Westerton  

Westerton today is a pleasant area of housing estates encircling the small original village. If you take a walk however behind Canniesburn hospital on Cairnhill, the tree-capped hill that dominates the area, you can easily imagine what it must have been like before building began.

Standing there 200 years ago, you would have looked down on an area of rolling farmland dotted with farms, cottages and the few large country houses of the landowners. You would have been standing on part of the Garscube Estate, land owned by the Campbells of Succoth, but their mansion, sitting down on the banks of the River Kelvin to the east, would not have been visible. Looking out to the west however you may have been able to see Garscadden House, the mansion of their neighbours the Campbell Colquhouns, and its Girnin Gates where modern Drumchapel now stands, and the snaking line of the newly completed Forth and Clyde Canal winding just beneath you. Looking to the left you may have seen something of the rapidly growing industrial city of Glasgow. At your feet to the north lay the road from Drumchapel to the crossroads at Canniesburn, with its toll house, set up after an Act of Parliament earlier in the 18th century which allowed landowners to charge tolls on roads over their lands, to provide income to maintain and improve them. The small cluster of cottages around the church of New Kilpatrick lay further to the north, and out of sight towards the Campsie Fells in the distance, would have lain the only "considerable village" of the New Kilpatrick Parish in 1791,

"Millguy, which contains about 200 inhabitants, who are mostly employed as bleachers, printers and pencillers of cloth."

From old maps we can identify some of the farms that lay in the Westerton area. Lying alongside what has always been a main route through the area to the west (now Canniesburn Road), was one of the most important farms and probably the one that gave Westerton its name. The North Westerton Farm buildings which stood here until their demolition in August st 1992, were built around 1800, although there is evidence that the farm had a much longer history.

On 7th June 1841 and from then on every 40 years to the present day, a national census has been taken and the whereabouts of every person on that day recorded. Looking back over the census returns we get a ten-yearly snapshot of the people who lived and worked in the Wes terton area. In 1841, William McNair and his wife Jean worked the North Westerton farm with the help of their children, four agricultural labourers and a domestic servant. The Farm buildings stood at the head of a small valley (Deepdene) with a stream fed by springs flowing from Cairnhill. In living memory this valley was used to graze cows and the farm produced dairy produce, (one of the springs still flooded gardens in Stirling Avenue in the 1930s). Cows were being reared back in 1861 also, with the farm employing at least two dairymaids. When William McNair died in 1870 aged 80, his son Robert took over the farm, now described as 220 acres. We do not know for how long McNairs held the farm before 1841 but Robert handed it on to his eldest daughter Margaret who farmed it for many years until about 1950.

When she left, the farm was bought by Mr Pinie whose daughter Jean still lived there until its demolition. Miss McNair died in 1969 and is buried along with many of her forebears in New Kilpatrick churchyard.

Back in 1861, McNairs, pnobably another branch of the same family, worked the other prominent farm in the area Netherton farm, the buildings of which can still be seen on the canal bank near where Maxwell Avenue becomes Westerton Avenue. On the night of the census, 8th April 1861 besides the family and their two ploughmen, a visitor stayed at the farm. A pedlar, possibly selling his wares to outlying families who had little recoarse to shops, may have been given a bed for the night before travelling on.

The map of 1861 shows a farm called South Westerton lying where the present Westerton Hall and Library now star ds. In the census records we find references to it, occupied in 1841 by the family of James Maiklem and his wife Agnes Carss and hater by their son Robert. By 1871 it had changed hands however and later census returns show it occupied by two farm servants and their families. The land of South Westerton farm may have been absorl)ed by the two larger farms of North Westerton and Netherton leaving its dwe lling houses to be split into smaller units to accommodate farm workers. All that is left now of South Westerton farm is its well, lying covered over and unnoticed opposite the hall on Maxwell Avenue.

Not all farm-workers lived in the farm buildings. Other accommodation was available and it appears there were some cottages at Mid-Westerton. Nothing remains of them except the record of their occupants over the years between 1841 and 1881 but they probably stood on Monreith Avenue opposite the present post- office. The census gives us a list of occupants in up to five family units, of another level of society: agricultural workers, fa:rm servants, or outdoor labourers, both male and female. In other cottages were workers from other industries, 'sewers' (dressmakers perhaps), a joiner, and by 1861 a surfaceman presumably employed on the ever more important railway lines.

