John Street

John Street

Another bite sized chunk of Blantyre History

With the continuation of John Street on the right hand side, we had the Blantyre Iron Foundry Works, The next place was the Aitkenhead Slaughterhouse, used for butchering horse and cattle from the farms in the local area.

On the Left hand side traveling north down John Street, half of the street was taken up by tenement type buildings, again just like the one we have already covered, through the close, and up the back stairs to living quarters, with wash houses and clothes lines at the back of the properties.

The next part of the street was the start of the Blantyre Public Park, this side of the park contained the two football fields, where you could at most times find a football game of sorts going on. Sunday afternoon was special when the teams from other villages in the area came to play the local boys and of course a little gambling went on the results.

At the end of John Street there was a fairly large close opening going under the railway lines which led out on to the River Clyde Braes, a good view of the surrounding area of the valley and the Blantyre Village area could be seen from here. Do not misunderstand me when I say Blantyre Village, it’s that there was a part of Blantyre called the Village, it was like a village within a village. This was the area that David Livingstone was born and crew up in, I will cover that some other time.

Also running along at the bottom of John Street was a continuation of the short-cut from Baird’s Raws, Forrest Street and then on to the Blantyre Railway Station. The name John Street was the second name given to this street, in its first use as a street it was called New Station Road, where the John came from I do not know, but will try to find out.

(Note from Bill: John Street, Clark Street and Forrest Street were named after Col. John Clark Forrest who was Grand Master of the Mason’s, Logan Street was called after his wife, Janet Logan.)

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Continuing the conversation between Thomas Dunsmuir Hartman in Chicago, formerly Logan Street, (known as TDH or Drapadew) and Margaret in Queensland Australia on TalkingScot.

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