Old Photograph School Darvel Scotland

Old photograph of the school in Darvel, a small town situated ten miles East of Kilmarnock in East, Ayrshire, Scotland. James Morton was born at Gowanbank in Darvel in Ayrshire on 23 March 1867 the second son of Alexander Morton. His father founded the weaving company of Alexander Morton & Company, employing 600 persons in the late 19th century.He was educated at Darvel School then Ayr Academy. He did not go to university and was trained as a chemist at Morton Sundour Mills in Carlisle, when his family purchased Denton Mills in that city. The company greatly expanded the use of Arts and Crafts designs in the late 19th century. James specialised in permanent light-fast dyes and moved to Scottish Dyes Limited around 1895. He went on to direct the dyestuffs section of ICI. Morton aimed to make ' fast dyes ' that would not fade in sunlight , even if that meant sacrificing the variety of colours available to the consumer. He sent out sample test cards of dyed fabricto his brother-in-law, Patrick Fagan, who was working for the British colonial civil service in India, with instructions to leave the fabric exposed to direct sunlight for weeks and even months at a time. He was knighted in June 1936 by King George VI, and died on 22 August 1943 at Dalston Hall near Carlisle.


Tour Scotland video of old photographs of Darvel, a small town situated ten miles East of Kilmarnock in East, Ayrshire, Scotland. Darvel is situated on the A71 road that runs from Irvine on the west coast to Edinburgh on the east. The town is nine miles east of Kilmarnock and is the most easterly of the Valley Towns, the others being Galston and Newmilns. The land on which Darvel was built was owned by Earls of Loudoun and it was John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun who began the modern town in 1754 as an income for the estate. By 1780, the population had increased to over 400. In 1876, the art of lace making was introduced to the town and many mills were built to keep up with the demand. Sir Alexander Fleming, was born on 6 August 1881, at Lochfield farm near Darvel. He was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. His best known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the world's first antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin, Penicillin G, from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy. On 24 December 1915, Fleming married a trained nurse, Sarah Marion McElroy of Killala, County Mayo, Ireland. Their only child, Robert Fleming, became a general medical practitioner. After his first wife's death in 1949, Fleming married Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, a Greek colleague at St. Mary's, on 9 April 1953; she died in 1986. From 1921 until his death in 1955, Fleming owned a country home in Barton Mills, Suffolk, England. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day.

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

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