Articles

In connection with a planned new book and commemorative event in 2022, The Operation Freshman Project is trying to locate relatives of Scottish servicemen who lost their lives during a daring special forces raid in Norway in November 1942.

The album was an unassuming green cloth-bound book picked up at an antique fair. I should never have bought it since, at first sight, there were no clues to the previous owner’s identity. But the photos were wonderful – a clearly wealthy Edwardian family, shown posing in sunny gardens, elegant domestic interiors and in front […]

“To Miss E McLymont from her affectionate friend Jessie Malcolm March 26 1863” Cartes de visite were introduced into Britain in 1857 and rapidly became a national craze. People collected portraits of royalty, politicians, friends and family, and mounted them in photograph albums. This collection, presented by Jessie Malcolm to her friend Elizabeth McClymont, is […]

The lands of Meikle Earnock were acquired by the Strang family around 1654. In 1731 and perhaps as a reaction to the Duke’s having flattened the old parish church and disturbed the sleepers in the graveyard, James Strang, ‘Laird of Meikle Earnock’, enclosed an area of ground as a burial ground for his family and the feuars of the village.

With a little practice, the family historian can become adept at ‘reading’ old photos and may even be able to identify previously unidentified ancestors in the family album.

At Main Street, Barrhead, Renfrewshire there once stood Old Arthurlie Church, known locally as the White or White-washed Kirk. Adjacent to the church was the Arthurlie Burial Ground. North Arthurlie United Free Church, to give its full title, was erected in 1790 as the Burgher Meeting House. Burgher Meeting Houses were places where congregations which […]

There is a happy land, doon Duke Street JailWhere a’ the prisoners stand tied tae a nail.Ham an’ eggs they never see, dirty watter fur yer tea;There they live in misery, God Save the Queen In 1825, Glasgow City and Lanark County decided to build a new prison in the grounds of the old House […]

All the burial grounds described so far have left some trace behind, whether a burial list, a survey map or a mention in contemporary sources. But Glasgow has its own share of medieval burial grounds which usually come to light when developers move onto a site and discover remains. One ancient burial ground has yet […]

Known nowadays to locals as the ‘Riddrie Hilton’ or Bar-L, Barlinnie Prison was built in 1880 on farmland to the north east of Glasgow, in an attempt to alleviate prison overcrowding in the city.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Catholic population of Glasgow and its surrounding area grew rapidly with the arrival of many Irish people in search of work. Their numbers swelled in the 1850s with those leaving Ireland in the wake of the potato famine. St Mary’s Calton RC Church was opened to serve […]