This post covers industrial sites in the area bounded by the Kelvin in the west, Maryhill Road in the east, the railway line in the north and the canal in the south.
This 1892 map has some familiar features with the canal locks and four basins in the centre, the Kelvin on the left and Maryhill Road on the right. Kelvinvale Mill is circled in red. The two chemical works are in yellow and orange circles, and the boatyard and sawmill are in the green circle.
Here’s approximately the same view today:
Kelvinvale Mill
This 1969 photograph by Professor John Hume is looking north, roughly from the site of the modern day Cowal Road bridge:
© Copyright: HES (Papers of Professor John R Hume, economic and industrial historian, Glasgow, Scotland)
The gasworks are on the left bank, the mill is the range of buildings on the right bank, with the taller one in the middle and lower ones on each side.
This photo by Hume a year later is from ‘diagonally opposite’ so the river is now on the right (behind the buildings):
Originally there was a printworks here, said to have been built around 1830 by a man called John Barr (of whom I cannot find any further trace), taking advantage of the supply of water for the process of applying dye to cloth and an area to lay the printed cloth out. So good was the site, apparently, that there had been works on the west bank for 80 years, called Dawsholm Printworks, the 1830 east bank ones being called Maryhill Printworks. (For more on the Dawsholm works see my post here).
Glasgow Corporation purchased the land on the west bank of the river in the early 1870s to build the gasworks and the Dawsholm works closed. If the Maryhill works on the east bank survived, it was not for long because in 1875 there was a plan to turn the buildings into a whisky distillery, which we know from news reports that one of the buildings was burned down (North British Daily Mail 10th May):
It’s interesting to note that Maryhill at this time was too small to have its own fire engine – rather surprising in view of the new gasworks immediately across the Kelvin – but that the army’s engine at the Wyndford barracks turned out for an emergency like this. Glasgow sent an engine but (of course) it would have been horse-drawn and hence would not have arrived until it was too late (one way or the other).
According to Professor Hume, the site was acquired by William Cumming and Co., possibly as the whisy distillery plan was abandoned after the fire. The intended business was to produce blacking, seemingly for domestic and for industrial use.
Readers over the age of 60 may remember hearing about blacking the grate, the stove, the floor and/or doorsteps and of course boots and shoes would be blackened as well. This involved rubbing the blacking (a paste, I think) in with a brush (or cloth?) to cover up marks and enable the house-proud owner to show their home to visitors.
The industrial uses are suggested in this adverts from 1903 (from the excellent Grace’s Guide website, link):
Foundry facings are “an auxiliary material, such as a paint or paste, used in molding to reduce the tendency of the casting to stick to the mold or core. Paints contain adhesive substances and refractory additives; they increase the surface strength and reduce flaking on molds and cores. Pastes are used primarily as facings for metal molds.” (link, although note the source is The Great Soviet Encyclopedia and some one has helpfully added that it may be ideologically biased.)
Professor Hume described the buildings in his photo at the start of this post with the oldest dating from 1893 when the company added a “large, one storey, 11 bay rubble store with a Belfast roof … Burnett & Boston, architects (£3000)”.
It seems a rebuild was underway when in 1895 fire struck again (Paisley Daily Express, 30th September):
I wonder if this was part of the older buildings (you will note the damage as covered by insurance).
Grace’s Guide also quotes a newspaper report that William Cumming and Co had £75,000 of capital in 1900 for the Kelvinvale Mill, plus others in Falkirk and Chesterfield in Derbyshire.
More new buildings followed, in 1900 a “seven storey, 5 bay brick mill and chimney … T.W. Copland, engineer, Falkirk (£3000)” – this is the prominent ‘tower’ in Hume’s photo at the start of the post.
Then in 1902 “the bottom storey of the two storey 8 bay office block … W. Reid (II), architect (£400)”.
Hume also says “Behind these blocks is a group of single storey sheds with Belfast roofs.”
The 20th Century history of the company is not clear to me – the last reference I can find to Kelvinvale Mill is 1929. There is an advert from 1951 referring to Glasgow as the company’s base:
The mill is still marked as active on an Ordnance Survey map published in 1967.
Chemical works
Clutha Chemical Company of Kelvin Dock – listed in Post Office Directory for 1892 and also for 1900. Described as “oil, essence and chemical manufacturers”:
Still marked on map dated 1909 but not on a map dated 1932 (no other large scale maps available online between those dates).
Kelvindock Chemical Works – the premises of Hay, Steven and Co. Very little is now available, apart from this press notice in the Edinburgh Gazette of 1st June 1926:
The works are not marked on the map of 1932 so the company either moved or ended soon after Alexander Hay’s retirement (he died in 1929).
Sawmill and boat yard
There is an excellent article by William B Black on the Maryhill Burgh Halls website (link); this second link is also interesting (link). I’ll just pick out four key facts:
1. Built in 1789 as the graving dock at the western end of the canal
2. ‘Heydey’ of boat building around 1810-1910 – see, for example (Greenock Telegraph 16th April):
As the title says, this is a photo of a launch onto the Forth and Clyde Canal at Kirkintilloch (not Kelvin Dock) but it gives some idea of what it could have been like (photo credit to :
3. Last launch in 1921 (see below from Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 21st February), for repairs only after this
Boat-building equipment was sold off in 1922 (The Scotsman, 26th August):
4. Used for building plywood landing craft in World War Two (200 carpenters employed!), but closed when the war ended
Painting by Francis Patrick Martin 1943