Milngavie

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Milngavie, (pronounced "Mill–Guy" or "Mull–Guy"), is a town on the northwestern outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland. It lies approximately seven miles northwest of Glasgow city centre in East Dunbartonshire. Politically it is within the East Dunbartonshire constituency for the Westminster Parliament and the Clydebank and Milngavie constituency for the Scottish Parliament.

The town is part of the Glasgow urban area (officially the Greater Glasgow Metropolitan Settlement Area) which includes the city and its surrounding towns. Postal addresses are commonly given as "Milngavie, Glasgow" as the town has a Glasgow based postcode.

Milngavie is a commuter suburb, with much of its working population travelling to Glasgow to work or study. The town is served by Milngavie railway station on the North Clyde Line of the SPT rail network, which links it to Central Glasgow. The town is also a very popular retirement location, with an unusually high proportion of senior citizens. In the 2001 census the town had a recorded population of 12,795 in 5,256 households.

Currently the town is perhaps best known as the start of the West Highland Way long distance footpath which runs northwards for 95 miles to the town of Fort William. A granite obelisk in the town centre marks the official starting point of the footpath.

1 History
2 Current Status
3 Architecture
4 Local Environment
5 Pronunciation and Name
6 Schools
7 Places of Worship
8 Sporting Institutions
9 See also
10 External links

[edit] History

Although known today as a dormitory suburb of Glasgow, the town grew from a country village to a minor industrial centre in the nineteenth century with paper mills and bleach works on the Allander River to the north east of the town centre. Some remnants of this industry remain today on the Clober Industrial Estate.

The land surrounding the village comprised several estates with tennant farms, amongst them Barloch, Clober, Craigton, Craigdhu, Dougalston, Douglas Mains and South Mains.

Stone built villas and semi detached houses were constructed for wealthy citizens to the east of the town centre and around Tannoch Loch when commuting to Glasgow was made possible by the opening of the railway, which reached the town in 1863. The town become a police burgh, within the county of Stirlingshire in 1875 and retained burgh status for 100 years. Milngavie was transferred to the county of Dunbartonshire in 1891.

After World War II a local authority housing scheme was built to the west of the town centre, housing many people relocated from Clydebank which had been badly bombed. The town grew with the addition of private speculative housing developments of bungalows and semi-detached homes at South Mains to the south of the town centre and around Clober, to the west, in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fairways estate was built in the 1980s and the Mains estate increased the population in the 1990s.

In the early 1980s the town centre was redeveloped to improve traffic flow and pedestrian safety. The central commercial streets were pedestrianised and many buildings replaced. A superstore was opened on the fringes of the town centre in the 1990s.

[edit] Current Status

Today Milngavie is linked in the popular imagination with the neighbouring town of Bearsden although their social histories differ. Bearsden grew almost exclusively as a dormitory suburb of Glasgow for the wealthy and professional classes. In that sense both towns now currently fulfil a similar role. The two towns became a single local authority district in 1975, before Scottish Local Government reorganisation in the 1990s re-integrated them with Kirkintilloch and Bishopbriggs to form East Dunbartonshire, although transport and social networks link the town much more closely with Glasgow itself.

Certain properties in the locale can command amongst the highest house prices in the Glasgow urban area. This has led to its reputation as an exclusive residential area and an aspirational destination for home buyers.

Governmental and tax raising boundaries separate Milngavie and Bearsden, along with other wealthy dormitory suburbs like Newton Mearns and Giffnock, from the City of Glasgow unitary authority area. These concentractions of the city-region's wealthy residents outside Glasgow's boundaries, while working and using facilities in the city but not contributing to the city's coffers, has prompted some to call for tax redirection, however local identity and political forces are strong and any calls for inclusion within Glasgow's boundaries have been rebuffed.

[edit] Architecture

Little remains of the pre-nineteenth century village other than the Corbie Ha' meeting hall, Cross Keys Public House and the Gavin's Mill water mill on the Allander River along with Barloch House and Barloch Farm.

