Milngavie
Encyclopedia
Milngavie , is a town in East Dunbartonshire
East Dunbartonshire
This article is about the East Dunbartonshire council area of Scotland. See also East Dunbartonshire .East Dunbartonshire is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders onto the north-west of the City of Glasgow. It contains many of the suburbs of Glasgow as well as containing many of...

, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. It is on the Allander Water
Allander Water
The Allander Water is a river in East Dunbartonshire and West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, and one of the three main tributaries of the River Kelvin, the others being the Glazert Water and the Luggie Water.The Allander Water flows through Milngavie...

, at the northwestern edge of Greater Glasgow
Greater Glasgow
Greater Glasgow is an urban settlement in Scotland consisting of all localities which are physically attached to the city of Glasgow, forming with it a single contiguous urban area...

, and about 6 miles (9.7 km) from Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

 city centre
Glasgow city centre
Glasgow city centre is the central business district of Glasgow, Scotland. Is bounded by the High Street to the east, the River Clyde to the south and the M8 motorway to the west and north which was built through the Townhead, Charing Cross, Cowcaddens and Anderston areas in the 1960s...

. It neighbours Bearsden
Bearsden
Bearsden ) is a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It lies on the northwestern fringe of Greater Glasgow, approximately from the City Centre, and is effectively a suburb, with housing development coinciding with the introduction of a railway line in 1863, and from where the town gets its name...

.

Milngavie is a commuter town
Commuter town
A commuter town is an urban community that is primarily residential, from which most of the workforce commutes out to earn their livelihood. Many commuter towns act as suburbs of a nearby metropolis that workers travel to daily, and many suburbs are commuter towns...

, with much of its working population travelling to Glasgow to work or study. The town is served by Milngavie railway station
Milngavie railway station
Milngavie railway station serves the town of Milngavie, East Dunbartonshire, near Glasgow in Scotland. The station is 14 km north west of Glasgow Central on the Argyle Line and north west of Glasgow Queen Street on the North Clyde Line....

 on the North Clyde Line
North Clyde Line
The North Clyde Line is a suburban railway in West Central Scotland. The route is operated by First ScotRail, on behalf of Transport Scotland...

 of the SPT rail network, which links it to Central Glasgow. The town is also a very popular retirement location, with an unusually high proportion of elderly. In the 2001 census
United Kingdom Census 2001
A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK Census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194....

 the town had a population of 12,795 in 5,256 households.

The Milngavie and Bearsden Herald, owned by Johnston Press
Johnston Press
Johnston Press plc is a newspaper publishing company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. Its flagship titles are The Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post; it also operates many other newspapers around the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and the Isle of Man. It is the second-largest publisher...

, is a weekly newspaper that covers local events from the schools, town halls, community and government in the area. The paper was established in 1901 and is printed every Wednesday, to be sold on Thursdays.

Currently the town is perhaps best known as the start of the West Highland Way
West Highland Way
The West Highland Way is a linear long distance footpath in Scotland, with the official status of Long Distance Route. It is 154.5km long, running from Milngavie north of Glasgow to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands, with an element of hill walking in the route...

 long distance footpath which runs northwards for 95 miles to the town of Fort William
Fort William, Scotland
Fort William is the second largest settlement in the highlands of Scotland and the largest town: only the city of Inverness is larger.Fort William is a major tourist centre with Glen Coe just to the south, Aonach Mòr to the north and Glenfinnan to the west, on the Road to the Isles...

. A granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 obelisk
Obelisk
An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...

 in the town centre marks the official starting point of the footpath.

