Old Photograph Douglas South Lanarkshire Scotland

Old photograph of cottages, houses and people in Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. This Scottish villages is located on the south bank of the Douglas Water and on the A70 road that links Ayr, on the West coast of Scotland, to Edinburgh on the East, around 12 miles south west of Lanark. The Douglas family took this name when their ancestors settled here in the 12th century. Within the village stands a statue to one of the Covenanters, James Gavin who was persecuted for his religious faith and had his ears cut off with his own tailoring scissors for refusing to renounce it. After suffering this humiliation he was transported to a life of slavery in the cotton fields of the West Indies. The village was shaped later by the Industrial Revolution, which brought woolen mills and coal mining. The village was also one of several locations near which a large camp of the Polish Army was set up in 1940. Units of the 10th Polish Cavalry, including the Podhalanski, Highland Battalion, 10th Mounted Rifles Regiment, the 24th Lancers as well as brigade support and service units were stationed here for a brief period in a temporary tented camp before moving north to Fife and Angus where they were deployed to defend the east coast of Scotland against invasion.



All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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