The period 1908-10 and onwards brought great changes to Carmunnock. At long last water was pumped through pipes to the village. For centuries the tiny hamlet round the church, the kirkton of Carmunnock, spreading out in the 19th century to be more like the place we know today, had used the many springs from which came beautiful pure clear cold water.
In the 18th century, a survey was done under the patronage of the University of Glasgow to assess the water supply from Carmunnock’s reputed springs. But it was found that altogether the amount yielded only 70 pints per minute and would scarcely have been sufficient for a quarter of the city’s population. Carmunnock was allowed to keep its springs and its abundance of pure water for its own use, a good supply for another century or more.
Wells with water pumps, focal points in the community, had been built round the best confluence of water. There were other wells in the village, such as the one in the back garden of the original 14th century dwellings. Older houses outside the village and farms had their springs and Wells too, and going back in time it is logical that where there was a reliable spring of good water, a habitation would be settled.
The Misses Borland in their 80s told us that down the hill on the road towards Glasgow, the spring at High Netherton Farm brought a flow of water that never saw the light of day until, pure clear and cold, unfrozen in winter and never dry in summer, it came out of a tap in the house. It started from a good spring further up the fields near the village, and so deep in the ground did its channel run, far below the muck of the farmyard, and so good was the quality of the water that it passed all the Water Department’s tests and could not be condemned.
There were other springs on the Netherton farms, and the old ladies told us that their cows, consistently preferring to graze at an unlikely spot near the steadings, showed quite clearly that the grass must be sweeter there. To the Borlands it was no surprise when a beautiful spring of water was found underneath, running from out of the limestone rock - because while nearby Windlaw Farm was on whinstone, the High and Mid Nethertons were on limestone. Some folk had heard how a well-maker worked: how he listened to trace the line of water and finding it, channelled it into a hollow of water, building it up until it was caught in a circle swirling in a well of rock and stones, open to ground level.
Every household in Carmunnock had its regular water-carrier. Old Mrs McNiven who lived in Stewarts’ Lands, wife of the blacksmith, daily pushed her little water-cart all the way up to the Doo Well in the plantain on Waterside Road where the purest water came from.
Years later, her grandson, a small boy called Sandy Jamieson (Mr. Alex Jamieson, proprietor of Ashtree Garage till 1993) whose family by then lived in Stewarts’ Lands too, was sent by his mother with his pail to the same Well early each morning before school. No other water would do for Granny McNiven, and in Sandy’s house, only on the winteriest of days when snow or wet mud on the road made it too hard for the little lad, was he allowed to bring water from nearer at the Halla’ Well below the churchyard’s northwest wall. The water there, “although not quite as good as the Doo Well’s” his mother would say, was “good enough for some things”.
Discussions frequently took place in the village as to which Well had the best water or a good flow in the varying seasons. Dip sticks for officially measuring the amounts were carefully kept in Connells’ Smiddy where they had been made.
The water in the Well at the foot of the Low Green was not so highly thought of, however. Mrs Jess Macrae (who lived to be 90) used to tell of when she was young. All her life she lived in one of the houses in the 1828 tenement on Greenside just beside the Well there. But like many folk, her mother insisted on the Doo Well’s good water.
Jess was frequently sent up to the plantain on Waterside Road after school for a pitcherful enough for teatime; but if she thought her mother was not looking, she sneaked down to the Well on the Green beside her house. The Doo Well was too far away, she thought, and besides, on the road back home the precious water always spilled out, soaking her long black woollen stockings and her button-up boots. Alas, one day, stealing down to get water at the nearby Well when nobody was near, she slipped and her clothes got wet. Then there was a row!
The name Doo Well, according to the Rev Charles Harrison, may have described the numerous pigeons in the trees there, but was perhaps also a derivation of Dow, the surname of people who lived locally. Census Returns show that last century there was a thatcher by that name in Carmunnock.
Every morning old Miss McVeannie who lived in a cottage (long since ruined) in Linnbrae’s garden, hobbled down the path with her two pails, crossed Busby Road and drew water from the Halla’ Well’s pump almost directly opposite. The path the old lady took from her cottage met the road at the east end of Linnbrae’s garden wall which at that time stood further forward. In the 1950s when road-widening was taking place, the wall was rebuilt a yard further back, higher than the original one.
