Captain W. Dykes Loudon, Commandant B (Hamilton) Company, 2nd V.B. Scottish Rifles, had just received a very interesting letter from two brothers, Private John and Thomas McEwan, former members of his Company. When the war broke out, they applied, through the local depot, to join the Regulars in order to go to the front, but found the regulations were against them.
Nothing daunted, they paid their passage to Cape Town, and their letter, which is as follows, tells its own tale as to their subsequent movements: “Victoria West Camp, Cape Colony 12th Dec., 1899.—Sir—My brother and I arrived in Cape Town on 25th November, and joined the South African Light Horse, a regiment of cavalry raised by the Imperial Government for service against the Boers. We are presently stationed behind the base at Dr Aar to guard the lines of communication and to check any attempt by the local Dutch to assist the enemy.
My squadron (F) patrols a large district, while my brother, who belongs to E, is stationed about 30 miles up country. I was promoted ambulance sergeant a week ago. We get good pay—food, however is scarce—5s a day for a trooper, with 2s 6d extra for rations. The regiment is a very mixed lot, the only qualification being ability to ride and shoot. We have English, Irish, Scotch, Canadians, American cowboys, Australians, New Zealanders, Swedes, French and Swiss in our squadron, many of whom have seen active service in different parts of the world. Our commander is a retired Major of the Blues.
This camp from which I write is a miserable hole—the sandstorms nearly blind us, and we shall be very glad when we advance further up country.” Ref. Hamilton Advertiser. 6/1/1900 page 3.
DEATH OF AN AGED RESIDENT. The Low Waters district has lost “Granny” as the children around the area loved to call Mrs Janet Brownlie, of 10 Corporation Buildings. Born in Bannockburn, she came to Hamilton as a bride of 19 fully sixty-four years ago, and she has resided in Low Waters since that early period in her life. Predeceased by her husband, she is survived by the married members of her family, forty grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren. She died on Monday night to the regret of neighbours and many friends and not least the children who constantly had experience of her kindliness and interest. Ref. Hamilton Advertiser. 7/1/1933 page 6 Wilma S. Bolton. 2012
A few friends and well-wishers met last Saturday evening to do honour to Mr Thomas Campbell in the occasion of his leaving Neilsland Colliery to take up a more lucrative position in South Africa.
After a splendid tea purveyed by Mrs Lockhead in her usual good style, Mr David Campbell who presided, in a neat speech spoke of Mr Campbell as an industrious workman, and wished him every success in the land of his adoption. He then called on Mr David Robertson, who made the presentations in an appropriate manner. Mr Campbell in accepting a handsome dressing case, thanked one and all for the kind gift.
Songs and recitations were rendered by Messrs Reid, Brownlie, McInnes, Riddle, Calder, Brown, Robertson, Cochrane, Campbell, Maxwell, Kerr and Russell, and a happy evening terminated with the singing of “Auld Lang Syne.” Ref. Hamilton Advertiser. 20/3/1915 page 4. Wilma S. Bolton. 2012
A dissatisfied warden writes:- The last day of the “Passing Notes” in last Saturday’s ‘Advertiser’ concluded with patting Hamilton on the back because of its immunity from convictions for contraventions of the lighting restrictions. Anyone who is not blind will wonder why there have been no convictions.
The only reason the writer can see is that there is a great deal of slackness on the part of those who should check or summon the offenders. Wardens and police, either or both, are failing in their duty, or else a score or two of offenders could be got every night. The test is: if it can be seen from the outside that there is a light inside, then the black out is not satisfactory.
With this test in mind, let any person take a walk round the various districts in Hamilton and it will be seen that the existing conditions are disgraceful. People should come out and look at their own windows, back and front, after the black-out, and not be content with “oh, that’ll do.” Streaks of light from tops, edges and bottoms of windows can be seen almost everywhere. Another careless fault arises from doors left open with a hall light on. Again, some people, when seeing their visitors away at night, seem to think nothing of opening wide the front door with hall light full on, and lighting the path to the front gate to let their visitors see their way out.
