On Friday 17 October 2025, Strathblane Heritage committee members, Keith Vass and Anne and Alastair Balfour, plus drone photographer Jamie Ballantine met with Kenny French of Kenwil Ltd, the Kirkintilloch-based company awarded the contract to produce the boards for...
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...
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...
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...
Members of the Muir family in their garden at 27 Glasgow Road, showing the chimney and part of the Dumbrock works in the background. The illustrated essay Dumbrock Mills and Bleachfields has been extended to include the Dumbrock Works. Dumbrock Mills and Bleachfields
We welcomed our 100th member at our last meeting on November 20! Carol Craig, of Dumbrock Road signed up to join our swelling ranks. It’s wonderful to know that so many people are enjoying our presentations and our website.
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...
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....
It would be hard to find anyone who has a longer association with education in Strathblane than “Mrs Marshall”, as she is known to generations of pupils. As butcher’s daughter Georgina Campbell, she started at Strathblane School aged four and a half in June 1949 and...
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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...
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...
John Kemp Scott, Lt Royal Scots Fusiliers, aged 24 John Scott John Kemp Scott stares resolutely from his portrait in which he wears the uniform of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. It is not hard to imagine this moustachioed, neat, determined-looking young man with a dog...
James McKenzie, Private Royal Lancashire Fusiliers, aged 19. James McKenzie’s family was long established in Strathblane. His father, also James, worked at the waterworks and lived at Dumbrock. His mother Margaret Kennedy, though born in Busby came from an Irish...
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...
STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 27 JOHN DILLON, PRIVATE ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS, AGED 24. John Dillon “The bearers are in good spirits despite the casualties and working well but had a rough time in Bernafay Wood which was being thoroughly and systematically shelled as are...
STRATHBLANE FIRST WORLD WAR PROJECT: 24 FERGUSON THOMSON, PRIVATE, SCOTS GUARDS, AGED 22. Private Fergie Thomson The Thomson family assembled en masse, probably for the wedding of Annie (back row, second from left) in September 1906. Fergie, aged ten (front row,...
STRATHBLANE FIRST WORLD WAR PROJECT: 19 COLIN OGILVIE RANKIN, LANCE CORPORAL HIGHLAND LIGHT INFANTRY, AGED 27. Troops going over the top in 1917 at Arras where Colin was killed on April 25. Postcard ofOld Edenkiln in Dumbrock Road, Strathblane, where Colin grew up and...
STRATHBLANE WORLD WAR ONE PROJECT: 11 DANIEL MORRISON, PRIVATE KING’S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS, AGED 38 Daniel Morrison Tyne Cot Memorial Daniel Morrison M&B Herald October 1917 Tyne Cot, Zonnebeke, Belgium “Of a quiet and retiring disposition, he put his heart into...
STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 10 ALEXANDER MITCHELL, PRIVATE CAMERONIANS (SCOTTISH RIFLES), AGED 36. Silk postcards sent by Sandy Mitchell to his wife at Duntreath Alexander Mitchel- family grave Strichen Parish Churchyard, Aberdeenshire Sandra Mitchell, Sandy's...
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...
"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...
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...
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...
“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...
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...
Early Days I was not born in the village but in Salisbury House, Campsie Glen. My dad was a native of Strathblane, being born in Milndavie House. My mum was born at Little Gala near Biggar but came to Ballagan Farm when her father took over the tenancy there in about...
This Is Our Parish 1957 -1958 is based on footage taken by Harry and Helen Arnold during this period. It is three parts. The first is a comprehensive view of life in the Parish focussing on all aspects, from the road sweepers to the trades people and the doctor, the...
For various reasons, a number of men from the parish fell in the First World War yet are not commemorated on the War Memorial. These men are also therefore only briefly mentioned in "A Village Remembers", a book about the men commemorated on Strathblane War Memorial...
Families of some of the men on the memorial A Village Remembers (pdf)Download Contents Foreword by the Wright family Introduction by Anne Balfour (nee Johnstone) Jack Barr, inventor’s son Robert Blair, gardener James Cartwright, joiner William Cartwright, storeman...
The Strathblane Notebooks Life in a Stirlingshire Village before the First World WarBy Alex Urquhart edited by Anne Balfour Quotation from the headstone of Alex Urquhart's parents in Strathblane Cemetery Alex Urquhart (1894-1978) Strathblane Heritage Society...