In the 1906-10 period when so many changes happened in the village, several more handsome villas were built. The Studio (where Scrimgeours’ new house at no. 17 is now) on Windlaw Road dates from this time and the artist William Petrie came to live there with his wife Elizabeth, a fellow artist who, like himself, became quite a well-known painter. The Studio - an attempt at the fashionable Charles Rennie Mackintosh style - was an interesting building, revolutionary in some of its features, with a big roof window facing north to catch the truest light.
Opposite The Studio, an attractively designed house went up at the corner of the lane down to Windlaw and the one to Gallowhill Farm. Called Viewfield, it became the home of the MacGregor family in 1910. Next to it was Maryville (6 Windlaw Road) a cottage-villa consisting of two houses. On its far side was Parkview, and next, Jim Lennox’s house which he called Bonnyton (at no. 2).
In the early years these three rented out some of their rooms to tenants or holiday visitors. Other privately owned properties let some of their rooms, such as the late 19th century house known as Rockview on Waterside Road (no. 118) facing east on to the Low Green, later bought over by Matthew Connell the blacksmith. Then, finding their own cottage home on Manse Road too cramped, Matthew had a fine new villa built for his family next to Rockview around 1915 (no. 120). Nowadays it is known as Ardenlea, but in the earlier decades of the century it was proudly called Tigh-na-ghoba, the Gaelic words for house of the Smith.
Further out Waterside Road, at the top of the Ditch, a fine stone-built villa of the early 1900s stood on the edge of the north and south (the Park) Glebe’s 5 acres, and although the house was at first known as Woodbine, it was inevitably renamed Five Acre Gate (at no. 150).
Across from the drive entrances to The Craigs and Craigsheen House (formerly Craigend) on Busby Road, substantially-built high spacious-roomed villas with the detached one next to them - nos. 42, 44 and Brantham at no. 46 - date from 1909. Further west, Holmglen dates from 1896 and Carnbooth House, close to its 18th century farm, was built in 1900. About 1919 the architect and interior designer, John Ednie created Windyriggs down Pedmyre Lane (off Busby Road) camping in Pedmyre’s grounds while the work was in progress. Ednie’s stay in his newly created house was brief, however. The unpleasant odour from the village’s untreated sewage area nearby drove him out after only a year.
The Browns of The Craigs, rich from their pawn-broking shops and who had been in the dyes industry before becoming grey cloth or worsted manufacturers in Cathcart, built the little cottage-villa on Busby Road (opposite the foot of Bankhead Road) in the 1890s for a relative or friend of theirs. Then a Dutch artist and his family came to live there. No one can remember his name, except that it began with the usual Van..., but he is known to have been very fond of his little house, affectionately calling it het huisje. Finding the words difficult, local folk pronounced it simply the hut, making the structure sound much less handsome than it actually is. Note for instance the shaped cut at the top of the beautifully rounded corner blocks, the light-coloured clean-cut sandstone and its nice doorway. Yet for years the name held; people in the village still use it today when referring to this neat well-built little house. The artist’s daughter later married the son of the Rev George Gillan, minister at the Parish Church from 1888-1913.
After the Dutchman left Mr. Fairley and his wife moved into it in 1906; he had been the coachman to the Strangs of The Peel a mile out on Waterside Road. In 1910, their pretty little granddaughter with rosy cheeks and dark curly hair, came with her parents to live with them; she became Mrs Ovenstone of Windlaw Road, reliable, clear-minded and helpful like many other folk in the village with information about Carmunnock’s earlier times. In the 1920s the cottage-villa became the home of Mr. Peter Crawford the joiner, and his wife and sons. One of these sons, Mr. Tommy Crawford lived there till he died in 1989.
The Browns owned several other properties in the village. In the early years they had bought part of the tall tenement built in 1898 on Greenside and in one of its houses they put their gardener Rab Ferguson and his family, next to the rooms in the building at that time occupied by the Police Station and the Policeman’s family. Much later, Rab’s son Willie courted Bessie the Browns’ housemaid who, some time earlier, had been sent as a 14-year-old tweenie from her home on the Argyllshire island of Seil to work in service. And on her wedding day in Springtime, the Browns’ coachman drove the young bride in grand style to church in their open carriage, sunshine dappling through the pretty blossom on Carmunnock’s trees.
Crag Lodge Gatehouse with the Castle (or Cassel) family in residence.
Soon the Browns built them the gardener’s cottage at the foot of their drive (no. 47 Busby Road). Mrs Bessie Ferguson, who in the 1970s went to live with her daughter in Ayrshire, celebrated her 100th birthday in December 1986.
Another of the Browns’ properties accommodated their coachman Jackson and his family (not thought to be any connection with the one of Jackson’s Lands) in the upstairs house of the cottage on Wellside (31 Kirk Road). At that time Wellside Cottage was divided into two or three and the McNiven family - Uncle Dan and Auntie Jess and their children (one of whom became Mrs Mary Little), cousins of the little lad Sandy Jamieson - lived in the house below them. Still more McNiven relatives, two washerwomen sisters, lived in the lands (32) on Kirk Road, south of the church.
Jackson looked after the stables between the cottage and bothy and he watered his master’s horses at the trough beside Mattha’s Well out on what was then the lower part of the Pathhead Road, at the corner of the cottage garden. Perhaps someone called Matthew or Martha long ago lived at Wellside Cottage? Whatever the origin of the name, Mattha’s Well also became known at this time as Jackson’s Well.