In a broadcast recently, a pilot said he flew for a considerable time over the district he was to visit but could not determine whether he was over the town or a wood near it. Suddenly he saw a pinpoint of light and that gave him his bearing. (That might have been someone showing visitors out.) Well, that was a British pilot looking for his target over Germany.
The very same thing could happen here and the whole district be endangered be somebody’s carelessness. So far, nothing has happened here, but one never knows what night it might happen. The offenders in these lighting restrictions are not confined to one class. The writer has been all over Hamilton and has found lights in all classes of property, quite often in buildings and houses where a good example ought to be shown. Wake up, Hamiltonian’s! Get to it and make the black-out a black black-out.
Wilma Bolton’s graduation picture with her two daughters.
Of all the countless the people you meet during the course of your lifetime, if you are fortunate, there will be at least one you’ll never ever forget because of the positive influence they had on your life. For me that very special person was the late Mrs Margaret Alexander my former English teacher at Earnock Secondary School.
Earnock opened on the 26th August, 1957 and I was among the first intake of pupils. The teaching staff were excellent but human nature being what it is we all have favourites and Mrs Alexander and science teacher Jimmy Maxwell were both right at the top of my best teachers list. However, you can’t put an old head on young shoulders and being headstrong my only ambition was to leave school and get a job. I certainly put little thought into what I would do and how it would affect my life.
At fifteen I was off as soon as I could and went straight into the into the world of a Glasgow basement typing pool and what a culture shock that was. The two unhappy looking female owners looked and dressed like something from the turn of the century. They wore grey cardigans and long black ankle length dresses and their faces suggested that a substantial meal would do them both the world of good. The working conditions were like something out of a Dickens novel. I stuck it for four months then moved on to a Glasgow construction company and you couldn’t have made up the scenario in this office if you tried. It was whispered that the managing director had a penchant for the “ladies” and and he used the building to entertain them in the evening when his staff had gone. There was also a beautifully dressed, very distinguished looking but homeless chartered accountant sleeping in one of the offices. He was not long out of jail for embezzlement.
Office jobs were plentiful and I moved on to a company supplying motor car spares to garages. My weekly wage was £2 10/- (£2 50p) for working nine to six Monday to Friday and a half day Saturday. With train fares and deductions there was not a lot left. I enjoyed working there but moved on after about eighteen months and followed the “big money” straight through the gates of Philips factory and into the lamp section. We sat at a capping wheel making stop and tail lamps for cars and when I got my first wage I felt like a millionaire. In less than a year I was earning £7 10/- a week if I worked a Saturday shift and my widowed mother finally had a decent money coming into the house. She gave me 10/- (50 pence) pocket money and bought my clothes. We even went on holiday to Belgium and she just loved it.
I was married when I was twenty and left Philips after the birth of the eldest of my four children. Money was really scarce and as soon as they were all off to school I started cleaning shops and offices. Some years later the free weekly paper The Lanarkshire World came on the scene and with my youngest daughter delivered 1,400 papers every week for the magnificent sum of one penny a paper which gave us £14. The money went a long way and so did our feet; from Swiscott to Hamilton Central and we delivered them for quite a substantial number of years. I was also cleaning an office at the Peacock Cross starting at 5 am and when I was finished there I would run down to Marks and Spencers where the conditions were quite good and I enjoyed it as much as I could ever enjoy a cleaning job, for I will put my hands up and plead guilty to never ever being over fond of housework.
