We had often seen the old milestone embedded in a city centre wall (in Dundas Street) that read: “Carmunnock 6 miles, Cambuslang 4 miles”, never dreaming that the village would one day be our home. When my husband and I and our son and daughter came to live here in the late autumn of 1956 to be nearer my husband’s work, it was still a country village - an outer suburb and a dormitory area it’s true, but a quiet, pleasant, independent little place, quaint with old cottages and picturesque corners. It was a village clearly telling an incoming stranger that it had been here a long, long time, with its own life, its own people and its own ways.
Gradually settling into our peaceful, attractive old cottage, we enlarged it from four to six rooms, using the high attic space under the steep roof. Our long back garden with the churchyard on its north side stretched all the way down to the junction of Busby Road and the foot of Kirk Road. At the back door in the angle between our late 17th century cottage and the old croft’s byre or barn which had long since been converted and become part of the house, was a perfect suntrap with a fresh green aspect of trees and gardens. In winter we shut out the cold dark nights and relaxed at Trestermyre’s homely (one-time kitchen) fireside.
Talking to villagers and local tradesmen, to friends who had been in Carmunnock longer than we had, and to colleagues of my husband’s, it took time before we began to learn a little about the history of the place. Years later, in 1972, 1973 and 1974, I attended a long series of evening class lectures given in the Castlemilk Hall by the well-known Glasgow historian Frank Worsdall F.S.A. - lectures that were packed full of interest and information.
These were knowledgeably and descriptively added to at the time by folk in the village. The Borland sisters had much to tell for instance, Mr. Jim Brown with them, the Jamiesons, Grays, Crawfords and Connells, keen historians Mrs Helen Lambie (daughter of old Mrs Catherine Craig of Pathhead and mother of Marshall Lambie) and of course Mr. Bob MacGregor of Viewfield, well-known with his guide dog. Then and over the years since, I have learnt about the history all round us.
A few yards from our door at 26 Kirk Road was the 18th century church in its peaceful graveyard. Sheltered and shaded by tall old trees, it was a pretty place where snowdrops and daffodils appeared between the gravestones in springtime. At 9.30 on a Sunday morning the church bell rang, continuing long tradition - as it still does today - calling parishioners from far and near to prepare for worship, giving the farm folk time to walk to the village after the milking was done and the animals fed; at 12 noon it rang again for morning service. On the grass at the side of the church’s path was set - as every Sunday for centuries past and still today - a pail of Carmunnock’s pure cold water, drinking cup beside it, to refresh those who had walked a distance.
Names of the village’s fallen in the 1939-45 War were commemorated in the church on a brass plaque on the baptismal font dedicated in 1949, the same year as the new pipe organ was installed. And on the War Memorial on Waterside Road at the Glasgow Road end of the village, nine new names had been added to those of before. These names are: Flt/Lt. Thomas Barclay, RAF; ABSC William H. Close, RN; Gnr. Thomas Crawford, RA; LAC John H. Edwards, RAF; AC I Henry Graham, RAF; AC.1 Thomas Hodge, RAF; Rfm Robert Hodge, SR; Tpr George Stewart, RAC; Sgt/AG Ian William Sanderson, RAFVR.
Between us and the church gates and watch-house, old Miss Jeannie Young lived in the 17th century cottage at 22 Kirk Road, sister of the late Stephen Young of Davielea. Across from this on Kirk Square, there were two adjoining cottages. In the far one, old Mrs Sharp lived (mother of Mr. Sharp of Stuart Road) and in the nearer were two ageing sisters, the Misses Nan and Jean Twaddle of the Bankhead Farm family. Until the War they had helped their brother John deliver milk by pony and cart and had scrubbed the milk and butter churns in a tiny stone and brick-built dairy still standing in the south-east corner of their garden when we came. Their niece Mrs Betty Perry formerly of Hillcrest tells me that on Sunday mornings before church, customers used to line up outside the cottage and milk was ladled into jugs and milkcans. But she explains that her father at the farm had never kept cows - he bought the milk from the Bairds of Gallowhill Farm who themselves had customers.
Besides these in the 1950s, Lawsons of Parklea and Perratts of High Flat Farm shared the milk-rounds, and horses drawing their milk carts clip-clopped round the streets long before dawn. Years earlier the Lawsons had taken over the Flemings’ milk round when they retired from Muirside near the big bend on Cathkin Road. This farm close to the Water Board’s fenced-in machine house was demolished soon after we came. Muirside’s land was Glasgow’s; but since those days, after the 1940s and 1950s when Madam Stuart Stevenson sold her farms to their tenants, some privately owned farmlands have been merged as farmers have retired.
