MUIRSIDE /DRUMPELLIER/ CALEDONIA

MUIRSIDE covers the south end of Baillieston from East Muirhead Road to West Muirside Road and Old Wood Road.

To understand the theme behind the naming of these streets we must to consider the two councillors in the 1950's

Frank Murphy, County Councillor: A local man who was a time served Electrician who lived in Millar Street at the cul-de-sac end. Frank was a very well liked councillor, a very approachable honest straight talking man and was on the side of the working class folk. Frank tragically died of cancer in1955 at the age of only 48. I recall my mother talking of Frank with great fondness and her telling me that at Franks funeral service in St Bridget's Chapel the whole of Baillieston, religion put aside, turned out and filled Martin Crescent.

Jimmy McGuigan: District Councillor Another local man who was a Mine Deputy who lived at the top of Nelson Street. These 2 up : 2 down semidetached houses were nicknamed "Nelson Heights". Jimmy was also a very popular and well liked local man.

By this time the days of the Landed Gentry were over, who in this case would have been George Scott Nelson-Scott of Daldowie, he died a bachelor with no heirs in 1939. Frank Murphy and Jimmy McGuigan at the request of the residents of THE BAULKS, got the name changed to CALDER PLACE. The name "Calder" in old Scots means "Rough - Stoney River". It simply related to the River Calder 1/2 a mile to the south in Calderbank. They followed this local theme for the rest of the streets and even into Old Wood Road.

MUIRSIDE ROAD: Named after the old Hamlet of Muirside.

The 3 buildings / 30 dwellings that made up Muirside was located at the junction of Muirside Road and Muirside Street. One of the buildings can be seen here in the Virtual Mitchell website.

https://www.mitchelllibrary.org/virtualmitchell/view-item?i=6933

The hamlet of Muirside was nicknamed “The Lazy Y” as it was surrounded by corn fields and looked like a scene from a western movie (ref: Isa Robertson who lived in Muirside)
There was a section of the old Hamlet of Muirside west called "Burnside" where there was a spring fed burn. (see Calderwood)
George Scott Nelson-Scott of Daldowie and Robert Scott-Miller jointly owned the property of Muirside and sold it to the old Lanarkshire County Council shortly after WW1. That last Valuation Roll for Muirside was carried out in 1920 which was probably just before the sale of the land with the intention of using it for housing. The build did start and got as far as South Scott street, Nelson Street and George George Street and stopped just as Muirside Street was about to be started as the onset of WW2 loomed followed. My father was an young 21/22 year old joiner on the houses in South Scott Street. When the building stopped he was working on Mainhill Farm Bargeddie which was a part-time job he previously had at the weekend. He was called up in 1940 and was an MP in London and Kent.
The Muirside terrace buildings were doomed long before they were demolished as they were subsiding. They had no proper foundations and the ground floors were really just that as the floors were beaten hard earth as were the rest of the terraced buildings in Muirside Road and Muirend.
After WW2 Pre-fabs made of Steel and Asbestos were thrown up in Baillieston in 1946 to 1947. The Government called them, "Homes for Heroes" according to my father. The foundations were laid about 4 weeks before the it was put together on site.They were erected usually in just one a day and services coupled in and the Electric, Gas,Water and Drainage commissioned the next day.

Baillieston Prefab count = Nelson Place 20 / Nelson Street 3 / Muirside Road 8 / George Street 2….. Total 33

MUIRSIDE STREET: Links South Scott St. and Muirside Road. Site of post war flat roofed houses built in 1948/49 after the emergency completion of the Pre-Fab's.

The roofs were left flat due to the shortages of timber of post WW2. Timber apex roofs were eventually installed during a refurbishment in the 1980s by Glasgow District Council.

MUIRSIDE PLACE: Was a Cul-de-sac that became the start of OLD WOOD ROAD

Billy Linton Calderpark / Glasgow Zoo head keeper told me that his birth certificate lists his address as No2 Muirside Place which in 1958 became Old Wood Road.

CALDER PLACE : Once named BAULKS and part of Muirside . This area according to the books "The Rise of a Community" and "My Ain Folk" the area apparently contained Run Rigs, an old style of allotment cultivated by the people who lived in the hamlet of Muirside. The edges around the rigs were called Bauks, Baulks, and the stones from the fields were the boundary that held the soil in place and the raised the soil for drainage.

The residents of the Baulks requested the name change as they felt THE BAULKS was a derogatory name, my aunt Isa Robertson of Muirside and later George Street said it was because the name sounded like The Bronx in New York which had a bad reputation, and especially when at that time the houses had flat roofs and looked like boxes due to the aforementioned timber shortages post WW2.
The name was changed by the Councillors to CALDER PLACE, which in old Scot’s Gaelic translates into "Rocky / Stoney River " and fits the description of the North Calder which is only 1/2 mile from Calder Place which geographically in the North Calder Valley.