The turning point for me came right out of the blue when I met Mrs Alexander in Duke Street, Hamilton and twenty three years after I had left school she gave me the third degree as to where my life was going. She was anything but amused with what I told her and went straight into lecture mode. “You wasted a good brain, get to night school and sit your O Grades and Highers.” I thought she was winding me up but she was deadly serious and gave me food for thought and a lot of good advice. When I was seventeen I hadseriously considered nursing, but at that time you had to live in the nurses home and that was out of the question with my father not a year dead and my mother really struggling to come to terms with his loss. Taking Mrs Alexander’s advice, I paid a visit to Brandon Street Job Centre to find out what qualifications I would require to be accepted as a student nurse and the answer left me reeling. Five O Grades and two Highers! Not a chance! The only writing I had done in the previous sixteen yearswas to sign my family allowance book.
Deep down I knew that it was now or never and so at the age of thirty eight I enrolled for night school classes at Hamilton’s Bell College and opted for O Grade English starting in September. Eight months later I was sitting in a large assembly hall filled with students and we were listening to the adjudicator giving out instructions for the exam. I was was scared out of my wits and when it was over I swore I would never put myself through that amount of stress again.
On the day the results were due out I was pacing the floor at the crack of dawn and popping outside every five minutes to look for the postman. When I finally spotted him, I was up the street like a shot to get my results. He must have thought I was barking mad and at that particular moment I would have fully agreed with him, however he handed over my envelope. By this time my hands were shaking so much I could barely open it and when I succeeded I found to my absolute disbelief I had obtained a B grade. That was when the penny finally dropped and with it came the realisation that I had taken what for me was a gigantic first step and it had paid off. There was no way I was giving up a second chance to have a good education, a career and freedom.
The following year I sat Higher English and Mrs Alexander was in Marks and Spencers on the day the results came in. She spotted me, grabbed my arm and said “how did you get on?” When I told her that I got another B grade she danced me around the racks of blouses and skirts saying “I knew you could do it” and I knew that I could never have done it without her encouragement and told her so. Two down and five to go. The next year I passed my O grade Biology.
With my confidence increasing and having almost half the required qualifications, my legs were then kicked from below me when Bell College discontinued the night school classes. I was devastated! Two years later I heard that adults could now attend day school with the children and so I found myself sharing classrooms with fifteen year old pupils at Holy Cross High School. Originally I intended to go to Hamilton Grammar because it was nearer to both my home and Marks and Spencers. However, my children were not at all amused about the idea of their mother joining their classes and on hindsight I don’t blame them so I was off to Holy Cross and it was a really good move. Iwould finish work, run like a greyhound down to Muir Street and arrive just in time for the bell ringing. In the two years I spent there I was the only adult in the four classes I attended and both children and staff were excellent. I still occasionally bump into one of the girls who was in my Higher Biology class and we have a wee blether. She is now in her early forties; how fast time flies away! It only seems like a few years ago since we sat in class together. I met her recently and she told me that she had just got a provisional acceptance for university and I am absolutely delighted for her. She is planning on becoming a teacher and I have no doubts that she will succeed.
I obtained the required 5 O Grades and 2 Highers and at the age of forty four I applied to train as a Registered General Nurse at Hairmyres Hospital. My interview was held in the Lanarkshire College of Nursing and Midwifery at Monklands Hospital and I was a nervous wreck. After countless probing questions from the three senior nurses interviewing me, the Sister Tutor looked me up and down and speaking slowly and deliberately said, “I cannot possibly give you an answer today as to whither or not you will be accepted as a student nurse, you will be notified by post in due course”. I felt my stomach hitting the floor! My O Grade and Higher certificates were lying on her desk and with both hands she slowly spread them out like a fan, looked directly at me, smiled and said, “what I can tell you is that you ought to be proud of yourself. I would suggest that you buy a pair of white lacing shoes” and I knew that I had been accepted.