History

The apparent mismatch between the town's written and pronounced names stems from the way its Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic language
Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish....

 name was adapted into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. The Gaelic name for the town is conjectured to have been Muileann Dhaibhidh (ˌmulan̪ˠ ˈɣaivi; "David's mill"), with Daibhidh shortened to Dàidh in common speech, yielding Muileann Dhàidh (ˌmulan̪ˠ ˈɣai). The former may thus account for the spelling "-gavie", the latter for the pronunciation "-guy". The stress placement is Gaelic, too, but the first part of the name may have been influenced by its Scots/English counterpart in both pronunciation and spelling, not just reduced; cf. Kirkcudbright
Kirkcudbright
Kirkcudbright, is a town in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.The town lies south of Castle Douglas and Dalbeattie, in the part of Dumfries and Galloway known as the Stewartry, at the mouth of the River Dee, some six miles from the sea...

.

There are many Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...

 names for the town. In fact, even within single texts such as the Records of the Parliament of Scotland, different variants are used alongside each other (Mylnedavie, Mylnegaivie, Milnegaivie and Milngaivie). Joan Blaeu
Joan Blaeu
Joan Blaeu was a Dutch cartographer.He was born in Alkmaar, the son of cartographer Willem Blaeu.In 1620 he became a doctor of law but he joined the work of his father. In 1635 they published the Atlas Novus in two volumes...

's Atlas of Scotland shows some Scots spellings for well-known places which indicate some of their origins: Milngavie is shown as Milgay ("ay" being a Scots spelling of [ae̯], cf. aye and the original pronunciation of MacKay), possibly meaning "Mill of Guy". An alternative suggestion is that the original translation meant "Gavin's Mill", and indeed Gavin's Mill remains in the town centre to this day. The most recently published name is Mulguy, although the author (Billy Kay
Billy Kay
Billy Kay is a writer, broadcaster and language activist. Born in Galston, East Ayrshire, Scotland in 1951, he studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh...

) admits that while academically researched, some entries in his work on place names may be controversial.

Although known today as a dormitory suburb of Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, the town grew from a country village within the parish of New Kilpatrick
New Kilpatrick
New Kilpatrick, is an ecclesiastical Parish and former Civil Parish in Dunbartonshire. It was formed in 1649 from the eastern half of the parish of Kilpatrick , the western half forming Old Kilpatrick...

 to a minor industrial centre in the nineteenth century with paper mills and bleach works on the Allander River to the north east of the town centre. Some remnants of this industry remain today on the Clober Industrial Estate.

The land surrounding the village comprised several estates with tenant farms, amongst them Barloch, Clober, Craigton, Craigdhu, Dougalston, Douglas Mains
Douglas of Mains
The Douglases of Mains are a branch of the Clan Douglas, related to the Lords of Douglas through Archibald I, Lord of Douglas. The first Laird obtained land through marriage into the Galbraith family, which had been granted land in New Kilpatrick by Maldowen, Earl of Lennox...

 and South Mains
Douglas of Mains
The Douglases of Mains are a branch of the Clan Douglas, related to the Lords of Douglas through Archibald I, Lord of Douglas. The first Laird obtained land through marriage into the Galbraith family, which had been granted land in New Kilpatrick by Maldowen, Earl of Lennox...

.

Stone built villas and semi detached houses were constructed for wealthy citizens to the east of the town centre and around Tannoch Loch when commuting to Glasgow was made possible by the opening of the railway which reached the town in 1863.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 a local authority housing scheme was built to the west of the town centre, housing many people relocated from Clydebank
Clydebank
Clydebank is a town in West Dunbartonshire, in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. Situated on the north bank of the River Clyde, Clydebank borders Dumbarton, the town with which it was combined to form West Dunbartonshire, as well as the town of Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire, and the Yoker and...

 which had been badly bombed. The town grew with the addition of private speculative housing developments of bungalows and semi-detached homes at South Mains to the south of the town centre and around Clober, to the west, in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fairways estate was built in the 1980s.

In the early 1980s, the town centre was redeveloped to improve traffic flow and pedestrian safety. The central commercial streets were pedestrianised and many buildings replaced. A superstore was opened on the fringes of the town centre in the 1990s.

Residents launched a "tongue in cheek" campaign to bring the Olympic games to Milngavie in 2020.