Across from us on Kirk Road, old Miss Nan kept hens in part of her tangled garden. Soon her sister became too frail and Nan, wearing a long much-worn coat and with a torn old shawl over her head, regularly hobbled past laden with firewood gathered from the trees at The Craigs and Crag Lodge. She would stack it throughout her house, upstairs and down! When you looked in the open door of her cottage, you could see neat little piles of ready-sawn kindling at the side of each step all the way up the lobby staircase. “Y’ git twa heats”, Nan would say, “ae’n whin y’ sa’ the wood an’ anither whin y’ burn it”. Sometimes we chatted, and the old ladies nodded to each other and smiled toothless smiles. We were “the new folks in Whytes’ hoose, no’ from Carmunnock at a’”. (Mr. Robert Whyte, the last of that family had died in 1916). All round us were folk born in the 19th century, in the times I’ve described.
On the far side of Mrs Sharp’s cottage was a tiny rough stone-built stable, a miserable place where Sam Little kept his horse and coal cart. The poor beast scraped its feet on the floor and kicked the door disturbingly in the night. Next to the stable, the coal was stored in a shed twice as big.
Across Manse Road, the two old cottages (where Dewars, Hannahs, Bowmans and Orrs had lived) stood empty after some months and in 1958 the roof was removed. Soon the fronts and west gable, a door used as a gate and the windows bricked up, served as garden wall of the neat house on Kirk Road opposite the Church that had been the village Post Office.
Further up Manse Road, past a little copse of pine trees, the early schoolhouse stood roofless and in ruins, rubble and rubbish inside, ivy growing up its walls. At the foot of its own and the neighbouring back garden, alongside a fast-flowing stream open to the air at that point in its course, were two little washing-houses with chimneys on their slated roofs. Opposite these cottages was the big square Georgian Manse built in 1837 with its stables and outbuildings, a high wall round lawn and tall old trees.
Kirk Road at our quiet corner was a peaceful lane, which at first was unsurfaced beyond Trestermyre. The lands at 32 next door on our right, still with several tenants, was gradually taken over by the owners of the building (who lived in part of it) as the little houses were vacated. By the early 1960s they had converted it into one self-contained residence; yet two front doors remained: one south of the forestair and the other, under the stairhead, blocking off the former close. When we first came, our children loved this outside stair in front of our neighbours’ house, delighting in running up and down it whenever the owners would allow.
Mr and Mrs John Wilson were these owners and on the south side of our back garden hedge, old John aged 87 - Golf Course John they called him - scythed his extensive lawn to perfection twice weekly like the golf course greens he was so proud of caring for at Cathkin half a century earlier. Wielding the scythe with an easy regular motion, big silent stone-deaf John cut the grass as though with a pen-knife, to an even half inch.
In the far Pathhead Cottage was Mrs Catherine Craig - some called her Auntie Kate - a gentle old lady with much to tell about Carmunnock. Her daughter Helen, Mrs Lambie, and two grandsons David and Marshall as well as her niece Mae Craig (Mrs Borthwick of Stuart Road) were also in the village. It was old Mrs Craig’s mother-in-law Grannie Helen Craig who had lived in the neighbouring cottage - once a weaver’s house, thought to be the one where the Jacquard loom was installed - whom she had helped with washing and shop. And it was her father-in-law David followed by her own husband Robert, and even at times her two sons until the War, who had been church beadle, gravedigger and then the Clason Hall’s caretaker or janitor. Besides keeping the church clean, Mrs Catherine Craig had preceded the late Mrs Smith (mother of Mrs Robina Ross and Mrs Jessie Boyd of Stuart Road) as the village’s midwife, and she had also helped to lay out the dead.
Across from Pathhead Cottages, The Craigs stood back among the trees, home of Sir Andrew McCance (Managing Director of Colvilles’ Ravenscraig Steelworks at Motherwell) and his wife Lady McCance.
Up a drive past a deserted and dilapidated little gatehouse, a coachhouse-cum-garage stood in front of Crag Lodge. Since Mr and Mrs Alexander Ross Browns’ deaths in 1937 and 1939, Mr Christopher McMillan lived there with his second wife Dr Eunice Colville whose surgery was at Rutherglen. Crag Lodge’s long walled garden full of fruit, vegetables and flowers, sheltered by the trees, lay on the north side of their drive (where the property Whispers is now). Nearby, Mr and Mrs Angus MacGregor were in Wellside Cottage; they had come at the end of the War now that it was all one house (following the McChlerys, the Jacksons and the McNivens).