Now that the number of residents in Carmunnock - particularly those who were part of the city’s big business world - were increasing, it must have been about 1906 that the village Post Office was moved out of Maggie Wilson’s cottage (now known as Kirkennan Cottage) opposite the church. From then the business was carried on in part of Mr. and Mrs Archibald Tagg’s village shop at 4 Busby Road and Mr. Tagg became the Postmaster. Soon the Telephone Company installed Carmunnock’s first telephone in it, the latest advance in this fast-moving progress.
West down the Mill (Busby) Road showing, on the left, The Beeches and on the right, Sunnyside, Lennox’s cottage and Jackson’s Lands.
The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s reign was celebrated in 1897 and some lucky Carmunnock folk still have the mug painted with the words “Castlemilk 1897” given by the Laird to all the parish families to mark the day. And they have the one given throughout the land in 1902 on the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. 1911 was another Coronation year: Edward VII was dead after only nine years as sovereign and now King George V came to the throne in far-away London.
Everywhere in the land celebrations were held. Several of the older folk remembered Carmunnock’s great day. First of all you went to the Castlemilk Hall for your flag and your bag of cakes. Then at the field which became Crofthill Park (where the houses on Stuart Road and Old Playing Field Road are now) games and races were held and tea from huge kettles was poured out. Everyone came, old friends met and gossiped, and children got lost in the crowd and were found again. The McNivens and the Jamiesons of Stewarts’ Lands would be there, the Bairds of Gallowhill Farm, the Barkers of Sunnyside newly here from Yorkshire, the Borlands who worked for Mr. Fleming on Windlaw Farm at that time, the Connells of the Smiddy on the new School Road, the Malleys and MacGregors of Jackson’s Lands, the Warnocks of Bankhead Farm, Crawfords the joiners of Greenside, the MacGregors of Sunnybank and then of Viewfield, and members of other families still well-known in Carmunnock today.
Huge logs from trees specially felled for the occasion had been sent by the Laird. His men with their horses hauled them all the way from Castlemilk and they were piled high on the field. By evening the great bonfire was lit and fireworks let off. Rockets exploded in the sky with a loud bang and then amid a shower of bright sparks, they zoomed groundwards towards the crowd. One small boy called Sandy Jamieson was terrified. Quite certain that the fiendish things were coming straight for him, he fled from the field as fast as his little legs would carry him and ran right home to his Grannie McNiven and the safety of her fireside. These were old Mr. Jamieson’s most outstanding memories of this highly important national occasion!
Three generations of Connells the blacksmiths, outside the old Smiddy on Waterside Road.
For a time in the early days, young Sandy’s Grandfather McNiven who lived in Stewarts’ Lands did blacksmithing in a yard next to it (before the Castlemilk Hall was built there). Later his son-in-law Mr. Jamieson, Sandy’s father, who was a gardener (and years afterwards the school’s janitor, drill instructor and district attendance officer as well as being caretaker of the Castlemilk Hall), moved his family from the old toll-house across the road into another of Stewarts’ Lands’ houses. But by now it was old Matt’a Connell with his son Matthew at the 17th century Smiddy on what is now Waterside Road opposite the school, who was the busiest man in the village, shoeing horses and making or repairing wheels and an assortment of iron tools and implements.
Safe in quiet little Carmunnock, children played round the lanes and gardens. Carts, horseback riders, an occasional horse-drawn lorry, a dray, waggonette or pony and trap, a very rare cab or carriage and pair were all that Main Street saw. Even then, so our friends remind us, mothers constantly warned their children to watch out on the roads. Sometimes these conveyances were driven at speed; sometimes nervous horses reared up or took fright and bolted off at a gallop, completely out of the driver’s control. Advice to take care on the roads is not as new as we might think.
Back in 1902 Mr Orlando Young had taken over Mr Miller’s horse-brake service (started about 1884) to Busby railway station; and Orlando also ran a covered cab and a pony and trap for hires, making use of some of the Boghead’s stables and sheds. The hiring business flourished and next door to the Inn Mr Young built the handsome villa Davielea in 1905 (knocked down in 1978 to make way for the Kirk Care complex). Yet Carmunnock folk still walked miles daily to their destinations just as they had always done. Some even walked to the University in the city, and they say that in the 19th century David Livingstone the explorer and medical missionary liked to walk up to Carmunnock in his earlier years to visit acquaintances here. Even today walking in this district is pleasant - past fields, farm and river, tramping the hill paths, enjoying the fresh south-west air and the changing sky. Partly sheltered and partly exposed on the braes, the village lies surrounded even now by some of its ancient farmlands, preserved as a green belt.
People here recall that an expression used by farmers round Eaglesham more than 100 feet higher near the bleak moors to the south, best describes Carmunnock’s situation. Surveying the wide aspect of country and the lay of the land to the north-east of them, “the doon ower yins” obviously referred to the ones whose pastures were round Carmunnock village down there on the lower slopes where the weather was kinder.
“Carmunnock, oh! how fair thy braes,
When sunrise throws its welcome rays
O’er plantain, burns, and grassy lea,
My soul enraptured looks on thee.
The golden glory in the West
Touches the Kittoch’s restless breast
And helps it to pass its unknown ways
Because it touched Carmunnock’s braes.”
- wrote Dora B. Nisbet in the early decades of the 20th century while she lived at Stipends Cottage (no longer in existence) beside the bridge on Waterbank Road, and then at Craigmiln Cottages on Busby Road.
Map published 1912 - Village.
Map published 1912 - Down Busby Road