269 February 2017 - Gryffe Advertizer

28 the advertizer t: 01505 613340 07731 923970 e: info@advertizer.co.uk
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LOCAL
history
Johnstone History Society
Our February meeting will be held Tuesday 14th in the Masonic Hall Collier
Street at 7.30 pm. Our speaker this month will be our own secretary Valerie
Reilly and appropriately her talk will be “For This Was Seynt Volantynys Day
- Valentine Traditions” this should be a very interesting evening. Visitors
and new members will always be made welcome. We had an excellent
attendance at our fi rst meeting of 2017 and everyone enjoyed Sheina’s
informative and entertaining talk on “Six Cord Thread”.
The Museum has reopened after our festive break and continues to open
on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10.30am till 4pm. We still have
a few Calendars available which are now £3.50 with an envelope £4 . Our
usual books and publications are also on sale.
Kilbarchan - 4th February 1917
George Anderson was born in Kilbarchan in 1884. The 1901 census
records that he lived with his father, George 56, a self-employed dairyman,
Mary aged 29, Julia 20, an assistant draper: George was then 17 and an
apprentice bank clerk with the Clydesdale Bank in Kilbarchan. The family
home was at 16 New Street.
In 1911 he was a lodger at 42 Priory Road, Bedford Park, Chiswick. On
the 2nd October 1912 he married Margaret Knott at the Parish Church in
Barnes: they set up home at Boileau Road, Ealing. He was a month short
of his 32nd birthday when he volunteered for the Royal Field Artillery on
10th December 1915. In December 1916 he was recommended for officer
training but he was soon after transferred to the infantry, the 1st Battalion
Border Regiment, 87th Brigade, 29th Division. His record with the battalion
lasts from 7th January 1917 to 4th February 1917, when he died of gun shot
wounds to the back and left arm.
George had moved to the National Bank of India in Bishopgate, London in
1903 and had eventually become a manager. He left a widow and one son.
He is buried at Grove Town Cemetery, Meaulte, near Albert, Somme.
Black Cart Mills 6: Kilbarchan Burn
Continuing our journey down the Black Cart
Opposite the site of Johnstone Old Cotton
Mill, is an arch in the high stone retaining wall
supporting the former railway (now the cycle
path). This marks the entry of the Kilbarchan
Burn into the Cart.
The burn rises in bogland on Marshall Moor.
Above the village, it passes through Glentyan
Estate, where it has been dammed to create
a large pond and high level lade, passing
over ornamental cascades. This pond was
party to store water to drive Glentyan Mill. However it also seems to have
been diverted south of Bank Brae to the bleachfields in the centre of the
village (see below). Glentyan Mill was a traditional grain mill of which ruins
survive.
Although famed for its weaving industry, Kilbarchan is one of the only
Renfrewshire villages not to have a big cotton mill. The nearest cotton mill
to the village was at Cartside. A relatively late proposal to erect a large
steam powered cotton mill nearer the village in 1825 never emerged.
However Kilbarchan did make innovative use of its water resources. Just
downstream from Glentyan Mill was a water powered thread mill in a
converted house built over the burn by James Alexander in 1756. The
previous year Alexander had invented a machine ‘to go by water for twining
thread’ and received a grant of twenty pounds from The Board of Trustees
for Manufacture. Alexander’s house is shown on Roy’s map of 1755,
situated west of the kirkyard directly on the Kilbarchan Burn. This linen
thread mill can lay claim to being the first water-powered thread mill in
Scotland.
In the heart of the village in the 1780s were at least six bleachfi elds which
bleached the fine textiles which had been hand woven in the village. These
bleachfields were located in the Bog Park, although only scant evidence
remains today.
Downstream of the village there is a tradition of another mill in the Victorian
period. Beyond this, the lower parts of the burn pass through Milliken
Estate, where the burn was straightened and passed over cascades
supplying ponds, before entering the Black Cart at Johnstone.
2017, Stuart Nisbet, Renfrewshire Local History Forum
©
RLHF next archaeology lecture will be held in the Shawl Gallery in Paisley
Museum on 9th February, 2017, when Colin Sparrow will speak on Excavation of
a Viking Trading site in Gottland. Visitors are welcome at all our lecture meetings.