Some distance behind Crag Lodge was a beautiful big empty house where W. L. Reid, FRFPSG, of the Victoria Infirmary (one of Lister’s pupils) and his wife lived till recently. (His wife had been a Miss Brown of Brown & Polson of the flour mills). It stood across the present-day turn-around at the very top of Craigsheen Avenue, facing northwest. The very next year we could hear the banging and rumbling sounds as it - 19th century Craigsheen House known until the early 20th century as Craigend - was systematically demolished. The house and its land had been bought outright by Laidlaw the builders.
Mrs Margaret Filer of Craigsheen tells me that till then the drive from the lodge (that is: from no. 49 at Busby Roadside on to Craigsheen Avenue) led up through Bluebell Woods, past fields on its right and at (still existing) gate-pillars where the first lodge had been, into the very fine gardens. Soon this drive would lead instead into the new estate of expensive and very modern houses in the process of being built there. Even Craigsheen House’s beautiful greenhouse vines which for years had supplied grapes to local shops would be destroyed. And the service road which the coal carts had used - long ago known as Whytes’ road leading to a field near Picketlaw Farm - would be reduced to a mere overgrown footpath between The Craigs’ garden fence and the west side of the Park.
Sometimes two ponies were put to graze in Jackson’s (Browns’) old field (now a garden lawn) behind the MacGregor’s house on Wellside or Kirk Road (formerly lower Pathhead Road). And on other days in a separate little field in front of the house (where the row of garages and the terrace of houses on Busby Road are now) they nuzzled over the fence to talk with passers-by. On the other corner, the garden wall at the foot of Trestermyre’s ground dates from 1939 when the Council requisitioned part of the orchard for pipe-laying and to make a footpath.
On the opposite side of Busby Road a not-so-friendly big black stallion pranced wildly in a field (where the new bungalows at 22 and 24 Busby Road are now); and in the field’s top right-hand corner were the row of 18th century bee boles facing south-east, sheltered against the retaining wall in front of Bankhead Farmhouse.
Craigsheen House, formerly Craigend.
Attached on the farmhouse’s west was the one-time meal-house. Next to it was the old byre and the cottage behind it which had been empty since 1955 when the Sharp family moved to Stuart Road (demolished about 1963, probably just after the Ordnance Survey was done for the map published a year or two later). On the east side the two cottar houses, latterly for holiday people and then as hay barns, were knocked down a few years before we came. When the dairying ceased just before the War, Mr. John Twaddle prepared market-bought fruit and vegetables on the small-holding and now his son Jim, still renting out the remaining field (in front of the house), was doing the same work.
Next to it Linnbrae stood in its walled garden. Late in the 19th century the Gilmores and the Edgars lived there and early in the 20th Mr. and Mrs George Gordon, followed by people called Harbottle. Now it was the ageing brothers Stevenson, looked after by their Russian-born housekeeper until they died late in the 1950s. About the time we came it was these brothers who had their front garden wall rebuilt a yard further back, higher than before, after the County Council widened the road. Behind it, the big square villa which it is said looked like a palace when it was redeveloped in the 1880s or 1890s, was obviously one of the finest houses in the village. In its grounds, near Sunnyside’s wall, was a ruined cottage.
To the back of Linnbrae and the farm, on the site of the old Crofthill Park or Playing Field, the air rang with the sound of hammering as the roofs were put on the last of 35 new council houses, namely the block on Old Playing Field Road. Even further back was Pedmyre, earlier lived in by the Warnocks (of the Trust), then the Findlays and now by Lt. Col and Mrs George Stevenson. And in the field where Pedmyre’s reputedly beautifully groomed horses had grazed in days gone by, was a nursery garden lined with long greenhouses run by Mr. and Mrs Hawthorn and their son, the second owners of this garden area.
For a short time the Stevensons had owned The Peel down Waterside Road following a family called Fleming and before them the Strangs, and in the 19th century The Peel had been owned by an Andrew Houston of Jordanhill. (Mr. and Mrs John Dick of the antique furniture business live there now). Near it, the Dow family lived in Waterside House.