My three years as a student nurse were divided between the Lanarkshire College of Nursing and Midwifery for theory and the practical experience was mostly at Hairmyres Hospital but with placements at Bellshill Maternity Hospital, Hartwood Hospital and the district nursing services. I enjoyed it immensely and graduated as a Registered General Nurse. At that time there were no permanent nursing posts available and for almost a year I got a lot of first class experience working as a bank nurse mostly in the Intensive Care Unit where I had already spent three months as part of my student nurse training. The patients inthis unit needed one to one care and I vividly remember one particular night when my patient was a critically ill ventilated man in acute renal failure and on haemofiltration. He was connected to so many infusion pumps and other types of equipment it reminded me of a scene from the Starship Enterprise. Looking around the unit I could scarcely believe how my life had changed and all because of a chance meeting in Duke Street. Some weeks later, a permanent post finally came up in the Acute Medical Receiving Unit and I was offered it and enjoyed every minute I worked there.
I thank God for Mrs Alexander’s faith in me and for giving me the confidence to change my life completely. Without her input I would never have had the courage to do it. My children were also really supportive and encouraged me every step of the way. My only regret was I had waited until it was almost too late. I loved nursing and would have worked for nothing. It was the best eighteen years of my life.
The reason for this very personal narrative is to pay tribute to Mrs Margaret Alexander, a first class caring teacher whose influence on my life was incalculable. She convinced me that no matter how difficult your circumstances may be, nothing is impossible.
Life is not a dress rehearsal, it is the only one you are going to have and there are no second chances. Before you know it, the years have vanished and you are old and you don’t know when it happened. If you want something badly enough, seize the moment, give it everything you have and watch the miracle unfold. So go for it; it might just change your life and be the best move you ever made. It was for me…… thanks to Mrs Alexander.
A lot of my childhood memories revolve around the small kitchen of our prefab at 133 Mill Road, Hamilton. This kitchen without question, was the undisputed domain of my mother Peggy Russell. An all round cook and a great baker, she made apple, currant and rhubarb pies as well as lemon meringue pies, doughnuts, shortbread, gingerbread, pancakes with sultanas on top and currant, treacle and plain scones. Her speciality was truffles and they tasted just beautiful.
When she was baking, my father Jimmy would be forever popping in and out asking her when it would be ready. “When I say it’s ready!” was her standard answer. She would eventually lose her rag with him and ban him from the kitchen.
My father was the only member of the family who took sugar in his coffee. Peggy had other plans for it and although she bought sugar every week, she guarded it like a zealot. What she didn’t use for baking she hoarded in the living room sideboard for eleven months of the year until it was the jam making season.
Jimmy had three plots behind the cottages on Bent Road, two of them filled with black and red currant bushes, raspberries, gooseberries and strawberry plants; the other one was for vegetables. When the fruit was ready, out would come the sugar and the big brass jelly pan, and my father and I would start picking the berries and carry them home in baskets. For weeks the kitchen would be filled with the smell of jam and jelly being made.
Peggy made enough to see us through until the next jam making session the following year. She also gave away a great many jars to friends and neighbours and her jam was beautiful. I still have her brass jelly pan to this day and I’ve used it many times myself to make jam and marmalade.
My father spent a lot of his spare time down at his plots, usually with me and my friends Marjorie Laird or Betty King in tow. At dinner time he would dig up potatoes and cut a cabbage and we would be sent to wash the potatoes while he lit a fire inside a square of old bricks. On top of the bricks he had a couple of oven racks where he placed the pots. He never quite trusted me to make 100% sure that there were no caterpillars on the cabbage so he always washed it himself at the stand pipe in Mary Street. He would either fry bacon or open a tin of corned beef and with his new potatoes and cabbage, we sat down and ate a meal fit for a king from tin plates.
My mother always made a clootie dumpling on Christmas Eve and it was rich and dark with fruits and spices. She would clean and wrap silver threepenny and sixpenny pieces in greaseproof paper and stir them through the dumpling mixture which would then be steamed in a large pot for four hours.
Peggy never lost her Aberdeen accent and she had a lot of sayings. One she used to use when the dumplin was simmering away was; Oh my! the smell of that dumplin’s “gaen roon my hert like a hairy worm.” Another one was “A hairy man’s a happy man but a hairy wife’s a witch.” “He’s got a face like a weel skelpit erse” was her description of a man or boy with a red face. Her sayings were legion.