Westend (on Maryhill Road) was also part of the Garscube Estate and was occupied by a variety of farm workers and servants employed by the Campbells on the estate or at its Home Farm (now the farm of the Glasgow University Veterinary College, on Bearsden Road close to Canniesburn Toll).

The Westerton families would have met others from the area as they made their way to the church at New Kilpatrick on a Sunday or as their children made the daily trek to the school there.

Lochend cottages were occupied throughout the period 1841-1881 by Thomas Inglis, a mason and his children, who grew up to be dressmakers, a mason and a clerk. These farm cottages, at some time combined into one house, and now re- divided into two, are the oldest buildings in the area. They stand on the end of Lochend Road and are over 300 years old, but finds of Neolithic (Stone Age) tools in nearby fields suggest a farm may have existed here for much longer.

Robert Pinder; a handloom weaver; lived in the cottage called Bearsden, which first gave its name to the new railway station that was built nearby and thence to the whole area.

They may have met the blacksmith from Canniesburn Toll, the toll keeper (before the abolition of tolls in 1883), or the miller and his workers from the mill at Garscube Bridge.

Although the servants up at the big house would have been known in the neighbourhood, there was less chance of seeing the gentry themselves. The landowners, the Campbells, had not been in the habit of living at Garscube House but more commonly resided in Edinburgh. One who chose to live at Garscube was Ilay Campbell 7th of Succoth. He had been a successful lawyer like many of his predecessors and rose to the position of Solicitor General in 1783 and Lord Advocate in 1784 being made president of the Court of Session in 1789 under the title Lord Succoth. In 1784 he was made an honorary member of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, a very great honour. In 1808 he was created a baronet and continued an extensive lawyer's practice until he retired to Garscube House. During his life he extended the estate, buying land off his neighbours, one of whom was the proprietor of the Gairbraid Estate, Mary Hill.

After Sir Ilay's death in 1823, his son Archibald succeeded him and in 1827 completely refurbished Garscube House. While renovations were under way, he lodged at Garscube Inn at Killermont Bridge. In 1846, his grandson Archibald Islay succeeded to the title of Baronet but was too young to inherit the estate, and so his three uncles, acting as trustees, controlled the money, presumably a great annoyance to a young man. The house was closed for a while and the staff reduced. Having finally come into his inheritance at twenty-five we find him in residence at Garscube House with his widowed mother on the night of the census in 1851 along with many servants: butler; footman, coachman, helper in stable, housekeeper; lady's maid, two housemaids, two kitchen maids, a laundry-maid and dairymaid, besides other servants living in the lodge. He married a lady of delicate health, however; and from then on they spent much of their time in England or on the continent, leaving a factor to run the estate. The factor would know all the tenants, and the first factor must have given the neighbourhood plenty to talk about when in 1857 he fled the district after betting and gambling with the estate funds.

On a pleasant Sunday afternoon the 'locals' may have seen some of the bleachers or weavers from the mills at Duntocher out for walk or maybe a ride in a trap. The 18th and 19th centuries were the years of the major social and economic changes known as the Industrial Revolution and our area was not immune to these changes. For some time, industry had been moving into factories based on water power. Textiles were an important industry and four mills at Duntocher, Faifley, Milton and Hardgate employed 1400 workers in 1835. Flax was grown and spun into linen, and bleachfields were established near plentiful water supplies. At Dawsholm there was a bleachfield, as well as a printfield specialising in printing handkerchiefs, and a papermill and srtuffmill, while Milngavie had six small bleachfields and two printworks. In the days before the shipbuilding industry developed, Dumbarton was a centre for glass making. And as water power gave way to steam power; coal became of vital importance.

Coal could be found over much of the Midland Valley of Scotland and had been in common use as a fuel for many years. In the middle ages, coal had been mined at Cochno, owned by Paisley Abbey, and a mine had been long established in Knightswood. The impetus to build the Forth and Clyde Canal, completed in 1790, had been the increasing need to transport coal through the country. With the coming of steam power; work was concentrated further; with people who couldn't find work on the land finding it in the rapidly growing towns. Add to this the development of the iron industry and we see the familiar picture of Victorian Britain developing, with dirty smoke-hung towns, overcrowded, unsanitary buildings, poverty and disease. Large numbers came to the Clyde valley from the Highlands or Ireland, to the tall and crowded tenements, with few amenities. Between the years of 1861 and 1901 the population of Scotland increased by 1,400,000 to 4.5million, many living in the towns along the Clyde.