MUIREND : Land was the property of Robert Scott-Miller of Wester Daldowie / Greenoakhill who owned a strip of land that ran all the way west to Muirhead Road. Robert Scott-Miller and his mother Mary Scott-Millar donated the land where St. Andrews church and hall were build.

The Muirend cottages were located at the West end of Miller Street where the health centre carpark is located today. The even numbers on Miller Street start at No16 which tells tells us that Muirend had 7 cottages. I remember playing in the derelict cottages in the early 1950's.

MUIREDGE: Is the land where Baillieston Health Centre and Muiredge Terrace, the red sandstone building and the house name Edelweiss is, and was the property of the Scott Family of Wester Daldowie.

Old Maps show a mineral railway line that ran from Muiredge to the Caledonian Railway at the foot of the Wood Road where the was a siding and branch line off the main Caledonian Line. In the early 1900's it was amalgamated into the Barrachnie Pit No2 owned by JM Scott-Maxwell of Baillieston house and The Buchannan's of Mount Vernon who set up the Mount Vernon Coal Company.

The adjoining Garrowhill Brickwork was set up in 1928 in anticipation of the build of the Henry Boot Garden estates at Mount Vernon and Garrowhill. In 1931 they put the colliery into liquidation in and G&J Paton purchased the Brickworks.

There was some subsidence at the Muiredge mine vent shaft and in winter the shallow pond just behind where Eddie Gilchrest's shop was and later the Bookies added would freeze over in winter and we used to play on it. My mother used to tell us to be careful as their was on old pit shaft there. The actual pit was in the Ladyhill field approx. 50metre north of the Wood Road.

The open area land at the foot of OLD WOOD ROAD / CALEDONIA ROAD was and still is the property Caledonian Railways now The Scottish Government.

Drumpellier Road, Place, Avenue / Provand Hall Crescent / Caledonia Road , Drive /

Calderwood Drive, Avenue, Gardens

This group of streets was built between 1954 and 1957.

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CALEDONIA ROAD / DRIVE

The Romans called Scotland CALEDONIA and the Main Roman Road "Watling Street" ran just south of the Caledonian Railway Line which is mentioned in the Glasgow Zoo archive page.

Also with the railway line being called The Rutherglen Coatbridge Caledonian Line it would have been quite an obvious choice since it ran exactly parallel to where they constructed CALEDONIA ROAD.

As a boy we always called that bottom end of Baillieston "Caledonia". I recently found notes I took from my aunt Isa Robertson when Robert Murray and I sat down with her one Saturday afternoon, the date we recorded was 08/03/2003.

Isa lived in the hamlet of Muirside until the Houses in George Street were let by LCC. Below I have added this part of the talk, which tells us that that area was called Caledonia before the houses were built.

During the great depression they sent the kids down Caledonia to get coal that the train firemen threw down the embankment.

The Primary School was opened in 1978 after being delayed by a year due to budget constraints. I always found it strange that it was called CALEDONIA PRIMARY SCHOOL when its address was CALDERWOOD DRIVE!

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PROVAND HALL CRESCENT:

It is two quite distinct words “Provand” and “Hall” And this was very carefully named to be distinct.

Provand:-

The origin of this is originally military 17th century term where soldiers were paid in food. However it later it literally became providing anything, even their equipment!. In the 18th and 19th centuries it could be even a plot or plots of land on an estate: So, this would suit the Baulks and it's Run Rigs

Also as children living in Baillieston, Crosshill, Swinton or Garrowhill in the 1950’s we can all remember the land around Baillieston was cornfields or fallow pastureland, from Ellismuir in the east to Mount Vernon in the west, Springhill in the North to Broomhouse in the south. Even in the 1950’s aerial photos haystacks are visible in the fields around Baillieston. This is also Provand, food both for the grain and the hay.

Hall:- Many places is Scotland had their Scots names Anglicised by the British Ordinance Survey that change the term "Haugh" to "Hall"

Dictionary ref:

A "Haugh" is a low-lying meadow or stretch of alluvial land in a *river valley in Scotland. A minor elevation in marshland. A corner of an area.

The word comes from the Old English word "Healh".

These terms combined certainly fitted use and description of this "HAUGH" of land.

* This also explains why they chose the name from BAULKS to CALDER PLACE

In the mid 1960's there was a Putting Green there some years. The greenkeepers hut was just off Provand Hall Crescent.

