St Germains and Lochbrae: two of Bearsden's lost buildings

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 photo and Bearsden Station is in the top right.  The lodge (still standing) and gateway are ringed in red, centre left of the photo.  Above the lodge are the gardens and then St Germains.  Lochbrae is to the left.

Ellergreen Road runs up the north side of the garden of St Germains and a gateway remains:



Here it is on a 1955 aerial photo (seen from the opposite side):

The final detail still visible today is a gateway from the Lodge to the garden:

and here it is in the 1955 photo:

The garden is now a car park.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Burnbrae: The Dye Works and The House (updated 2pm on 11 August)

Image
Burnbrae, as we know, is located on the Milngavie Road out of Bearsden.  Craighdu Burn, which runs in between McDonalds and Pure Gym, is the boundary between Bearsden and Milngavie.  Thus the Burnbrae pub and restaurant and McDonalds are in Bearsden but Pure Gym and Kelvin Timber are in Milngavie. Going back to the 1920s, this would have felt semi-rural compared to today, as the following photo illustrates: I think this was taken from just north of the junction with Kilmardinny Avenue  looking towards Milngavie.  The road still has a slight bend in it but it is hardly noticeable in a car.  The monorail is visible in the middle distance (see my post here ).  Just to the left we see a building end on and behind that is today's Kelvin Timber building. Going back before that we can get an idea of how the area looked when New Kilpatrick was originally becoming established at and to the south of today's Bearsden Cross (see my post here ) by using material from this website : Burnbrae
Read more

Braehead Farm

Image
It's well known that before the Braehead Shopping Centre was built, the site was occupied in part and most recently by a power station.  Less well documented is that to the east of the power station site stood Braehead Farm.  This was just off of what was referred to as Renfrew Road in the 1890s and at that time there was an additional dwelling place referred to as The Lodge. Maps from this amazing resource (click here) provided by the National Library of Scotland, photos from Britain from Above (click here). It can be seen in this map from 1895: The river runs from bottom right to top left. The earliest industrial development around Scotstoun is shown on the right.  Braehead Farm and the Lodge are centre left of the map. By 1909, industrial development was eating into the farm lands.  The Lodge still stands on Renfrew Road but the new geography is in the shape of railway lines linking industrial sites to the main towns in the area: The Lodge was now cut off from the farm except by
Read more

Mosshead, Gartconnell, North and South Baljaffray: four lost farms north of Bearsden

Image
  I found this fascinating map on the Scotland's People website.  It is dated 1945 and was part of a series covering farmland in Scotland.  In the area I have selected above you can see Schaw House bottom right, Edgehill Road immediately to the right of that and parallel to the right of that, Gartconnell Road.  The black buildings marked on the extreme right, just above the marking "30" on the vertical side of the map, is Gartconnell Farm.  Heading north (and just below the letter C in KILPATRICK is Mosshead Farm.  Going north again to the top of the photo is South Mains Farm (still a working farm in 2024) on Craighdu Road.  Following this road left to the then crossroads (now a busy roundabout) and going straight across into what we now call Baljaffray Road you can see another two farms, North Baljaffray and South Baljaffray. All the photos are taken from air the Britain from Above website GARTCONNELL The first photo of Gartconnell is from 1928: We are looking from the
Read more