There are a few good examples of nineteenth century stone villas along the Station Road as well as the well preserved ninteenth century railway station. Many interesting victorian houses around the Tannoch Conservation Area show Scottish cottage, Scottish Baronial, Classical architecture and Gothic influences. The town centre and Strathblane Road have remaining victorian shop/tenement buildings and a few Arts and Crafts influenced commercial buildings. Craigmillar Avenue and the area around Baldernock Road have some large Arts and Crafts and glasgow style influenced houses.

The bulk of the housing stock is twentieth century, showing Scottish vernacular influences such as harling or rough-casting, and more traditionally English elements like black and white timber panneled dormer windows and gables.

The public sheltered housing projects of the 1970s and 1980s are interesting for their attempts to use traditional local materials like grey rough-cast and slate plus interesting rounded walls and pitched roofs.

The most recent develpoment is characterised by some interesting one-off conversions and extensions to victorian properties; new housing by developers that often follows designs based on the brick architecture of the South of England; and contemporary steel framed commercial and leisure buildings.

[edit] Local Environment

Local beauty spots include Tannoch Loch, Drumclog Moor and the Mugdock Reservoir that sit on high ground to the north of the town amid pleasant landscaping and offer views over the Glasgow region. These waterworks, opened by Queen Victoria, were constructed in the nineteenth century to provide clean drinking water for the city of Glasgow and form the end point of an aquaduct that brings fresh water over twenty miles from Loch Katrine solely through gravitational force.

Mugdock Country Park is located just north of the town.

[edit] Pronunciation and Name

The apparent mismatch between the town's written and pronounced names stems from how the name Milngavie was originally translated from Gaelic into English. The Gaelic name for the town is Muillean Dhaibhidh, pronounced "Moolin Ghuh-ee", meaning David's Mill. The Gaelic letter combination "bh" is usually transliterated as a "v" in English, hence Milngavie, despite sometimes being pronounced more like a "w", as in this case.

[edit] Schools

High Schools

Douglas Academy : A state-funded secondary school, which includes a Music School for gifted children. Entry to the music school is by audition and pupils from outwith the area board in the West End of Glasgow.

Primary Schools

Clober Primary: A state-funded primary school.
Craigdhu Primary: A state-funded primary school.
St Joseph's Primary School: A state-funded Roman Catholic primary school.
Milngavie Primary: A state-funded primary school.
Atholl Preparatory School (The Glasgow Academy): A fee paying primary school that is part of The Glasgow Academy, whose senior school and other departments are located at Colebrooke street in the West End of Glasgow.

[edit] Places of Worship

Allander Evangelical Church
Cairns Church of Scotland (homepage)
Milngavie United Free Church of Scotland
St. Andrew's Episcopal Church
St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church (homepage)
St. Luke's Church of Scotland
St. Paul's Church of Scotland (homepage)

Originally Milngavie was in the Parish of New Kilpatrick, the church being that of New Kilpatrick in Bearsden, with no formal place of worship in the town until the eighteenth century. Milngavie has three stone built churches dating from the early twentieth century within 500m of each other. Up until the 1970s these three were all Church of Scotland congregations: St.Paul's, Cairns, and St.Luke's. This came about due to the history of the Kirk (Church of Scotland) which saw a multitude of factions and congregations organise, each with varying forms of worship and constitutional arrangements, which subsequently re-integrated. St.Paul's was always in the fold of the Church of Scotland and is the parish church of Milngavie. It was originally housed in a simple grey stone church building above the Station Road beside the Milngavie Primary School before moving to a handsome red sandstone building on the Strathblane Road in 1906. The original building is now apartments. Since 1799 Cairns Church had been located in a building on Mugdock Road close to the 'preaching braes' on Barloch Moor where the congregation's first services had taken place. It moved to its present building on Buchanan Street in 1903 which displays elements of the Glasgow Style of architecture and design. St.Luke's had been built as the Milngavie United Free Church. In the 1970s it was decided that the concentration of churches in one area should be reviewed and a new St.Lukes was built on the western side of the town to serve the residents of Clober. The Roman Catholic Church bought the old St.Luke's Church and moved their congregation to the new premises from a chapel on Buchanan Street at Moor Road which was associated with the neighbouring Roman Catholic Convent of Ladywood which closed in the 1970s.