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DRUMPELLIER ROAD / AVENUE / PLACE:

Ancient history

During the medieval period, Drumpellier (then called Dunpeleder) was the farming grange of the Monks of Newbattle Abbey, which gives rise to the name of Monklands, the historical name for the surrounding area. The name Drumpellier itself means 'ridge where the wheat is stored'.

Muirside was covered in wheat fields from the Wood Road all the way down to Broomhouse and West across to Bruntbroom.

Those of us in our 70's+now will remember playing in the haystacks in the fields which were leased out to the Wilson's of Burntbroom until building started. Johnny Wilson used to come over from the Farm on his tractor to chase us off the Haystacks.

That slope from Ash Road, across Drumpellier Avenue and around Provand Hall Crescent was locally known as the Curwhal Brae, which is a corruption of "Cornwall" which in old Brittonic means "A Headland".which it actually is if we visualise it without the houses.

Frankie Owens told me that his birth certificate has the address 2 George Place on it , this is when it was a cul-de-sac prior to the Drumpellier Road houses being built.

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CALDERWOOD AVENUE / DRIVE / GARDENS:

This was believed to be the name of a Stream / Burn that's source was a spring just meters west of the Muirside Hamlet in a plot on old maps known as "Burnside"

The burn ran down the slope / brae to where Calderwood Drive is and flowed across the field and under the Caledonian railway in a culvert and emerged in and old area called The Moss, then under Boghall Road (aka Serpents Twist), under Baillieston Road (south) to a steading called Burnhead and then down through the Calder Woods down a steep stony ravine and into the Webster pond and eventually into the North Calder underground. Before the major subsidence that created the Webster Pond it flowed direct into the Calder. This major subsidence was cause by the estate being undermined and collapsing during Baillieston's mining period. The Mansion also fell into the hole it created and the water filled pond is still there.

I used to jump across this burn as a boy of about 5. I ran into the burn a few times as the corn in summer was taller than me.

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Additional information gathered:

1: In the mid 1960's there was a Putting Green there some years. The greenkeeper hut was just off Provand Hall Crescent at the junction with Drumpellier Drive.

The Wood Road: These houses were built in three phases:

1: Which was originally Muirside Place to Oak Crescent. 1956-58

2: Oak Crescent to Calderwood Drive 1958/60

3:Calderwood Drive to Caledonia Road 1961-62

OLD WOOD ROAD

The current Old Wood Road in part was locally known as the “ Wid Road” or "Wee Wid Road" that ran from Muirside Road at Muiredge, (where the Health Centre is now) to the small wood on the east side of the Baillieston House estate and originally all the way down to Daldowie Road.(The Serpents Twist)

I used to play in this little triangular shaped wood as a boy and lived across the road from it. I would estimate that there were around 30 trees in the wood most of these were at least 150 to 200 years old and it had been planted due to the sheer variety of tree species, and I can still remember the types of trees in the wood as I had climbed every one of them. Sycamore, Horse Chestnut, mostly Broadleaf Lime, Elm, Oak, Ash, Fir.

The strange aspect of OLD WOOD ROAD was the space to the North side of it which was Hawthorn tree lined with a wide 3 metre empty gap before the kerb all the way down from Muirside to the Southern edge of the Wood. The old Mining Railway map above suggests the was a Mineral Railway line there and perhaps it was not just a name to a Wood, but a wooden road too because of the wooden sleepers laid to transport the coal from Baillieston Colliery (in the Ladyhill Field) ?

This eastern field of the Maxwell estate known as the “Home Field” had various crops grown in it through in the through the years potatoes, but mostly wheat. Maxwell family leased out most of their fields to the Wilson family who managed Burntbroom Farm.

Many of the families who moved to OLD WOOD ROAD came from the likes of the Pre-fabs, in Baillieston, Bargeddie and Meekies Building, I remember the Steamies in the back court of Meekies Building and used to take a shortcut through it going to school. The last memory I have of Meekies, which was part of an old areas known as Longlee was that it lay derelict for years with only Dr Paterson Surgery at the bottom west end of it, the Cobblers Shop and milk carton vending machine that never worked.

ASH ROAD*: There were, and still are, two a very old Ash trees at the junction of Old Wood Road and Ash Road. Back then the electricity pylons “The Wayleave” ran between Drumpellier Road and Ash Road down to Boghall Road.

OAK CRESCENT*: There was a very old Oak tree in the Wee Wood adjacent to the start of Oak Crescent.

FIR PLACE*: The last tree on the south point of the Wee Wid was a beautiful Fir tree like a big Christmas tree. It was removed when they started to build Bannerman High School.

*Many of the families that moved to the south of OAK CRESCENT came from the old slums in Budhill which came under Lanarkshire County Council.

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