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...
GREAT NEWS! We’ve been successful in raising the £16,000 that we reckon is needed to create a Heritage Trail around Strathblane. We’ve secured generous grants from two supportive local charity foundations: £8,000 from the Killearn-based Paul Charitable Trust, and...
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...
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...
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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...
James McLean Love, Private Seaforth Highlanders, aged 43. James spent a year fighting for his country and the next 11 fighting for his life, after being caught in the first German chlorine gas attack of the war.He died of chronic nephritis in February 1927, too late...
John Kennedy, Private Royal Scots Fusiliers, aged 32 Several of the men of Strathblane who died in the First World War left behind children so young that they may never even have held them in their arms.Private John McCulloch of the Argyll & Sutherland...
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 FIRST WORLD WAR PROJECT: 16 DONALD JOHNSON MCNEIL, SERGEANT 1ST BLACK WATCH (ROYAL HIGHLANDERS), AGED 24. The Stirling Observers lurid account of December 5 1914 describes the stirrup charge in its report of Donald's death. The entirely mythical "stirrup...
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...
STRATHBLANE WORLD WAR 1 PROJECT: 9 ALEXANDER LOWE, SAPPER ROYAL ENGINEERS, AGED 25 Alex Lowe's grave Steam train on the Somme 1918 with men ofthe Railway Operating Division Effie Lowe (MOBE) in her QMAAC uniform The lodge at Parklea (now Blanefield House) where Alex...
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...
The parish of Strathblane, some twenty square miles in size, lies in the south-west corner of Stirlingshire. It was at one time part of the county of Dunbarton and as an ecclesiastical parish is still part of Dunbarton Presbytery. It is a very beautiful district. The...
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...
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...
In response to suggestions from several friends I have sought to give a picture of life in the village during the period 1900-1910, during the whole of which time I was resident in it. It is not intended to be what is generally known as a "history." I wish to...