Every woman who has ever made a clootie dumpling is one hundred percent convinced that her recipe is the best and I am no different. I am sure that my mother’s dumpling recipe was better than any other I’ve ever tasted. It also had the advantage of having the silver treasure hidden in it’s dark recesses. I have to belatedly confess that the thought of the money determined where I put the knife. That was when a knitting needle came in handy. I would push it through the dumpling until I felt it hitting a coin. That is where I cut my slice and then I ran up to Blyth’s shop to spend my ill gotten gains. If Peggy had caught me, there would have been a murder in Mill Road, or then again; she might just “ hae turned a blin ee’”
The above story was sent to us by Wilma Bolton and is taken from her childhood memories of growing up in Hamilton.
Wilma has kindly gave Historic Hamilton readers her mums recipe for her Clootie Dumpling. Enjoy!
PEGGY’S CLOOTIE DUMPLIN’.
1lb self-raising flour
25 g mixed spice
2 1/2 heaped T/spoons cinnamon
2 1/2 ” “ ground ginger
200 g suet
2 tablespoon syrup
3 tablespoons treacle treacle.
1 pound of sultanas
1 pound of currants
Or 2 pounds of mixed fruit
1 pound of raisins
1 large apple grated
2 eggs + milk (not semi skimmed)
1 large soup pot.
A cotton cloth no less than a meter square or an inside out clean cotton pillow case with the seam at one side unpicked for boiling the dumpling. I use the same small table cloth that my mother used.
1. Mix flour, suet, spices, syrup, treacle and mix. Add currants, raisin and grated apple (core and grate with skin on) and mix again.
Add two beaten eggs and milk and mix to stiff dough. The amount of milk required will be judged by the stiffness of the dough. Just go easy with it. The dough should be neither wet nor dry. Just a bit sticky.
2. Put a soup plate upside down on the bottom of a large soup pot and then sit a side plate on top of the soup plate. Pour boiling water into pot until it is just under the plate.
3. Pour boiling water into another pot and imerse the cloth, empty water out and remove and wring out when cool enough. Lay it out on clean table or worktop, sprinkle with flour, place mixture on the floured side of the cloth and bring the four corners of the cloth together and tie in the middle with string above the dumplin’ mixture, leaving a wee bit room for it to expand. Remember you are using self raising flour.
4. When water is boiling place the clootie dumplin’ on the plate. Put spare cloth corners outside pot (keeping away from gas) and put the lid on and simmer away for four hours. Have boiling water ready to top up when the sound of the water boiling changes as the water level falls. When topping up do not pour the water over the dumplin’. Pour down the side of the pan. Just let it slowly boil away with steam coming up the side of the dumpling’. You will hear the plate at the bottom making a noise as the water boils. Don’t let the pot run out of water and always make sure that the water doesn’t go off the boil. You need the steam to cook the dumplin’.
(An alternative to steaming is to put a plate on the bottom of the pot, sit the dumplin’ on top of it add boiling down the side until it covers the dumplin’ and boil for four hours.)
5. After steaming or boiling for about 4hrs lift the dumplin’ out of pot. Leave on a dinner plate for a few minutes to let it cool down a wee bit. Cut the string, opening the top and peel cloth slowly down the sides of the dumplin’. Let it cool a bit more and then put a plate on the top of the dumplin’ and holding the two plates turn upside down and then remove the top plate and slowly remove the cloth. Put it in a pre heated oven (150 degrees) with the door open to let a skin develop on the outside of the dumplin’. Or if you have a fire or a gas fire sit it in front of it. You will know it is ready when it no longer feels wet. It dosen’t take long.
