Old Photographs Of Maryhill Glasgow Scotland

Tour Scotland wee video of old photographs of Maryhill, Scottish Gaelic: Cnoc Mhoire, an area of the City of Glasgow. Hew Hill, the Laird, or Lord, of Gairbraid, had no male heir and so he left his estate to his daughter, Mary Hill, born 1730, died 1809. She married Robert Graham of Dawsholm in 1763, but they had no income from trade or commerce and had to make what they could from the estate, but on 8 March 1768 Parliament approved the cutting of the Forth and Clyde Canal through their estate, which provided some much-needed money. The canal reached the estate in 1775. Later Five locks, the great Kelvin Aqueduct and, between two of the locks, a dry dock boatyard were built. A village too began to grow up and the Grahams fed more land for its development; Robert Graham attached one condition that was to immortalise the heiress of Gairbraid, his beloved wife and the last in line of centuries of Hills of Gairbraid after the death of her father Hew Hill. The then village was to be " in all times called the town of MaryHill." In 1856 Maryhill became a burgh in its own right. It was later absorbed into the boundaries of the city of Glasgow in 1891. A part of the Antonine Wall runs through Maryhill, in the Maryhill Park area, where there is the site of a Roman fort adjoining the wall in nearby Bearsden. A Roman bath-house may still be seen there. Maryhill Barracks were opened as Garrioch Barracks in 1872. Built to accommodate an infantry regiment, a squadron of cavalry and a battery of field artillery, it dominated the area which is now the Wyndford housing estate. The barracks replaced the previous Infantry Barracks at Duke Street in the East End of the city, which dated from 1795. Maryhill Barracks became the depot of the Highland Light Infantry, City of Glasgow regiment after the Childers Reforms of 1881. During the 1919 general strike in Glasgow, the soldiers at Maryhill Barracks were deemed to be unreliable and were confined to barracks while troops from elsewhere were brought in to impose order. It was in 1919 that Maryhill Barracks was used as a marshalling place for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders before embarking for India. It was also home to the Scots Greys and famously held Adolf Hitler's second-in-command Rudolf Hess during World War II after his supposed Peace flight to the UK in 1941, at a time when it was used as a prisoner of war camp. In 1942, the Free French leader, General Charles de Gaulle, visited French troops there. The Barracks were decommissioned and largely demolished in the early 1960s. All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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