Governance

Milngavie, originally in Stirlingshire, was in an area that became an exclave of Dunbartonshire
Dunbartonshire
Dunbartonshire or the County of Dumbarton is a lieutenancy area and registration county in the west central Lowlands of Scotland lying to the north of the River Clyde. Until 1975 it was a county used as a primary unit of local government with its county town and administrative centre at the town...

 on the orders of King David II
David II of Scotland
David II was King of Scots from 7 June 1329 until his death.-Early life:...

 (1324 - 1371). In 1875, whilst remaining part of Dunbartonshire, it became a police burgh
Police burgh
A police burgh was a Scottish burgh which had adopted a “police system” for governing the town. They existed from 1833 to 1975.-The 1833 act:The first police burghs were created under the Burgh Police Act, 1833...

 under the jurisdiction of the Stirlingshire
Stirlingshire
Stirlingshire or the County of Stirling is a registration county of Scotland, based around Stirling, the former county town. It borders Perthshire to the north, Clackmannanshire and West Lothian to the east, Lanarkshire to the south, and Dunbartonshire to the south-west.Until 1975 it was a county...

 constabulary and retained burgh status for 100 years until 1975 when it was absorbed into the newly created Strathclyde Region.

Milngavie is located to the north of the neighbouring town of Bearsden
Bearsden
Bearsden ) is a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It lies on the northwestern fringe of Greater Glasgow, approximately from the City Centre, and is effectively a suburb, with housing development coinciding with the introduction of a railway line in 1863, and from where the town gets its name...

. Although the two are in close proximity, the social histories of these two towns differ significantly. Bearsden grew almost exclusively as a dormitory town of Glasgow for the wealthy and professional classes. In that sense both towns now fulfil a similar role. The two became a single local authority district in 1975, before Scottish Local Government
Local government of Scotland
Local government in Scotland is organised through 32 unitary authorities designated as Councils which consist of councillors elected every four years by registered voters in each of the council areas....

 reorganisation in the 1990s re-integrated them with Kirkintilloch
Kirkintilloch
Kirkintilloch is a town and former burgh in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It lies on the Forth and Clyde Canal, about eight miles northeast of central Glasgow...

 and Bishopbriggs
Bishopbriggs
Bishopbriggs is a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. The area was once part of the historic parish of Cadder - originally lands granted by King William the Lion to the Bishop of Glasgow, Jocelin, in 1180. It was later part of the county of Lanarkshire and subsequently an independent burgh from...

 to form the East Dunbartonshire
East Dunbartonshire
This article is about the East Dunbartonshire council area of Scotland. See also East Dunbartonshire .East Dunbartonshire is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders onto the north-west of the City of Glasgow. It contains many of the suburbs of Glasgow as well as containing many of...

 administrative area, although transport and social networks link the town much more closely with Glasgow itself.

Certain properties in the locale can command some of the highest house prices in the greater Glasgow urban area. This has led to its reputation as an exclusive residential area and an aspirational destination for home buyers.

Governmental and tax raising boundaries separate Milngavie and Bearsden, along with other wealthy dormitory towns like Newton Mearns
Newton Mearns
Newton Mearns is a suburban town in East Renfrewshire, Scotland. It lies southwest of Glasgow City Centre on the main road to Ayrshire, above sea level. It has a population of approximately 22,637.The town is part of the Greater Glasgow conurbation...

 and Giffnock
Giffnock
Giffnock is a wealthy, dormitory suburb of Glasgow in the East Renfrewshire Council area, within the historic county of Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland...

, from the City of Glasgow unitary authority area.

Landmarks

Little remains of the pre-nineteenth century village other than the Corbie Ha' meeting hall, Cross Keys Public House
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

 and the Gavin's Mill water mill on the Allander River along with Barloch House and Barloch Farm.

