Bearsden Misc

In the post 1861 I showed the substantial houses on the north side of St Germain's Loch,  While I have found several undated pictures of houses surrounding the loch, I have not found one of the house called St Germain's. Fortunately, Britain from Above includes an aerial view from 1955 taken from somewhere just south of Canniesburn Hospital looking north: We are looking north; Drymen Road runs from the right hand side, centre, diagonally to the centre top of the photo.  Canniesburn Hospital is underneath us and Canniesburn Toll is off camera in the bottom right.  Station Road and the railway run across the top left of the photo. I was able to pick out this close-up: St Germains is on the left, Lochbrae is on the right. The modern view looks roughly like this (from Google Earth): The entrance to St Germains from Drymen Road is still there: Here is an aerial view from 1955 for comparison: We are looking from the east to the west, Drymen Road runs left to right across the p...

The National Library for Scotland has an amazing online facility where you select a spot from a modern map and can then select different historical maps covering the same area.  The map from 1861 is fascinating. Here is the area from today's Bearsden Cross in the north to St Germain's Loch in the south: The Church at the top centre is New Kilpatrick on New Kirk Road (currently celebrating its 375th birthday).  Modern Bearsden Cross is labelled 'New Kilpatrick'.  At the actual crossroads Roman Road goes east while Thorn Drive goes west - the mapmaker thought they were the old road running behind the Antonine Wall. On the left is Ledcameroch House, now the site of the houses at Ledcameroch park / Chesters Road, I think.  The driveway from Drymen Road is, of course, Ledcameroch Road. At St Germain's Loch there are the substantial houses at St Germains and Lochbrae.  On the other side of Drymen Road there are other substantial houses called Croftbank, Beechwood and...

Britain From Above is a wonderful website of aerial photographs going back as much as 100 years.  In a 1930 photo , the famous monorail was captured: Here is my attempt to reproduce the view using Google Earth: We're above Milngavie Road looking south-east.  Macdonald's and Pure Gym are in the bottom right, Home Bargains and Aldi are bottom left and the new defunct Arnold Clarks still has cars on display.  The white building that has survived from the 1930 photo is Kelvin Timber and the monorail would have run on the area of today's timber yard. Here is some more detail from the 1930 photo.  The main building: The platform and carriage: And not forgetting the car heading to Milngavie: Note also the existing railway line under the monorail: This ran to a junction with the Hillfoot to Milngavie line: I believe the sidings were built to service the dyeworks at Burnbrae (now Macdonald's).