Early church buildings had probably stood on or close to the same Kirk site in Carmunnock, perhaps even from when Henry or Henricus de Cormanoc, son of Anselm of the Manor, gave the original parish lands to Paisley Abbey. Throughout the centuries until the Reformation, the monks’ abode stood north of the churchyard, a cluster of low dwellings that faced south-east up the Cathkin Way. Vigilance was kept night and day against approach by marauders and the church’s enemies. Seven roads (or paths) led into Carmunnock village, folk will say, but only one of these, the one down from the Braes could overlook it. The monks’ lives were constantly in danger in times of persecution. For safety from attack, it is said that they crept through an underground passage between the Monkeries and the church - a passage that in the present day has never been found. The site of these ancient dwellings at the village’s main crossroads is nowadays occupied by 8 and 10 Busby Road.
Then in 1767 the landowning heritors had a fine new church - our present one - built for £365 6s of fine and freestone (probably meaning the rarer smooth easily-cut sandstone and good squared sandstone sets punched and dabbed) on or close to the site of the preceding building, thus continuing our long history as a settled parish.
In 1696, the independent Scottish Parliament passed an Act of Settlement of Schools, whereby if not already provided, each parish must supply a school and a schoolmaster. Although in Carmunnock there was already provision for the children’s education in the village church, we know that a house (in present-day Manse Road which starts opposite the church gates) was specially designated for the purpose in 1702 - thus the road’s early name School Loan or Lane.
The remains of the old school, roofless and ruined, were still there in 1973 and when builders started clearing the debris and rubble, they came on a stone broken in two, covered with ivy, lying unnoticed among the others. When it was carefully cleaned, the words THE SCHOOLHOUSE 1702 were deciphered on it and now, in commemoration, the restored stone is set into the outside wall of the rebuilt house at that site, 11 Manse Road.
We are told that long ago, when lessons were over for the morning, the schoolchildren played on a grassy area at the top of the Loan where, as now, the road widens between the cottages on the near side and the wall opposite enclosing the old Manse grounds.
The Lairds Stuart in their fine mansion-house at Castleton - entitled Castlemilk since the 18th century (from the Stuarts’ original home in Dumfriesshire) - owned much of the land and many of the properties. Rents in merks were paid and transactions for changes in tenancy signed. Like several other properties, Pedmyre (Padmyre or Padmuir), thought to have originated about 1660, a 20 penny land, was called a merkland because its wealthy farmer could afford to pay the rent in money and not merely in kind such as by supplying farm produce or animal stock annually.
And Linnbrae’s lands (on which a house was built in the 1830-60 period) are described in a transaction dated 1765 between Sir John Stewart of Castlemilk and a Mr. Crawford, as “covering 6 acres between Pedmyre and the Quarry”. (Registers of Sasines from 1781 can be seen at The Mitchell Library in Glasgow or at the Scottish Records Office in Edinburgh.)
The croft house Trestermyre (26 Kirk Road) dates from about 1698 and in 1750 its title deeds refer to “the house, byre or barn, yeards and piece of ground bound on the north by the churchyard, on the east by the common town, on the west by the Mill Road and on the south by the old march sometimes renewed and staked off”.
This croft or small-holding is described as a 20 penny land of 3 acres at a rent of 3 merks Scots payable to the Laird of Castlemilk, “reserving always the limestone and coal found on that land to the superiors of that land and their successors” but having “the liberty to cast divots on the Stuarts’ common-loaning”. In 1793 Trestermyre was “passed by Charter of Confirmation from John Stuart of Castlemilk to Robert Whyte, portioner, with grazing and crop-growing rights”. A portioner was a crofter who, with others, bought a piece of land and was the owner of his share or portion of that land.
It is from the foot of Trummle Hill on the Cathkin Way (Cathkin Road) that water draining from field springs, becomes Carmunnock Burn known locally even today as the Tammy Linn. From a long time ago most of it has been taken underground through pipes. But at one time it ran freely all the way down the Low Green past the two crosses (thought to have been put there to mark ground consecrated for Communion services held throughout the 18th century), then past the Well at the foot.
From there the Burn ran between the back gardens of the School Loan cottages and Rowan Bank - and householders on this stretch as well as along the Green, rinsed their washing in its rushing waters - meeting Kirk Road between the house now known as Kirkennan Cottage and the new complex of flats at Kirkgrove. It then gurgled through the rock behind the row of 17th century cottages known as The Beeches (where the Tearoom and Post Office are now) and flowed on down the middle of the Mill Road (Busby Road) to Pedmyre Lane, joining the Kittoch Water that runs into the White Cart at Overlee (Clarkston).
Until the 1970s the Burn still ran freely along the stretch between Waterside Road (close to the north gable of no. 118) and Kirk Road; then the Waterside Court complex of flats was built on its north bank in 1987. Its dry channel can still be traced in the gardens at the back of the Manse Road houses. Only at its beginning in the east and then at the far west end of the village can the Tammy Linn, the Carmunnock Burn, be seen today where it comes in from the fields beside the new houses at 14-24 Cathkin Road soon to be joined at the top of the Low Green by another stream running along the foot of Thorncliffe’s garden from the one-time Gallowhill Farm on Gallowhill Road, then underground till it finally reappears in Pedmyre Lane.
But in the 18th century, with many springs throughout the village flowing into it - and from some of these there were the four public and a few garden Wells - the Tammy Linn coursed right through the centre of Carmunnock, dividing the houses on the south nearest the church, the Wellside where the four public Wells were, from those that were referred to as being “on the north side of the Burn”.