Down Busby Road were Holmglen lived in by the Bissets, then the early Craigmiln Cottages, Milnflat (no. 76) looking deceptively modern, its block of houses facing east and Craigmiln House next to them. Milnflat’s east-facing cottage-tenement consisting of the dairy and little houses above it was developed into one complete residence in the 1960s. No longer keeping its old name as having at one time belonged to Milnflat, and probably having become part of Craigmiln’s land earlier in the century, it is interesting that, whereas the original Craigmiln House (the late 19th century villa in the trees at no. 78 Busby Road) is nowadays known as Comely Bank, the converted Milnflat block has taken the name of Craigmiln House!
There were the foundations and ruins of an 18th century farm close to Carnbooth House of 1900 up its long tree-lined drive from the lodge at the roadside - Carnbooth House by then a Children’s Home belonging to Glasgow Corporation Welfare Department. At the top of Kittoch Mill’s lane were Millhill Cottage (at no. 86) where Katie Clark’s window had been, and Brier Cottage (at no. 88).
As tenants left, most of the 3-storey tenement on Kirk Road was taken over by the Begg family and made into one self-contained home, an exciting place with doors leading off to attic rooms. Outside at the back, beyond the spiral staircase, flowers and shrubs grew happily in their ancient habitat and there among the greenery was the old Well’s great dry depth covered over for safety.
North along Kirk Road, on the far side of a gap where another block had been, Mrs Rita McNiven’s sweetie shop at which everyone bought their weekend confectionery became our children’s favourite haunt, Saturday money spent on precious bags of sweets and chewy toffee for which McNivens’ was renowned.
Next to McNiven’s, Mr. Alex Jamieson’s brick-built workshop was a few years later developed into a much larger garage, and on the far side of their house Ashtree was the Castlemilk Hall of which he, following his father, was caretaker. On Monday and Thursday forenoons The Bank of Scotland, formerly renting a room in Ashtree House, opened for business in the public library room. Further along there was a big grassy gap piled with stones from recently demolished buildings and north of these the 1922 Council houses. Across from the hall, Mrs Young, widow of Stephen Young, lived with her sister in the villa Davielea behind the War Memorial, its big yard surrounded by empty stables and cart-sheds. Years later, Mrs Young acquired the house from Madam Stuart Stevenson. Next door at the Boghead Inn, now without accommodation, old Mr. MacAulay’s married daughter had been followed by her brother Jim as publican.
Round the corner of Waterside Road was the Primary School in headmistress Miss McDonald’s charge, following Mr. McCallum, from where the pupils progressed to Gallowflat School or the Academy at Rutherglen. At the bend of the road there was The Green Garage, the proprietor Mr. Jim Tait and his wife Mae. The Taggs of the Post Office, newsagent and village shop had retired in 1950, the Misses MacGregor and Duncan came to it for a while, then from 1953 Hamilton & Morison ran the prosperous newsagent and grocery business at Campbell Place, Mr. Ernie Morison (who lived next door at no. 2 Busby Road) partner and Sub-postmaster.
There was the butcher’s shop on the corner of a stony uneven little lane that cut through to the top part of Busby Road, passing Bishops’ Cottage at no. 7 with the date 1698 above its central doorway, and Rowanbank. A cafe was where The Beeches Tearoom had been and on the southwest side of the crossroads was The Neuk Tearoom and the Co-op’s general store (where The Beeches cottages used to be and Laura’s Tearoom and the Post Office are now).
At the top of the Low Green, the Strathearns were still in Thorncliffe that had a burn rushing through its garden; and a tiny derelict cottage known as Jimmock’s stood at the bottom corner of the High Green. Only a flow of water into a stone horse-trough marked the Doo Well on the plantain on Waterside Road opposite the Glebe and the Manse’s back gate; and on Wellside or the new part of Kirk Road (till recently lower Pathhead Road), a dripping tap in place of Mattha’s or Jackson’s Well sent a stream of water down the slope, regularly freezing in winter till the road was covered in a sheet of ice.
A few years earlier nice old wooden road-signs at lower Pathhead Road (Wellside) and at Windlaw Road were taken down and neatly painted metal ones, the sign on Wellside now Kirk Road, went up in their place. But happily, to this day four fork-signs on black and white striped poles with the traditional black-gloved hand and pointing finger still stand at road junctions in the village, namely at the crossroads, at the foot of Cathkin Road, Kittochside Road and at Hillcrest.
All day long, from early in the morning till late on summer evenings, rooks cawed in The Craigs’ and Crag Lodge’s trees near us, and on winter nights owls hooted in the dark. Smoke rose from almost every chimney, and before the time of smokeless zones the air up in Carmunnock on frosty days was only just free of the city’s fog. It hung around Laighnetherton further down the hill, venturing towards us up here in the weak winter sunshine, barely able to hold our own in clear visibility.
