The Bonnie Wee Well

Image: © Lairich Rig Taken: 28 Feb 2011

The well, a memorial to the poet Hugh Macdonald, is located beside Image, at Macdonald's Rest, within the bounds of Gleniffer Braes Country Park; for further comments on its location, see the link given earlier in this paragraph. [The following information was largely drawn from the second volume of "Paisley Poets, with brief memoirs of them, and selections from their poetry" (1890), by Robert Brown.] A few years after Hugh Macdonald's death, a smaller structure (the original "Bonnie Wee Well", named after the title of one of his poems) was erected here, to the poet's memory, by the Glasgow Ramblers' Club. This first memorial was damaged on several occasions, and was finally removed to Glasgow Green. The Paisley Old Weaver's Society then raised funds for a new memorial. Of the various designs that were submitted, that of Angus Ferguson, a glazier, was selected. That new memorial, shown in my photograph, was erected in the same place as the earlier one, and is the work of the sculptor John Gordon, with the exception of the bronze portrait medallion at the top, which is by John Mossman, and which is shown in Image The inauguration of the well, in 1883, was attended by a crowd of six or seven thousand people. This memorial, which is listed, is fairly large; it measures roughly nine feet by four. However, a verse from the above-mentioned poem "The Bonnie Wee Well" is inscribed on the portrait medallion; it was therefore only natural that this would become the well-established name for the memorial. For example, that name is used on the maps that appear on information panels throughout Gleniffer Braes Country Park (such as at the Image). For another detail from the well, see Image, which shows the basin at the bottom.

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