Old Photograph Cathkin Braes Scotland

Old photograph of a house in Cathkin Braes which is an area of hills to the south east of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. Cathkin Braes lies to the south of the districts of Castlemilk, Fernhill and Burnside, and to the east of Carmunnock. Rising to over 200m in elevation, it includes the highest point in the Glasgow City area. It was a rallying point in the Radical War. The Radical War also known as the Scottish Insurrection of 1820, was a week of strikes and unrest, a culmination of Radical demands for reform in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which had become prominent in the early years of the French Revolution, but had then been repressed during the long Napoleonic Wars. On Monday 3 April work stopped, particularly in weaving communities, over a wide area of central Scotland including Stirlingshire, Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, with an estimated total of around 60,000 stopping work. Reports came in that men were carrying out military drill at points round Glasgow, foundries and forges had been raided, and iron files and dyer's poles taken to make pikes. In Kilbarchan soldiers found men making pikes, in Stewarton around 60 strikers was dispersed, in Balfron around 200 men had assembled for some sort of action. Pikes, gunpowder and weapons called wasps, a sort of javelin and clegs, a barbed shuttlecock to throw at horses, were offered for sale. Rumours spread that England was in arms for the cause of reform and that an army was mustering at Campsie commanded by Marshal MacDonald, a Marshal of France and son of a Jacobite refugee family, to join forces with 50,000 French soldiers at Cathkin Braes under Kinloch, the fugitive Radical laird from Dundee. In Paisley the local reformers' committee met under command of their drill instructor, but scattered when Paisley was put under curfew. Government troops were ready in Glasgow, including the Rifle Brigade, the 83rd Regiment of Foot, the 7th and 10th Hussars and Samuel Hunter's Glasgow Sharpshooters. In the evening 300 radicals briefly skirmished with cavalry, but no one came to harm on that day.



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