to the Paul Charitable Trust, the Hugh Fraser Foundation and Stirling Council’s community grant fund for their support. From the start the project seemed to have a fair wind behind it. We have tried to use local people. Strathblane artist Amy Ricketts produced the great stylised map that appears on each board. And our main contractor was Kenwil of Kirkintilloch, who could not have been more helpful.
“We kicked off the trail with a party at the Village Club, attended by many of our long-term supporters.”
For those who do not live locally or have mobility problems, all the material from the boards is reproduced on the Strathblane Heritage website, created by Derek Townsend of WebReturn, based in Balfron. In addition, Blanefield photographer Jamie Ballantine has produced a drone version of the heritage trail, also available on the website, as well as a 3-D map.
Pupils from Strathblane Primary School walked all or part of the trail as part of their recent Health Week and answered a quiz. All pupils have had a go at using various printing techniques with the help of Blanefield-based retired primary head teacher Jane Parfitt. And older pupils are going to imagine what it was like to work at the printworks around 1850, when the owners objected to children attending school for more than four hours a week because this disrupted production!
Each household in the community will receive a free leaflet and an opportunity to enter a prize quiz, based on information on the boards.