Life has changed so much for women over the past fifty years and I sometimes sit and think of the differences in the lifestyles of young women today compared to the lives we in our sixties, seventies and eighties lived all those years ago. There are so many things which we take for granted now, but the younger women of today have no idea of just how hard it was for their mothers and grannies. Technology has improved our lives way beyond anything we could ever have imagined, not even in our wildest dreams; and thinking just what were the most important labour saving improvements in our lives, I offer you the following two items for your consideration.
THE WASHING MACHINE.
A washing machine for me was just a dream and all the clothes were washed in the sink with water heated on the gas cooker and scrubbed clean on a scrubbing board for several years before my mother bought me a “twin tub”. Oh the joy of that machine but that elation only lasted several years for as my family grew I spent more and more time standing beside it transferring clothes from the washing section to the rinsing and spinning section. Still, this was so much easier than standing in a “wash house” with a scrubbing board and a big mangle as my mother had done.
With the death of a relative I acquired an automatic washing machine and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. My friend Betty Walker came down to see it in action and we sat in front of it knitting and watching the machine for the whole cycle. It was so loud and unstable it almost shook the cups off the table but we were blind to this as we sat and stared at it with adoration while it washed the clothes. On hindsight we were like something out of Mrs Brown’s Boys. We could not believe what we were seeing. All I could say was “my granny would not believe this” and neither could we. With the introduction of the “automatic” women’s lives changed beyond recognition because we no longer had to spend hours washing clothes. To this day I still have my mother’s scrubbing board which she brought with her from Aberdeen when she moved to Hamilton 76 years ago. She used it for almost twenty years before she got a washing machine. Her first washing machine was an Acme and it was huge with a large wringer on top.
CENTRAL HEATING.
Today almost every home has central heating and long gone are the freezing winter’s mornings when it was so cold when you got out of bed you could see the huff of your breath and the windows of the house were frozen so you couldn’t see outside. Not only the inhabitants of the house and the windows were frozen. I remember making my four year old son’s bed one morning and finding out that part of the duvet was frozen to the wallpaper which ripped off the wall when I pulled it.
Memories of getting up at five o’clock on a cold winter’s morning are still vivid in my mind, for waiting was a coal fire needing to be cleaned out and set up with newspaper, sticks and coal ready to light. Holding your breath and crossing your fingers you would whisper a prayer when lighting the paper in the hope that it that it would catch first time. If it looked as if your efforts were in vain, the paper and sticks would be lifted up with up the poker and you would blow into the embryonic fire praying that it would burst into flames. A last resort would be the shovel placed in front of the fire and a newspaper held across it, the damper would be pulled out creating a draught which usually done the trick. The paper however could catch fire and vanish up the chimney in an instant and your heart nearly jumped out of your mouth in case it set it on fire. A chimney fire was quite a spectacular sight to see Pouring out of the top of the chimney was thick sulphurous black smoke and flames which could be seen for miles. To prevent the building going on fire you needed the fire brigade and so eventually you were summoned to court and fined.
So I say, God bless the men who developed the washing machine and central heating. They made the lives of countless women so much easier and I am one of them. …………Wilma Bolton.
Wilma, as always thank you for sharing your memoires!!!
With the struggle to eat, the chimney sweep was sometimes “forgotten” and the resultant fire meant the occupier had to appear at Hamilton Burgh Court. William Gray failed to appear and sent this poem instead.
I got up at three the ither morn, That’s as shair as I’m alive,
Tae sort ma fire and try and hae Ma kettle biled by five
I broke the raker up and then Slipped back into ma bed
For tae try anither twa oor’s sleep Tae ease ma aching head.
I wis dreaming of some happy days.When I heard an awfu’ roar, Wi’ a sudden leap I sprang richt Oot o’ bed on tae the floor
Noo, this is true, although Ye micht imagine I’m a liar Fae the bottom o’ my he’rt I cried My God, ma lum’s on fire!