There are a few good examples of nineteenth century stone villas along the Station Road as well as the well preserved nineteenth century railway station. Many interesting Victorian houses around the Tannoch Conservation Area show Scottish cottage, Scottish Baronial, Classical architecture
Classical architecture
Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...

 and Gothic
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

 influences. The town centre and Strathblane Road have remaining Victorian shop/tenement
Tenement
A tenement is, in most English-speaking areas, a substandard multi-family dwelling, usually old, occupied by the poor.-History:Originally the term tenement referred to tenancy and therefore to any rented accommodation...

 buildings and a few Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest"...

 influenced commercial buildings. Craigmillar Avenue and the area around Baldernock Road have some large Arts and Crafts and Glasgow Style influenced houses.

The bulk of the housing stock is twentieth century, showing Scottish vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

 influences such as harling
Harling
Harling can refer to:* Harl, a building technique* East Harling, a village in Norfolk, England* Harling, Norfolk, the parish of which East Harling is the principal settlement* Harling Road railway station, station servicing East Harling...

 or rough-casting, and, occasionally, more traditionally English elements like black and white timber paneled dormer
Dormer
A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface. Dormers are used, either in original construction or as later additions, to create usable space in the roof of a building by adding headroom and usually also by enabling addition of windows.Often...

 windows and gables.

The public sheltered housing
Sheltered housing
Sheltered housing is a British English term covering a wide range of rented housing for older and/or disabled or other vulnerable people. Most commonly it refers to grouped housing such as a block or "scheme" of flats or bungalows with a scheme manager or "officer"; traditionally the manager has...

 projects of the 1970s and 1980s are interesting for their attempts to use traditional local materials like grey rough-cast and slate plus interesting rounded walls and pitched roof
Pitched roof
A pitched roof is a roof for which one or more roof surfaces is pitched more than 10 degrees, and alternately a roof with two slopes that meet at a central ridge. Some definitions are even more general, including any roof with a sloping surface or surfaces....

s.

The most recent development is characterised by some interesting one-off conversions and extensions to Victorian properties; new housing by developers that often follows designs based on the brick architecture of the South of England; and contemporary steel framed commercial and leisure buildings.

The war memorial is by George Henry Paulin
George Henry Paulin
George Henry Paulin, often called Harry Paulin, or 'GHP' was a Scottish sculptor and artist of great note in the early 20th century....

.

High schools

  • Douglas Academy
    Douglas Academy
    Douglas Academy is a secondary school in Milngavie in the outskirts of Glasgow. In 2001, Douglas Academy was Scotland's top performing state school with 31% of students gaining five or more highers....

     : A state-funded secondary school, which includes a Music School for gifted children who gain entry through audition and board in Glasgow's West End

Primary schools

  • Clober Primary: A state-funded primary school.
  • Craigdhu Primary: A state-funded primary school.
  • St Joseph's Primary School: A state-funded Roman Catholic primary school.
  • Milngavie Primary: A state-funded primary school.
  • Baldernock primary: A state-funded primary school.
  • Atholl Preparatory School (The Glasgow Academy): A fee paying primary school that is part of The Glasgow Academy
    The Glasgow Academy
    Founded in 1845, the Glasgow Academy is the oldest fully independent school in Glasgow, Scotland. It is located in the Kelvinbridge area and has approximately 1300 pupils, split between three preparatory school sites and a senior school....

    , whose senior school and other departments are located at Colebrooke Street in the West End of Glasgow.

Places of worship

  • Allander Evangelical Church
  • Cairns Church of Scotland
  • Milngavie United Free Church of Scotland
  • St. Andrew's Episcopal Church
  • St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church
  • St. Luke's Church of Scotland
  • St. Paul's Church of Scotland


Originally Milngavie was in the Parish of New Kilpatrick
New Kilpatrick
New Kilpatrick, is an ecclesiastical Parish and former Civil Parish in Dunbartonshire. It was formed in 1649 from the eastern half of the parish of Kilpatrick , the western half forming Old Kilpatrick...

