Big changes were coming. Early in the 1930s the 17th century cottages at Helena Place, The Beeches, in a serious state of deterioration, were knocked down and the tall trees beside them felled. So strong were the trees’ roots that dynamite had to be used to blow them out. Carmunnock was shaken by the din; children were called home and for safety old folk stayed indoors till all was clear. Before the awful work began, some kind soul took away the hens from the hen-run at the foot of the long gardens near Trestermyre’s orchard wall, and settled them in someone else’s yard. In the deserted ground flowers and fruit bushes bloomed on as before and the folk who had lived there crept quietly in when no one was near to gather them from time to time, remembering summer days of years gone by.
Beside the lonely gardens, the churchyard was all but full of graves by this time and down the hill towards Glasgow, Carmunnock’s new cemetery close to Mid Netherton Farm was consecrated in the mid-1930s.
The sturdy-looking 17th/18th century building on the corner of Waterside Road and Kirk Road which had been Mrs Harper’s store, then the Avonbank and finally Rutherglen Co-op’s, was condemned and the shop closed; the two little houses tacked on behind were also doomed. No accommodation was available for the people still in them, however, and Mrs Jean Gold of Stuart Road told me that for many months she and her parents Mr. and Mrs Duff waited.
Winter came, and rats feeding greedily on the choice remains of groceries and rich fatty scraps in the oily old store got fatter. It was frightening to be in the tiny houses at the back while the vermin were free to feast insatiably in the rotting building. They scraped and squeaked with excitement in the night, little less brave during the day.
At last, late in 1936, the Council knowing the conditions and the people’s plight offered them bare rooms in the not quite completed Council houses on Gallowhill Road. “There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation,” Mrs Gold added, “We moved in”. The new houses still had no electricity and paraffin lamps had to suffice. But who cared! There were no rats here and the family slept soundly at night.
Some time later, in 1937 or 1938, the store, the tiny houses behind and the derelict 17th century Smiddy next to them were demolished - a sight and sound that was a shattering experience for the villagers, appalled at first to see the great empty space in front of the Clason Hall’s door. At that time too, across from it the little tenement on Kirk Road between the 3-storey one and Mrs McNiven’s - where Johnnie Leggat had mended shoes - had to be knocked down.
Torrances’ ancient thatched cottage, formerly Coulters’, still stood and a few more years passed before the couple moved out. Then the thatch caught fire and the roof collapsed - yet it survived. Sitting out at the bend of the road it was a hazard, blinding the corner to traffic. No one owned the old house and no one seemed to take responsibility for it. Thought to date from the mid 17th century, what stories could those crumbling walls tell?
By the very end of the 1930s the derelict outhouse adjoining Rowanbank fell down. Time was indeed taking its toll of the old places. They had had their day. But soon bright colour cheered up this tumbledown spot right in the centre of the village. When Mr. and Mrs Duncan Ross (of Stuart Road) were first married, they lived in one of Rowanbank’s houses and Duncan, a keen gardener, cleared the area enclosed by the low ruined walls and made a garden full of flowers. It was a sight to gladden many a heart now that War had come.
A few years earlier, in 1935, the Laird of Castlemilk Mr. William Crawfurd Stirling Stuart sold the huge tract of his Estate land round his mansion-house to Glasgow Corporation for the building of Council housing. Over a long period of time he had found the enormously expensive Estate impossible to run. The price he received for sale of that vast area was only a few miserable pounds per acre.
For three years more he lived alone with his servants in Castlemilk House and died in 1938. Somberly his Union Jack-draped coffin laid on a brightly-polished gun-carriage was drawn along Carmunnock’s crowd-lined main street to the church, and his faithful Estate foremen and their wives as well as a host of upper-class gentry attended the funeral. The few Carmunnock folk who bothered to watch the procession along with the numbers of incomers at the roadside had never in all their lives seen an occasion like it.
The last Laird of the district was dead. Loyal folk were sad at his passing, at the end of a way of life that had ruled their lives too. Others shrugged off any regrets; his death meant little to them; his manner had made things difficult or awkward for some in the parish; his era was over. But much more significant, so was a long and important time in this district’s history.
In the 1939-45 War, everywhere was affected by such things as the rationing of food to conserve supplies, and the blacking out of lights at night by drawing thick curtains or blinds across windows (the blackout) so that enemy aircraft couldn’t see built-up areas or identify important locations. Men and women from many Carmunnock families left to join the Armed Forces or entered other War work for the duration; and some children were evacuated to the village from the city to be safer from air-raids.
Soldiers were camped on the Cathkin Braes where Army tank crews carried out training manoeuvres; an Anti-Aircraft Artillery and Searchlight Battery was based at a camp west of Mid Netherton Farm; later in the War that location became a German Prisoner of War Camp and a few of the prisoners were trusted with helping on local farms. The village’s Home Guard Company under the Command at first of Lt. William Hyslop formed part of the 5th Lanarkshire Home Guard Battalion whose headquarters were at The Peel down Waterside Road.
One autumn evening when German aircraft jettisoned some of their incendiary bombs on the Cathkin Braes, one of these small fire bombs fell on the bungalow in Windlaw Road where Mr. Tommy Murray now lives. Happily the minor fire it caused was soon put out and the village’s A.F.S. (Auxiliary Fire Service) personnel could relax again. Their post was established in the School and if all was quiet during the night, they could sleep on the floor - unless, of course, you were on duty with old Mr. MacAulay who snored so loudly that you were in danger of not hearing the vital air-raid siren at Busby!
The village was in the good care too of the Home Guard, seen every week drilling and marching in smart military fashion along the main street, Lt. Hyslop leading and Sgt. Tom Crawford (Bel’s father) bringing up the rear. At the quick march south from Hillcrest Square towards the crossroads, they had to slow down where Waterside Road turns off, to let the traffic go by. This suited Sgt. Crawford admirably. When the men turned to look back, the Sergeant was nowhere to be seen: the Boghead Inn and its inviting bar were all too strategically placed!
Press and radio reports of such as the evacuation at Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, El Alemein, the D-Day landings, Arnhem then finally the fall of Berlin and the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took up everyone’s thoughts, till at last hostilities ceased and all was peace again.
While the Rev James Wotherspoon was serving as an Army Padre in Burma, the Rev. H. H. McBride took the church services here. This young man was one of the Committee formed to raise funds to celebrate the village Servicemen’s return. Collection boxes were put in the shops and in the Boghead Inn, people gave donations, dances were held, a farmer gave a calf to be raffled, the thermometer specially hung in Ashtree’s north window was moved up as every £10 came in, and at the social evening held towards the end of 1945 to welcome them home, each Service man and woman was presented with a cheque for £14.
V.E. and then V.J. Day (Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan) were celebrated. Not everyone rejoiced so happily, however. Nine of the parish’s Servicemen had died in the War and Carmunnock would never forget them.