Old Kilpatrick, Bowling & Milton
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Old Kilpatrick, Bowling & Milton Heritage Trail OVERTOUN HOUSE DUMBUCK MILTON BRAE HOUSE A82 STIRLING RD GLASGOW RD 6 CRANNOG A814 DUMBARTON RD 1 THE SALTINGS FORMER ESSO TANK FARM 2 ERSKINE FERRY 7 5 3 FERRYDYKE/DONALD’S QUAY DUNGLASS CASTLE 8 4 FORTH & CLYDE CANAL BASIN 10 5 RAILWAY/CYCLE PATH HENRY BELL 9 MONUMENT BOWLING 12 6 MILTON 13 BUCHANAN INSTITUTE STATION 13 14 A814 DUMBARTON RD 7 LITTLEMILL 14 BAY INN 11 A82 GREAT WESTERN RD 8 LITTLEMILL DISTILLERY 15 GAVINBURN SCHOOL 4 9 BOWLING SHIPYARD 16 ROMAN FORT (FORMER GAVINBURN BUS GARAGE) RIVER CLYDE 10 BOWLING HALL 17 ST PATRICK’S WELL 11 BOWLING HARBOUR 18 OLD KILPATRICK PARISH CHURCH 12 BOWLING CHURCH 19 SECESSION CHURCH 15 16 17 18 Old Kilpatrick, 3 19 1 BowlingHeritage & Milton Trail ERSKINE BRIDGE 2 NAPIER & MILLER SHIPYARD OVERTOUN HOUSE This Heritage Trail takes in the villages of Old as the birthplace of St. Patrick – a claim disputed, Kilpatrick, Bowling and Milton, stretching according to Neil Munro ‘by some foolish place approximately three miles along the north bank called Boulogne-sur-mer, but locally we laugh at that.’ DUMBUCK MILTON BRAE of the River Clyde, westwards from the Erskine The view of the Clyde from Dalnottar Hill, above HOUSE A82 STIRLING RD Bridge – a stretch of the Clyde that Dorothy Old Kilpatrick, attracted the cream of European Wordsworth declared to be superior in grandeur artists for two centuries. The significance GLASGOW RD to the Thames in Kent. The complete route has of shipbuilding, transport and distilling, all the advantage of a well-maintained cycle track, seemingly squeezed into a narrow neck of land 6 but for those wishing to take in more of the between river and hillside at Bowling, is as CRANNOG local detail, each of the village areas can easily be surprising as its connections with 20th century explored separately. Art Deco. Beyond the ruined Dunglass Castle A814 DUMBARTON RD and the monument to the steamship pioneer The area has numerous archaeological sites, Henry Bell, the early corn, textile and paper- mostly from the Bronze and Iron Ages; Roman milling undertaken at Milton have disappeared. influences in particular, and the extant (and still The extensive oil tank farm latterly owned by to be discovered) artefacts around Old Kilpatrick, Esso on the foreshore between Dunglass and are of great importance. The village asserts itself Milton has also gone and the extensive and contaminated site is being treated by new bio- 1 THE SALTINGS FORMER ESSO remediation techniques. The village now offers a TANK FARM 2 ERSKINE FERRY 7 valuable link between the river and the wonderful 5 3 FERRYDYKE/DONALD’S QUAY DUNGLASS CASTLE 8 hinterland around the Barnhill and Overtoun 4 FORTH & CLYDE CANAL BASIN 10 estates, as far as the Lang Craigs and beyond. 5 RAILWAY/CYCLE PATH HENRY BELL 9 MONUMENT BOWLING 12 6 MILTON 13 BUCHANAN INSTITUTE STATION 13 14 A814 DUMBARTON RD 7 LITTLEMILL 14 BAY INN 11 A82 GREAT WESTERN RD 8 LITTLEMILL DISTILLERY 15 GAVINBURN SCHOOL 4 9 BOWLING SHIPYARD 16 ROMAN FORT (FORMER GAVINBURN BUS GARAGE) RIVER CLYDE 10 BOWLING HALL 17 ST PATRICK’S WELL 11 BOWLING HARBOUR 18 OLD KILPATRICK PARISH CHURCH 12 BOWLING CHURCH 19 SECESSION CHURCH 15 16 17 18 3 19 1 ERSKINE BRIDGE 2 NAPIER & MILLER SHIPYARD The Saltings 1 The Saltings Napier and Miller Shipyard So called because the area was once a salt The yard opened in 1904 following a move marsh, the Saltings is now a nature reserve from Yoker. It notably built the last three- managed by West Dunbartonshire Council. masted, square-rigged barques in the UK, the It has well-maintained paths, seating and ‘Sunlight’ and the ‘Rendova’ for Lever Brothers, information boards which describe the for whom they carried coconut oil from the wildlife. At its east-end, what is now Glen Pacific to Port Sunlight on Merseyside; sadly Lusset Scout Hall was once home to Jeannie both vessels were lost in the First World War. Gentles who ran a canteen for shipyard The company closed in the Depression of workers. Close to the scout hall stood the 1928, and the site was then used for building Aurora Lamp Factory, which was Scotland’s landing-craft, and during WW2, for the first electric light bulb factory. It opened in construction of Mulberry Harbours. Arnott 1932 but closed sometime in the forties or Young & Co. also operated a ship-breaking fifties. yard nearby. 2 Erskine Ferry Originally located a little further down the river at Ferrydyke, the Erskine Ferry was one of a number of crossing points in the area. Until 1904 the ferry crossing was maintained by Lord Blantyre and thereafter by the Clyde Navigation Trust. The ferry was withdrawn when the Erskine Bridge opened in 1971. Erskine Ferry c1910 canal at Bowling by a fine (but now derelict) hydraulic swing-bridge operated from a now demolished signal-box straddling the tracks. There are prospects for the refurbishment of this bridge as part of a walking route. 