The few extra feet of wall which nowadays block off this no-longer used path, stand slightly at an angle to the rest of it to meet the line of Sunnyside’s. Almost opposite this angled section, the Halla’ Well stood at the side of the then much narrower old mill road, just outside The Beeches garden. Opinions vary as to how near or further down from the cottages the exact spot was. They say that the name Halla’ is probably derived from Hallow or Holy, being beside the church, and from the Well’s location in a hollow of the road.
Photographs of Main Street taken in the first decade of the century show big rain-water barrels outside each door, a handy supply good enough for a number of needs. But the old days were nearly over. Tremendous progress began to develop in the early 20th century. Busby Water Company had constructed two filters east of Carmunnock from which a supply was obtained.
In 1908 Lanarkshire County Council took over the responsibility for this area and, following the Water Confirmation Act of that year, an 8-inch pipe was laid from East Kilbride to Carmunnock, subsequently extended over the Cathkin Braes to Burnside. Subsidiary distribution pipes eventually supplied practically the whole of Carmunnock parish. It should be mentioned here that in the past, County boundaries must have been moved, because some old books show Carmunnock as being in Renfrewshire.
If Main Street and other roads in the village had been rutted and muddy before, they were about to become much worse. Everywhere for the next year or more, the dirt roads were dug up and pipes laid past the houses to bring water “by gravitation”. A new age had arrived and the villagers called this incoming supply “Gravitation water” as different from Carmunnock’s own spring water on which the folk had relied for so long.
Beautiful new kitchen sinks fitted with taps were installed in the houses and for months these waited, dry and useless, until eventually plumbing connected domestic pipes to take the water through to them. The story is told that one day in great excitement, Ellen Twaddle, a washerwoman, came running out of a cottage (no. 9) on School Loan or Manse Brae. “Come and see this, come and see this,” she called to Mrs Borland (mother of the late Misses Jean and Janet Borland of Bankhead Road, tenants of High Netherton Farm until about 1962). Mrs Borland was taken eagerly by the arm into the house to see one of the first taps in the village to be connected, “and with running water coming out of it too!” was the incredulous remark.
It was the greatest event of the times. For two centuries there had been much progress in many things, but it is astonishing to us today that people - especially in a laundering community - had to wait so long to have that most basic of commodities, running water in their houses.
Not everyone thought it was wonderful, however. There was the greatest suspicion of the water’s pureness. Rab Ferguson, gardener to the Browns of The Craigs, aptly described his disgust, “Gravitation water? A’ widna’ wash m’ boots in it!”. Nothing, they decided, could replace the pure water from the springs; so for cooking and drinking use, the patient villagers continued to make daily journeys to the Wells. It was some years before the Water Board, making improvements to the filtering processes, ensured that the quality was acceptable. By 1930, Carmunnock’s water was beautiful, pure, cold and refreshing, regarded by many as the best in the whole area.
The Regional Offices at Hamilton told us that while a small pipe from Glasgow still supplies excellent water to Carmunnock centre north of the crossroads, the main supply comes from the small reservoirs about 10 miles south of the Glassford Water Works near Strathaven. It is brought to East Kilbride, then to the distribution reservoir at East Rogerton, from where pipes lead it to the village. A new treatment plant was installed at the Glassford Works in 1988.
After gravitation water came to the village in those early years of the century, drainage pipes were laid to take the domestic and soil waste, although it has to be remembered that for a very long time few houses had the luxury of an indoor toilet, far less a bath. The Statistical Accounts of the parish (1953) tell us that from 1890-1912 the village’s drainage system consisted of certain small sewage pipes and these pipes discharged directly into Pedmyre Burn (Carmunnock Burn or the Tammy Linn) in Pedmyre Lane without treatment of any kind.
Then a sewage works was made near Pedmyre so that, once grit-drained and settled, the effluent ran into the Burn at that point. In 1929 a sewer was constructed taking the sludged effluent further away into the Kittoch Burn at Kittoch Mill, and in 1931 extensions were made and primary treatment works were almost duplicated. Secondary treatment by filters was added, and in 1935 drying areas were constructed.
