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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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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...
William Rankin McLintock, Private Royal Canadian Dragoons, aged 30. William McLintock’s Gravestone A brief bleak item appeared in the Milngavie & Bearsden Herald in July 1917. Under the headline “Strathblane Soldier Killed”, it noted: “The past week has been a sad...
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...
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...
Gravestone at Bramshott (St Mary) Churchyard , East Hampshire. Alexander Buchanan Gilchrist, Sergeant/CSM Reserve Canadian Infantry, aged 30. On June 6 1906 Passenger Number 192 boarded the Allan Line’s SS Carthaginian in Glasgow bound for Montreal with the dream of...
Daniel Dugan, Corporal Black Watch, aged 19. Daniel’s Irish-born grandparents had settled in Blanefield in the 1880s. In 1891 the family, including nine children, plus three boarders, are all described as living in a three-roomed dwelling with no running water in New...
John Colquhoun’s Gravestone John Colquhoun, Private Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, aged 19 On April 14 1917 the Stirling Observer reported the “death of a Strathblane man”, aged 19. In fact, John Colquhoun had never resided in Strathblane but was one of many...
STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 26 PHILIP BINNIE, SECOND LIEUTENANT SCOTTISH RIFLES, AGED 27. Park Terrace, Strathblane, where the Binnie family had their second home.It was demolished to make way for local authority housing in Park Place. “He spent a short holiday in the...
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 WW1 PROJECT: 15 JAMES MACINTYRE, PRIVATE SEAFORTH HIGHLANDERS, AGED 19. The atlas from his Aunt Rhoda that James took to war The pressed wild rosebud marked "Ardlui June 1916" The calendar tab for September 1916 on which James was marking off his days in...
STRATHBLANE WW1 PROJECT: 13 JOHN MCCULLOCH, PRIVATE ARGYLL & SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS, AGED 34. Left: Report of John's death in the Milngavie & Bearsden Herald. Immediately beneath there is an item about soldiers' pay being increased to 1s 6d a day after six...
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...
STRATHBLANE FIRST WORLD WAR PROJECT: 5 WILLIAM DEVLYN, PRIVATE HIGHLAND LIGHT INFANTRY, AGED 22. Private William Devlyn, Highland Light Infantry, aged 22 Burnside, Station Road, Blanefield, home of William's mother, Jessie The Mons Star Diary extract from William...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
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...
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...
Murray O’Donnell was the embodiment of a “man o’pairts”. Panto dame, dramatist, local historian, bowler, mason, mechanic, family man and friend to those in need. The list could go on much further. He was born in Ballewan Crescent, Blanefield in 1943 to Winifred and...
A book by local historian Alison Dryden, who died in 2009. Published posthumously by Strathblane Heritage Society in November 2012. Paperback, 218 pages. (Available from Strathblane Heritage, £8.50) From the mid 1800s, the rural parish of Strathblane was undergoing an...
A delightful memoir of a small girl’s life in Strathblane in the 1940s & 50s
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...
Groome’s Gazetteer of Scotland offers a snapshot of Strathblane in 1884 at which point the valley contained “an ex-quisite assemblage of mansions, lakes, woods, and luxuriant corn fields”, according to the author. The huge printworks, employing hundreds of men, women and children, living in cramped tenements and cottages, receives only a passing mention.
This poem was first printed in the Lennox Herald on 10 September 1881 and was “inscribed to AP Coubrough Esq, Blanefield Printworks”. McAuslane was clearly a friend of the Coubroughs, who owned the Printworks. It may be intended to voice the thoughts of Anthony Park...
The poet Thomas Thorpe was born on 9 March, 1829 in Milton, Dunbartonshire, son of a block printer at the local works. When he was five, he moved with his family to Strathblane. One of his earliest childhood memories was being with his sisters in a wood where wild...
The Reverend Dr William Hamilton was the minister of Strathblane from 1809 until his death in 1835. In 1836 a memoir of his life and work was published by his son, Rev James Hamilton. (The Life and Remains of the Late Rev. William Hamilton, Minister of Strathblane:...