The people before us at Trestermyre had kept poultry in the orchard at the foot of the garden. At night foxes barked, coming among gardens where hens were still kept - like the chicken-yard at the back of Bankhead Farm where a cock crowed at dawn, and under the monkey-puzzle tree near the cafe, across from us at Nan Twaddle’s and nearby at the MacGregor’s on Wellside. Mr. and Mrs Angus MacGregor had come to Wellside Cottage (31 Kirk Road) in 1945 when the McChlerys who had followed the McNivens moved away. Shoemaker MacGregor they called him to distinguish him from other MacGregors of much longer standing in the village, and because he had a shoemaker’s shop on Cathcart Road.
Living in Carmunnock at that time, there was someone to take your shoes to cobblers in town and collect them again, a boy to fetch doctors’ prescriptions from chemists in Mount Florida, Mr. Robertson, a kindly retired old man, son-in-law of another of the sisters from Islay, sold packets of tea round the doors, and old Willie Ferguson once employed at The Craigs became our gardener for a while. Mr. Frame the carrier drove his small motor-lorry locally, John (brother of the late Mr. Arthur Reid of Greenside) ran a countrywide service in his big high-sided van; there was Peter Crawford and his sons Tommy and Johnnie of the joinery family, and the Grays who were builders.
Various organisations in the village met weekly and a Badminton Club was soon to be started. Recently, Mr. Maxwell (father of Robert Maxwell of Stuart Road) had taken on the job of organising the village’s new Drama Club and from time to time plays and concerts were produced.
The village’s daily routine went on as it had always done. During the War Mr. Sandy Jamieson had been contracted to another district on war work and, anxious in case any harm befell his much-treasured big black hiring car, he had housed it once more in Young’s shed across the road at Davielea and there it had stayed for the duration. But when peace came and he took up his trade in Carmunnock again, he was sorely hurt to find that in his absence Jimmie Tait with his new taxi service, successor to Mr. Torrance at The Green Garage, had stolen almost all his customers. Just as happened in many businesses previously run by men sent away during those years, they came home to find that they had to start at the beginning all over again.
We had no idea where Floors Farm near Eaglesham in south west Scotland was when, during the War, we heard about Hitler’s Nazi deputy Hess on a so-called peace mission, accidentally landing there by parachute. But the War was long since over. Flags had been flown throughout Carmunnock on V.E. and V.J. Days in loyal British rejoicing. Only Jim McNiven’s house on the main street had displayed the Hammer and Sickle to show his Communistic leanings!
Then in 1953 the flags had been flown again in celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation on 2nd June. The official programme says that the children started the day at a church service at the close of which Mrs W. L. Reid of Craigsheen House presented Coronation souvenirs. The pipes and drums of the 474 H.A.A. Regiment R.A. (City of Glasgow) T.A. by kind permission of the Commanding Officer Lt. Col. G. Stevenson T.D., R.A. (TA) of Pedmyre led the parade from Hillcrest Square, Sports followed in Craigmiln Park on Busby Road, the presentation of prizes was by Mrs G. Stevenson and at night a bonfire was lit on the Green! (I can’t imagine a bonfire being allowed there now!)
On the following day there was an entertainment for the Old Folk of the Parish in The Neuk Tearoom next to the Co-op, a Whist Drive in the Castlemilk Hall on the Thursday, a dance for the young folk on Friday and a Service of Thanksgiving on the Sunday. The Rev C. W. Harrison had chaired the organising committee, with Jack C. MacDonald the secretary, James A. McMichael the treasurer, and with Neil McCallum, Donald R. Forbes, James Tait, Cyril Jones and Robert Moffat convening.
Mr. Jimmy Tait, taking over from Mr. Torrance about 1946, built The Green Garage early in the 1950s.
With all the excitement of things going on, it had been a bright, friendly week until the village settled back to itself again. True to its own folk as in most country places, incomers to Carmunnock were not quickly accepted even in the late 1950s. We found at that time a distinct and uncomfortable division between village folk and them of, say, Waterside and Kittochside Roads - a them and us attitude which had arisen from more incomers than those with village connections invading a long-held domain. It was an attitude which, happily, faded away in the ensuing decade.
We too were incomers, but in the different position of living close to the centre in one of the earliest houses. From then onwards, myself an east-coaster born and brought up in a north-east Angus village, a complete outsider to Carmunnock, I quietly became interested in its history. Its past and present were like an on-going story.