5 Railway/Cycle Path After the initial Bowling to Balloch railway Ferrydyke, Old Kilpatrick of 1850 was linked back to Glasgow in 1858, the Lanarkshire & Dunbartonshire Railway 3 Ferrydyke/Donalds Quay (later, the Caledonian Company) opened a separate line in 1896. It built an upper level At the bascule bridge and canal-side cottage, station at Bowling beside the quarry that a path leads down to Donald’s Quay, once the produced Bowlingite, a stone used mainly for site of a ferry crossing and still the location of a roadmaking. Bowling became an important beacon known as Donald’s Light. Just beyond transport link at a time when tourism was the cottage are the ruins of stables once used developing. Travellers came to the village by by the horses which towed barges on the canal. river, or by swift-boat on the Canal; they might In the 18th century a Roman distance slab was spend a night at Frisky Hall before travelling found here. by train to Balloch. From there, the journey 4 Forth and Clyde Canal Basin continued by boat to the hotel at Inverarnan, The Georgian Customs House marks the via the canalised River Falloch at the head western terminus of the Forth & Clyde Canal, of Loch Lomond. After an overnight stay opened In July 1790. This followed years of at Inverarnan, travellers continued into the wrangling over a route, and surveys by such Highlands and further north by stage-coach. eminent engineers as John Smeaton and James The upper railway was closed in 1960 and Watt. Although the canal was to have moderate it now forms part of the Glasgow - Balloch success, its days were numbered after the Cycleway; the 1895 bridge over the track- railways arrived; following decades of decline, bed at Manse Road is aligned with the rising it was closed in 1963. In 2001, the canal was sun at the equinox. Nearby stands the house re-opened, mainly for recreational use, as once occupied by the ship-owner and art The Millennium Link. The Lanarkshire and collector William Burrell, donor of Glasgow’s Dunbartonshire Railway of 1896 crossed the magnificent Burrell Collection. Forth & Clyde Canal Inner Basin 6 Milton The most interesting modern building, and The ‘Mill-toun of Colquhoun’ had established winner of a Saltire Society award, is Whyte’s bleach-fields in the 18th century, soon giving Corner, built in 1937 by Joseph Weekes; this rise to calico printing and weaving. By 1794 is a roughcast crescent of two-storey flats Milton is claimed to have had Scotland’s first demonstrating a good combination of Scots powered looms, 40 of which were supposedly vernacular and Art Deco design. installed under the supervision of James Overtoun House Watt. Near Milton House stand two ruined Above Milton Brae is the Baronial Revival battlemented towers, of three and five storeys, mansion of 1859-63 by James Smith (father between which the cotton mill stood. There of the notorious alleged poisoner Madeleine) were violent strikes there in 1833-34, when for the Rutherglen chemical manufacturer troops were quartered at the mill and in James White, whose son became the first Lord Dumbarton. Overtoun. The house, which is publicly owned, Milton House is an elegant, two storey and was neglected for many years after its closure basement, five-bay, gabled and pedimented as a maternity hospital in 1970 and is currently mansion of 1792. Maps of 1864 clearly show occupied by a religious organisation. the still-working Corn Mill and Print-works Dumbuck House and, further up the hill, the ruined Cotton Mill. In the mid-19th century Biggar’s Paper Mill Now a hotel, Dumbuck House was built in was incorporated into part of the cotton mill; 1824 as the estate house of the Geils family, this employed seven steam engines and 90 which farmed High Mains and Low Mains employees for the production of fine writing of Dumbuck. In 1906, the house became the papers before going out of business in 1905. offices of the notorious Kosmoid Companies, which were at the centre of allegations of Milton School, by Stewart and Paterson in alchemy at their Dumbuck factories. 1905 has recently been B-listed by Historic Scotland. Milton House Overtoun House Crannog/Canoes canal-builder James Brindley brought fellow On the foreshore opposite the Dumbuck Hotel engineer John Golborne of Chester to Glasgow. lie the remains of the Dumbuck Crannog. This He devised an important and highly successful Iron Age communal defensive dwelling, raised system of over a hundred carefully engineered from the water on stilts, was discovered in 1895 dykes to control the river’s scouring action and and its collapsed structure can be identified which typically deepened the main channel at low tide.