You might know of this photo, showing what we would now call Bearden Cross, looking from Thorn Road into Roman Road, with Drymen Road running horizontally across the centre (Photo 1):
In modern terms, the war memorial is where the three people are standing on the right and Slater Hogg and Howison would be on the left. The tree would be in the middle of today’s pavement, if not in the roadway of Roman Road!
The tree in Photo 1 is referred to as Meldrum’s Tree, which was a part of the buildings on this corner, known as Meldrum’s stables.
In Photo 2 below the camera is at the same junction but on the right hand corner, where the small dog (wee dug) is standing in Photo 1:
The tree is presumably just out of shot to the right. Now we can see there is a barn-like building and behind (almost end on to us) is a house.
The sign on the gable end of the barn reads “MacKie and Denholme, Carriage Hirers and Contractors”. The adverts on the side closest to the camera read, “Matthew White, veterinary surgeon”, “Todd and Carruth, decorators”, “R. Gibson, Mason and Slater” and “Middlemass Bros., plumbers”; the fifth one is illegible.
The buildings in the background on the left are still standing, the white one at ground level is currently the home of Okome, with the building housing Costa Coffee just to the right.
But if the stables were “Meldrum’s”, then why is there an advert for MacKie and Denholme?
To answer that, you need to start by considering Photo 3, showing the same house as was seen near end on in Photo 2 – in modern terms the man standing at the corner would be outside the Hillhart Café and the camera would be on the opposite side of the road to Okome, just by the car park entrance to the Bearsden Community Hub:
Note that I have taken this from the book “Old Bearsden” by McKinlay and Hamilton – I’ve deliberately reproduced the text below the photo so that this is quite clear. The postcard they reproduced describes it as “Old Coaching House” and the authors adapted this to “The Old Coaching Inn”, incorporating a story that there was an inn in the area. But does the evidence support either version?
Our problems are mounting – Meldrum’s Stables, which may have belonged to Mackie and Denholme instead, are now a coaching inn …?
The first glimpse of clarity we need was supplied by DM Buchanan writing about the history of Bearsden in the Bearsden and Milngavie Herald on 1st May 1943:
“Morrison’s Farm occupied what is now called New Kirk Square i.e. from Cooper’s vegetable shop down to the British Linen Bank, along the Roman Road to the lane at Miss Niven’s shop, through the lane and back to Cooper’s shop. Within this square stood the farmhouse, the byre, stables, the cart-shed, and stackyard. East of the lane to the Post Office and round to Douglas Place contained two or three old thatched houses, but most of it was taken up with gardens. At one time there was an inn at the top of the lane but this was long before my time.”
The assumption seems to be that the house in the photo was also the inn, combining it with its assumed role in coaching. The Valuation Roll recorded the rateable value of each property each year and some of them are available online at the Scotland’s people website. On checking the 1875 Roll, the land was owned by the Colquhoun family and the building in Photos 2 and 3 is Newkirk Farm. The tenant-farmer was John Morrison (hence Morrison’s Farm).
From Census information, John was born around 1823 in Glasgow. His wife, Agnes, was born in New Kilpatrick. At the time of the 1871 Census they lived at New Kirk with three farm servants, Alexander Allen aged 22, John Mackie aged 15 and Annie MacLean aged 21. At this point, Newkirk was an arable farm of 89 acres.
Here is the 1860 map, the crossroads at the centre being where modern Thorn Road and Roman Road cross Drymen Road, and just above the junction and to the right (or the north-east, as we say in English) the house and barn from the photos are evident:
This map reminds us that the Thorn Road, Drymen Road and Roman Road ran through farm fields, managed from Newkirk by John Morrison.
In 1861 the census records the farmer was John Freeland supported by his sister Agnes Freeland; John Morrison was their nephew. The Freelands, assisted by John Morrison, can be tracked at the farm back through the Censuses of 1851 and 1841 (the oldest one that is online). John’s wife, Agnes Weir, appears for the first time in 1861; they married on 15th December 1854.
The 1861 Census was also the first time the farm was called Newkirk. In 1851 and 1841 the name is hard to read but appears to be something like Eildub; I have reproduced the 1841 Census page below in case anyone can make more sense of the handwriting than me:
This proves to my satisfaction that the buildings in Photos 2 and 3 were part of a farm back to at least 1841 and (given John Freeland was born around 1781 and the record of his death records his father was a farmer before him) quite possibly back much further. I do not believe the evidence supports it ever having been a coaching house or an inn.
It does seem the farm went out of use around 1880, with John Morrison retiring to Rosebank Cottage, Hardgate. I wonder how he felt, having seen his family farm sold off field by field. His health was failing and he died on 1st February 1884, with a 2-year history of apoplexy and ‘softening of [the] brain’.