I had nothing bit ma shirt on, And ma he’rt wis achin sore,
And tae mak’ ma misery mair complete A knock comes tae ma door,
When I opened it I gazed upon Two gallant men in blue,
So I whispered tae masel—My heavens! “Wull, yer landed noo.”
Bit tae gie the men their due They hadna very much tae say;
They took doon ma name And then they baith slipped away.
I kent they wid report it tae Some yin a wee bit higher,
And I’d likely need tae suffer For that auld lum gaun on fire.
I have travelled roon the world noo For three score years and mair, And noo this is ma first offence—Nae wunner ma hert’s sair
But I hope they show me mercy, For I’d be far better deid
Than them tae send me for A wheen o’ years tae Peterheid.
Noo the nicht before the trial I wid like ye a’ tae pray,
For the sentence tae be very light On your poet Willie Gray,
And I’ll tak dasht guid care That while I live in Lanarkshire
Nae policeman will ever see Ma lum again on fire.
Written by William Gray. 6/9/1928. Hamilton Herald and transcribed by Wilma Bolton.
I can’t help but think that this is something that Hugh Hainey would have done!!
The old town hall with it’s steeple still attached.
Wilma Bolton sent us a picture of Brandon Street and the old Town Hall with it’s steeple still attached.
Wilma told us:
“I remember the old town hall well. When I was young my father Jimmy Russell got a job as the caretaker because he was unable to work any longer in the pits.
His chest was really bad and he died age 52 some years later. By then, it was the Hamilton Burgh Police Station and it was literally falling apart from subsidence due to the underground workings.
I used to put a ball on the billiard table and it ran down the table. The floorboards were so rotten that a policeman fell through them and was half in one floor and half in the other. He had to be hauled out.
There were two cells and one of them held Peter Manuel the notorious murderer when he was arrested.. Regards Wilma”
Wilma, you are a true legend and I have enjoyed speaking with you over the last 5 or 6 months. Your knowledge of Hamilton is absolutely priceless. I love the way that you can tell me a story about almost anything that I ask you about, Keep the story’s coming!
The former burial site of the Strangs of Fairhill.
Continuing with our graveyard story at the former burial site in Fairhill, Wilma Bolton has transcribed an article from the Hamilton Advertiser dated 7/5/1887.
Sir, I am curious to know the origin and age of the small graveyard on the confines of the Fairhill property and adjoining the road from Earnock to Meikle-Earnock. Might I ask the author of the “Recollections” which frequently appear in your publication if he can find on the shelves of his memory any impress of the facts relating to it and its dismantled state? If he could also tell me the history of the ruined wall on the north side of the village of Meikle-Earnock. I should be under an increased debt of gratitude to him. QUAERO.
The following reply was printed on the 14/5/1887:
Sir, having read in Saturday’s Advertiser a letter from a correspondent seeking information about the age and origin of Meikle-Earnock Burying-Ground. I, along with a few friends, visited it on Sunday night, as I have often done in my lifetime before, and I must say that I was greatly shocked with the state in which I found it, It seems to me that in this awful race for riches the old proverb holds good, “Better a living dog than a dead lion.”
The Indians of North America put us to shame in the way they respect the sepulchres of the dead. I must inform your correspondent that according to tradition the origin of this old burying ground is lost in the mists of time Everything points to Meikle-Earnock as being a very ancient place , there being an ancient tumulus, which, though much larger at one time still measures 12 feet in diameter and 8 feet high. There have ben found several urns in it from time to time.
It appears the ancient inheritance of Fairhill and Meikle-Earnock was held by a family of the name of Strang, of which our energetic councillor is a lineal descendant. So far as I have been able to discover, when the old parish church of Hamilton (of which many of your readers of your readers will remember the portion that stood up to 1852, and was used as the burying place of the Hamilton family) was removed on 1731, the Laird Strang of that day built here a place of sepulchre like Abraham of old, in the shape of an octagon tower wherein to bury members of the family. Of course there had been Strangs’ buried here before this, as witness the inscription on two flat stones in good preservation: — “Here lies James Strang, of Meikle-Earnock, who was born July 20th. 1654, and died 31st March 1746, in the 92nd year of his age” –also “Here lies Robert Strang, younger of Meikle-Earnock, who was born 31st October, 1687 and died 6th of May 1737. The Mathers of Meikle-Earnock, who held the estate for a considerable time, came through it by marriage.
