Although perhaps less progressive in some everyday things than the 18th century had been in comparison to its preceding period, the 19th century brought great changes. In many ways it was a time of very modern thinking. There were ideas for better health, Victorian moral discipline, some freedom from old domination - significantly in the Church - and still more progress in that tremendous change, the Industrial Revolution, with all its inventiveness and improvement in living and working conditions.
The Rev Adam Forman’s Statistical Account of 1796 reported that in Carmunnock parish in 1755 there was a population of 471; then by the end of the century this amounted to 570 which included 133 families who had separate dwellings. But by 1831 the total had risen to 692 and continued to average 700. Clearly, more living accommodation must be built to house the increasing number of folk in the village.
From necessity, better materials for using in building became available in this new century, better instruction in new methods too. As well as setting the houses in straight lines along a road, it was becoming more common to attach them at right-angles to existing ones. Moreover, the 19th century brought a new type of improving to buildings, namely enlarging or extending the existing ones.
People questioned the benefit of a draughty space under the floor and in the construction of new houses, damp courses were only gradually introduced. Towards the end of the century, the thatch on old cottage roofs was removed and houses with stone tiles or slabs of shale were stripped of these and carefully laid with the big early coarse slices of slate, later with the thin ones. In some, dormer windows were built out when the roofs were renewed.
From the 18th century, better-built chimney stacks had become necessary as a precaution against the dread old danger of thatch fires; and now in the 19th century, higher and more substantially constructed chimney heads of stone or brick with taller pots or lum-heads securely cemented into them, became the style.
The Industrial Revolution meant that people earned more money and standards of living were rising. House interiors were developed. Ceilings were made, thereby allowing bedrooms upstairs, because soon wooden staircases replaced the hatch through which till then a rough ladder had reached the area above.
From the 17th and 18th centuries box or recess beds and presses were built into the walls of rooms; and as people began to have more possessions, dressers and kists were made for storing them. In this new century, furnishings for more comfort as well as kitchen cooking ranges and better utensils began to be part of the household.
Progress in our rural little village, however, was slow. In many respects living standards here remained much as they had been for some time. Perhaps the Laird of Castlemilk who up until the end of the 19th and into the 20th century still owned many of the existing houses, felt there was no need and had no intention of making further improvements.
But there were other property owners in Carmunnock. Although as already said, the Stuarts owned many of the cottages and the two higher blocks of the 1790s built for mill workers, there were the 2-storey tenements south of the church. These, it is thought, were built by the previous laird, Lord Hamilton at the time the Hamiltons disposed the very last of their Carmunnock lands or properties to the Stuarts. The little houses which these tenements contained would be allowed rent-free to trusted and faithful former Estate servants for such time as they wished to remain there or until the husband died.
In the 18th century, the dwellings with their 14th century foundation near the crossroads were probably developed into a 3-storey tenement by an independent builder. And there were other small landowners in and around Carmunnock. For example, in the 18th century a Mr. John Dick appears to have owned several areas of ground in the village. In 1865 Mr. Daniel McNiven sold a piece of land for £40 on which the Clason Hall was to be built, and there were probably other small landlords. Even The Beeches, dating from the 17th century, dwellings which were built in traditionally modest style typical of those owned by the overlord of a district, belonged to a small independent estate.
As time went on and the Industrial Revolution became firmly established, many speculators launched themselves into the tenement-building business, renting out the houses to tenants. In 1828 the tenement next to Sunnybank, facing south across the Low Green, was built by one of these. This well-constructed block was regarded in those early days as “a very handsome edifice”. Note the date on the small central gable, and its attractive old window frames. With a passage or close running from front right through the middle of the building to the yard at the rear - as in the earlier blocks - there was access inside the close to the downstairs houses and outside in the back yard, stone stairs led to the ones above, the same as in the restored and replanned building today.
New blocks similar to this contained as many as four 2-roomed houses for four families, or even of five or six if the building was so divided that a house consisted of only one room for one person or for a married couple. This new advanced style of living accommodation in Carmunnock had arrived to stay. The old 18th century picture of the village with its early cottages was changing. Here and there fine new substantial and much bigger and higher 19th century buildings with squared sandstone walls and many big windows were appearing.
Around 1830 a block of five houses, Ashtree (later converted into two and then one self-contained private residence) went up on Main Street opposite Boghead Farm. Then in the 1860s, north of Ashtree, another big substantial tenement of four 2-roomed houses, a close through the building in similar style with an outside back stair, was put up by Mr. James Stirling Stuart, the Laird of Castlemilk.
It was attached on its north side to an 18th century Estate-owned cottage which itself consisted of two or three tiny houses. The tenement and cottage, both demolished in 1955, were situated in front of the present-day Jet Garage. They were on the Laird’s land and inevitably the new block was called Stewarts’ (or Stuarts’) Lands, a reminder that the word lands is an old Scots term for a tenement.
Probably in the 1840s, a fashionable 2-storey building containing five houses was built on Waterside Road (nowadays only two houses 111 and 113 Waterside Road) just behind Sunnybank Cottages. This new block would be on Boghead farm’s land at that site. This time the outside stair was at the front - a forestair as on the lands (32 Kirk Road) south of the church. Note the interesting stone mouldings, facings outstanding round windows and the decorative timbering on the dormers.
About the same time, a second fashionable building named Sunnyside, thought to have contained five houses, went up on Busby Road opposite the churchyard’s northwest wall. Nowadays it has only three houses, 12, 14 and 14A Busby Road. Although greater in length, one part angled to the other, this attractive building is similar in some respects to the one on Waterside Road, with stone mouldings above and facings standing out round the windows. The tenement’s outside stair was - and has been retained - at the back, and the doors to the downstairs houses may originally have been in a close.
In 1855 another tenement of four or more small houses went up at the corner of Kirk Road and the now non-existent little street Rowan Bank. Its date is still clearly seen above the upstairs window on the corner of what is now the Kirkgrove complex of flats. Later, with a stair at the back, there was Rowanbank of four houses, taking the location’s name. Built of rubblestone with squared sandstone facings, it is similar in style to the shop opposite at 4 Busby Road with its self-contained house above it, reconstructions of earlier ones.
But besides house-building in this part of the new century, other interesting things were happening in the life of Carmunnock village.