Old Photograph Station Road Windygates Fife Scotland

Old photograph of houses and people on Station Road in Windygates by Milton of Balgonie, Fife, Scotland. Windygates is a small Scottish village and surrounding district in central Fife. It encompasses the villages, hamlets and estates of Wellsgreen Farm, Little Lun Farm, Woodbank Farm, The Maw, a former farming community, Cameron, Isabella, Smithyhill, Cameronbridge, Bridgend, Durie Estate, Duniface Farm, Haughmill, a former weaving community, Drumcaldie, The Meetings, confluence of Rivers Leven and Ore, Bankhead of Balcurvie, Fernhill, Fernbank, both former farms, Balcurvie Village, a former weaving community, Little Balcurvie, Hawthorn Bank, Kennowayburns and Windygates Village itself. Housing demands of the 20th century brought all of these, almost forgotten identities, together into a district now commonly known as Windygates.



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Old Photograph High Street Langholm Scotland

Old photograph of a hotel, shops and buildings on the High Street in Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. In 1972, astronaut Neil Armstrong, a descendant of the clan, was welcomed to the town, and made the first freeman of the burgh. He happily declared the town his home:

“ My pleasure is not only that this is the land of Johnnie Armstrong, rather that my pleasure is in knowing that this is my home town and in the genuine feeling that I have among these hills among these people. ”

Langholm is the traditional seat of Clan Armstrong.



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Old Photograph Main Street Langholm Scotland

Old photograph of a hotel, shops and buildings on Main Street in Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Langholm, also known colloquially as the Muckle Toun, is on the River Esk and the A7 road. The town grew around the textile industry, but is now best known as the birthplace of Hugh MacDiarmid and Thomas Telford, and the ancestral home of Neil Armstrong. A branch of the Carlisle, England, to Hawick railway line to Langholm was completed in 1864, but closed 100 years later. Langholm is the traditional seat of Clan Armstrong.



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Old Photograph High Street Crieff Perthshire Scotland

Old photograph of shops, people and the Drummond Arms Hotel on the High Street in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland. For a number of centuries Highlanders came south to Crieff to sell their black cattle whose meat and hides were avidly sought by the growing urban populations in Lowland Scotland and the north of England. The town acted as a gathering point or tryst for the Michaelmas cattle sale held each year and the surrounding fields and hillsides were black with the tens of thousands of Highland cows, some from as far away as Caithness and the Outer Hebrides. In 1790 the population of Crieff was about 1,200, which gave a ratio of ten cows per person. Blog post of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to travel and visit one day.



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

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Old Photograph High Street Jedburgh Scotland

Old photograph of cars, shops, buildings and people on the High Street in Jedburgh, Scottish Borders, Scotland. Mary Fairfax Somerville was born at the manse in Jedburgh on 26 December 1780. Her childhood home was at Burntisland, Fife. studied art with Alexander Nasmyth in Edinburgh, who taught her about perspective. Inspired, she managed to obtain a copy of Euclid's Elements of Geometry, and began to teach herself from it. In 1804, she married her distant cousin, the Russian consul in London, England, Captain Samuel Greig, son of Admiral Samuel Greig. They had two children, one of whom, Woronzow Greig, would become a barrister and scientist. However, he died in 1807 and she returned home to Scotland. In 1812, she married another cousin, Dr William Somerville. She was passionate about astronomy and believed it to be the most extensive example of the connection of the physical sciences in that it combined the sciences of number and quantity, of rest and motion. Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope, wrote in 1829 that Mary Somerville was " certainly the most extraordinary woman in Europe, a mathematician of the very first rank with all the gentleness of a woman. She was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835. She was elected to honorary membership of the Société de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Genève in 1834 and, in the same year, to the Royal Irish Academy. She was elected to the American Geographical and Statistical Society in 1857 and the Italian Geographical Society in 1870. In 1869 she was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, then also known as the Victoria Medal, and and was made a member of the American Philosophical Society. " She died in Naples on 29 November 1872, and was buried there in the English Cemetery.



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

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