One of the pleasures of having a proper website is that people are sending me requests, some of which are about the history of the Bearsden area. Today I’m starting my response to a request for photos of the Courthill/Whitehurst area (starting my response in the sense this post will hopefully grow over time as I gather more material).
Here is a close up of one small corner of an aerial photo of 1928, from the Britain from Above website:
What are you looking at? Let’s pull back a bit and add some circles:
Bearsden Cross is just out of shot in the bottom-left hand corner – you can just make out New Kilpatrick Church, right at the bottom and slightly to the left. The yellow circle is the house (then called Dunmyat) on the corner of Ralston Road and Gartconnel Road. The photo is from somewhere near Hillfoot, looking north west.
The houses in the red circle are on Drymen Road (turning to run away from the camera) and were then called Courthill; they are now renumbered as being on Drymen Road with the modern Courthill having been built behind, just out of the photo to the right. (Schaw House is also out of shot to the right).
From this we can deduce that the houses in the green circle are the north end of Thorn Road. Thorn Farm is marked in red to the left.
The houses ringed in blue can only be Whitehurst, I think. Bonnaughton Farm is in purple. And right in the very, very top left you can just see the smudge of the farm at Castlehill.