One of the Lairds of Meikle-Earnock married a Mather, and at his death the estate lapsed into that family, and was held for a time by a Mr Dick, of Glasgow, and is now the property of the much respected laird of Earnock, and I have no doubt if Mr Watson’s attention were called to the state of this old burying ground, he would perhaps hedge it round and plant a few trees in it. I more readily suggest this, knowing that few gentlemen in Scotland have done as much for the improvement and beautifying of their estates, and I have no doubt if this were done he would earn the eternal gratitude of every well-disposed Hamiltonian. With regard to the high wall at the north end of the village, so far as I am able to judge, and so far as the older inhabitants remember, it was the garden wall connected with the old mansion house. Yours, Etc. KINGSTON.
Hamilton Advertiser. 21/5/1887:
Sir, Having seen a letter in last week’s Advertiser. Signed “Kingston,” regarding the above burying ground, would you kindly grant space for one or two additional facts which he, as well as others may not be aware of. The ground in question seems to have been taken off the lands of Fairhill, perhaps from the fact of the tumulus referred to being situated as that particular spot, and which has always been supposed to belong to the Roman period. The oldest information we can get concerning it is perhaps what it reveals itself when we find one James Strang, who was born on 1654, having been buried there in 1746.
Seventeen years later, however, in 1763 when the estate of Fairhill (which then formed part of the estate of Meikle Earnock) was sold by a later James Strang. The burying ground is carefully reserved, and there referred to curiously as the “new burying place,” which does not point to a very great antiquity. Eighteen years later still, viz., 1781, we find it portioned out between four members of a family of Strangs as their respective burying places; and the present tomb was not built for nearly 20 years later still viz., about the year 1800, and not by a Strang, as Kingston tells us, but by a Mather, and who was himself the first to be laid within its walls—one or two old residenters being still alive who remember having seen his funeral.
It was built and secured by him as a burying place for members of the family bearing that name only; and from that time it has been gradually filled up by them, as each in their turn paid the debt of Natures immutable law; and at the present time there still remains one or two spaces to be occupied should the present representatives ever choose the spot as a last resting place—their father being the last Mather buried there. If they have ever given up their rights, as “Kingston’s” letter suggests, it must have been very recently. As regards the present state of the burying ground.
I knew that the year before last it was put into a state of capital repair by the present representatives—strong boarding’s being put up inside the windows, the door made thoroughly secure along with many other needful repairs. But no sooner were these done, than a gang of young ruffians (you can call them nothing else) from the town and surrounding places visited the spot—Sunday being a favourite day for the display. The boarding’s are battered down from the windows—the door is wrenched open –head stones are thrown down and broken—and the very ashes of the dead disturbed and exposed to view; and not once only but repeatedly. And try to interfere without a policeman at your back! This is our nineteenth century civilization! “Kingston,” in his letter, speaks about North American Indians, but we have a generation of Vandals growing up around us that would put to blush any dusky Indians that ever handled the tomahawk.
If they have any religious notions at all, its symbols are the tobacco pipe and a sand jig, with a clog dance thrown in by the way of variety. The police authorities have been applied to at different times, but without result; and so the vandalism is repeated. Perhaps the above may account for the condition your correspondent fount it in. How to put a stop to such savagery is another question. I have not the least doubt but if our own beautiful cemetery was not carefully watched and tended it would ultimately share the same fate. Yours W.A.
It just go’s to show that vandalism is not a modern day thing, it was even happening back in the 19th Century.