Enter Meldrum
The buildings were rented to the famous Meldrum, or – to give him his full name – James Meldrum. He was born about 1841, the son of a ploughman, in Beith in ‘Fifeshire’, that is in Cowdenbeath, not Ayrshire where there is a better-known Beith (at least it is better-known to me). He first appears in New Kilpatrick in the 1871 Census as a single man, living in a bothy at Burnbrae Farm. He is recorded as a servant and his occupation is ‘vanman’, but he may well have been working at the Burnbrae Dyeworks next door. (Vanman means the driver of a horse-drawn waggon or van, believed to be short for caravan i.e. a covered waggon.) I have described the Burnbrae dyeworks and the houses around it in a previous post (link).
On 28th December 1871, James married Grace Scott, a farmer’s daughter, at Mugdock (no more precise location is given):
Initially they lived in an area of Milngavie referred to as “New Town” which I believe to be somewhere near the site of the Tesco store, then Burnbrae. By 1877 they lived at the newly built Eaton Stables, on Drymen Road by Bearsden Station. (This seems to refer to the first property completed in Eaton Place, which is now the northern half of the shops by the station, including Pizza Hut and The Lantern, with Dental FX above). His occupation in 1877 was “contractor” but by the 1881 Census it was more fully “contractor and carriage driver” Implying he worked for himself.
On the day of the 1881 Census, James, their oldest child, was not at home but their other three children – Grace, Isabella and Elizabeth – were present. James (senior) was doing well enough to have a domestic servant, 16-year old Elizabeth Gault. The stableman, 56-year old John Findlayson also lived with them.
By 1883 the family was living at an address described as ‘New Kirk’, which we now understand to be the old farm house. James’s occupation by this point had changed slightly to “contractor and carriage hirer”, the difference being he now hired carriages as well. Hence, Meldrum’s Stables. He and Grace had three more children while they lived here – Cecilia, William and Jane (Jeannie).
Despite only being 52, James died at New Kirk on 9th May 1893. The cause on the record of his death is ‘nervous prostation’ (a term meaning ‘emotional collapse’, unable to face the world or function) and cardiac failure. His business at New Kirk lasted ten years but the surrounding area grew rapidly at the time and the landmark at the crossroads mean his name has stuck when Morrison’s (and Freeland’s) Farm is forgotten.
While Grace was left with seven children, four of them were of working age. It’s possible James, the oldest son, was involved in the business as in 1901 his occupation was a vanman, but employed by a baker’s business.
The business continued with Grace overseeing it for long enough to register her role with the public before it was taken over by the Glasgow Tramway and Omnibus Company. Possibly with the proceeds of the sale, the family moved to number 8, Courthill (probably 190 Drymen Road today).
When Grace died in 1909, the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald included this article (29th January edition):
The Meldrums are buried in New Kilpatrick:
By the late 1890s (probably) the stables at the junction of Drymen Road and Roman Road were run by the Glasgow Tramway and Omnibus Company (GTOC) but not for long. In 1894, the Glasgow Corporation decided to take the Glasgow municipal transport system into public ownership but the GTOC refused to sell its assets to them. The Corporation started from scratch and GTOC went into competition with them (link). In the longer term there was only going to be one outcome; I have previously described how the Clyde Navigation Trust, backed by the Corporation, drove the privately-owned Glasgow Harbour Company (who dug the tunnel under the Clyde at Finnieston) out of business between 1895 and 1905 (link).
In 1902 GTOC went into liquidation and the Bearsden base was sold by the liquidator to Andrew Mackie and John Denholme (Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 12th September 1902):
This explains why the gable end of the barn in Photo 2 advertised Mackie and Denholme – they were the owners! We can also narrow the date of that photo to 1903, 1904 or 1905.
There is a little more in the following week’s newspaper:
Loose ends
The farm buildings were demolished in 1905 or 1906 to make way for the buildings that stand there today. We’ve no evidence of how old they were at that time.
And did Mackie and Denholme’s business prosper? The first challenge they faced was that within two years of starting up, they were displaced from their base at the Cross. However, new stables were built (either by them or by the builder who evicted them) as this commentary from the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 4th January 1907 mentions:
While this does not explain where the new stables were to be found, the address is in this 1909 advert:
(from the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 18th March that year). This advert from 1933 confirms it was on what we would now call Kirk Road:
(Milngavie and Bearsden Herald 3rd November 1933) – I believe the new stables are the building that now houses Massimo’s Restaurant.
The last mention I can find of the Mackie and Denholme name is in the 1950s.