But - on a more picturesque note - older people in the village were told by their parents that, long before such sophisticated systems were installed, soap suds from the washerwomen’s tubs poured down the clean drains were next to be seen scudding about in the rushing waters of Pedmyre Burn!
In those wonderful progressive years early in the 20th century, another big improvement inevitably came to the village. The main roads were remade. Under Mr. John Wilson’s supervision, Irish labour was employed for the quarry work, and every day Mirren Young the proprietress at the Boghead Inn would set a big bowl of hot boiled potatoes on the counter for them, free of charge.
They described the method as metalling the roads. First of all the grit was swept to the side and the road-bed dug out and evened. Then that hardest and most durable of materials, whinstone, found in the Cathkin Braes and High Green Quarries (where Cameron Crescent is now) was broken up into pieces of uniform size - about that of a tennis ball. They say that around 1910, when my elderly friends were mere toddlers or little children starting school, the area near the High Green rang with the sound of small metal hammers breaking the stone, a regular hand-action that was called knapping.
It was these hard-as-metal pieces of durable whinstone which gave the road its base. Spread evenly over the area, they were the metal bottoming. Cartloads of earth were brought and together with the grit, this topping layer was laid on to pack it. Water was sprinkled over the surface, it was thoroughly rolled and thereafter the traffic helped to compact the whole area.
This method would be similar to the one John McAdam invented in the early 19th century. But tarmacadaming, a surface of small stone chips sealed with tar or pitch and rolled by a heavy steam-roller, did not come till much later, probably not done here until the 1920s or even the 1930s. For the time being, however, the new floored roads were a tremendous improvement on the muddy lanes they once were.
In the past, tenants on Estate land had by law to take on some road maintenance work annually, and long ago two toll-houses in Carmunnock - an attractive 18th century cottage just north of and next to Boghead Farm and a tiny one on the south east corner of Cathkin Road and Waterside Road (where a power box is now) - took the tolls for use of the Lairds’ roads. Our 80-year-old friends were told by their earlier folk that a halfpenny (per wheel or vehicle?) was the toll charge for carts and other conveyances with narrow wheels, and a penny for broad ones because these took up more road. But it was easier to draw vehicles with the latter and even although the toll charge was more expensive, broad wheels were more popular.
By 1910 the taking of tolls at turnpikes had long since ceased. Probably the closure of the Lairds’ tollhouses dates from when Local County Committees or Councils took over the responsibility for road-maintenance. To offset the cost to the Council of wear and tear on their new floored and surfaced roads, a new toll was taken. For assessing the weight of horse-drawn and, later, motor vehicles, weighing machinery measured the load and charges were made accordingly. In Carmunnock until the 1950s, a small wooden building known locally as the Weys-box, inside which were the machinery’s dials, stood out on the edge of Waterside Road at the foot of the Greenside path; and on the road in front of it until the 1960s was the iron platform on which vehicles halted while being weighed.
All lighting was by candle or paraffin lamp, and in 1893 six street lamps lit by paraffin stood in the village, paid for with funds raised by the Band of Hope and the congregation of the Clason Memorial Free Church Mission Hall. Charlie Coulter the lamp-lighter or leerie of the time, lit them only on moonless nights and carefully studied the Almanac to find the dates of the full moon. If the sky was clear on those occasions, no lamps were lit. But if heavy cloud later covered the moon, there were angry complaints to Charlie next day!
Then in 1908 gas lighting came to the village after a pipe was laid along Busby Road. The Smiddy and the Boghead Inn were the first to have it installed. But it is said that as the 1914 War progressed, there were fears of explosions especially if enemy zeppelins spied out gas storage tanks, and the lights had to go out. For a while it was back to paraffin lamps and candle-light again. When peace came, gas lighting was put in the Council houses built in 1922 for the families of men home from the War.
Money for installing gas lighting in the church in 1920 was raised by house-to-house collections, and each elder had his district in the village to collect from. But the elder who was the farmer at Meikle Dripps felt embarrassed, “A’ cuidna’ tak siller aff thae washerfolk i’ the village” he said, and he contributed his district’s money from his own pocket. Many houses had to continue with paraffin lamps for years, however, and some even had to wait till well after electricity became available to Carmunnock from about 1927.