, the church being that of New Kilpatrick in Bearsden
Bearsden
Bearsden ) is a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. It lies on the northwestern fringe of Greater Glasgow, approximately from the City Centre, and is effectively a suburb, with housing development coinciding with the introduction of a railway line in 1863, and from where the town gets its name...

, with no formal place of worship in the town until the eighteenth century.
Milngavie has three stone built churches dating from the early twentieth century within 500 m of each other. Up until the 1970s these three were all Church of Scotland congregations: St.Paul's, Cairns, and St.Luke's. This came about due to the history of the Kirk
Kirk
Kirk can mean "church" in general or the Church of Scotland in particular. Many place names and personal names are also derived from it.-Basic meaning and etymology:...

 (Church of Scotland
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....

) which saw a multitude of factions and congregations organise, each with varying forms of worship and constitutional arrangements, which subsequently re-integrated. St.Paul's was always in the fold of the Church of Scotland and is the parish church
Parish church
A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....

 of Milngavie. It was originally housed in a simple grey stone church building above the Station Road beside the Milngavie Primary School before moving to a handsome red sandstone building on the Strathblane
Strathblane
Strathblane is a village and parish in the registration county of Stirlingshire, situated in the southwestern part of the Stirling council area, in central Scotland. It lies at the foothills of the Campsie Fells and the Kilpatrick Hills on the Blane Water, north of Glasgow, east-southeast of...

 Road in 1906. The original building is now apartments. Since 1799 Cairns Church had been located in a building on Mugdock Road close to the 'preaching braes' on Barloch Moor where the congregation's first services had taken place. It moved to its present building on Buchanan Street in 1903 which displays elements of the Glasgow Style of architecture and design. St.Luke's had been built as the Milngavie United Free Church. In the 1970s it was decided that the concentration of churches in one area should be reviewed and a new St. Lukes was built on the western side of the town to serve the residents of Clober. The Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 bought the old St.Luke's Church and moved their congregation to the new premises from a chapel on Buchanan Street at Moor Road which was associated with the neighbouring Roman Catholic Convent of Ladywood which closed in the 1970s.

Sporting institutions

Milngavie is the base of West of Scotland F.C., a rugby club, which dates from 1865 and is one of the founder members of the SRU
Scottish Rugby Union
The Scottish Rugby Union is the governing body of rugby union in Scotland. It is the second oldest Rugby Union, having been founded in 1873, as the Scottish Football Union.-History:...

. They were one of the first open rugby clubs in Scotland, i.e. not affiliated to any school.

Rangers F.C.
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...

 has its professional training facility at Auchenhowie Road in the east of the town.

Due to the town's suburban and residential profile, it is home to many sporting clubs and facilities.
  • Allander Leisure Centre
  • Milngavie Bowling Club
  • Claremont Bowling Club
  • Clober Golf Club
  • Milngavie Golf Club
  • Milngavie Wanderers AFC
  • Esporta (Dougalston) Golf and Fitness Club
  • Hilton Park Golf Club
  • Glasgow Vipers Inline Hockey Club
  • LA Fitness
  • Milngavie Lawn Tennis Club
  • Western Wildcats Hockey Club
  • Milngavie Boys Club
  • Milngavie and Bearsden Amateur Swimming Club
  • Milngavie Football Club

See also

  • Milngavie water treatment works
    Milngavie water treatment works
    Milngavie water treatment works is the primary source of the water for the city of Glasgow in western Scotland. Part of the Victorian Loch Katrine water project, construction was started in 1855 and the works was opened by Queen Victoria in 1859, replacing the previous water supply sourced from...

  • Bennie Railplane
    Bennie Railplane
    The Bennie Railplane was a form of rail transport invented by George Bennie , which moved along an overhead rail by way of propellers. Despite superficial appearances, it was not a monorail, as it used both an overhead running rail and a guide rail below...

  • List of places in East Dunbartonshire
  • List of places in Scotland
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