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Castlegreen Street, DUMBARTON, G82 1EA

On Castlegreen St.

The A814 diverges from the A82 close to the Dumbuck Quarry near Milton. It heads west through Dumbuck, and the eastern suburbs of Dumbarton as Glasgow Road.

On the A814 on the outskirts of Dumbarton.

For context, see Image, where this inscribed tablet can be seen on the front of the nearest building on the left. The date 1923 applies only to the houses on that side (the west) of the avenue. Those on the other side were built earlier, in 1914. Dumbarton Building Society had its origins at a special meeting of the Dumbarton Equitable Co-operative Society on the 30th of January 1873. There, Mr John Barr indicated that a number of workers at Messrs Swan's yard wished to form a building society. An interim committee was formed. At their first general meeting, on 26th February, the official committee was appointed. The organisation was at that time called the Dumbarton Land and Buildings Investment Company. The change of name came in February 1878, when the Society came under the Building Societies' Act. On the occasion of their Jubilee Year, a commemorative stone of polished granite, the one shown in the present picture, was built into the corner house on the west side of Silverton Avenue, nearest Glasgow Road. While it is a date stone, after a fashion, it is essentially a commemorative stone for the Society's Jubilee Year. On Saturday 1st December 1923, a ceremony was held at the building, when the stone was unveiled by Mr William A Hutchison, the president. Luncheon was then served in the Co-operative Hall, 46 High Street, Dumbarton, to which members of the Society of thirty years' membership, past members of the Committee, and officials, were invited. The above details are from the "Jubilee Souvenir of Dumbarton Building Society Ltd 1873—1923: Fifty Years' History" (James Lyon, 1923). Another building in Dumbarton has a stone with an inscription mentioning the Society: the stone is shown in Image, and it is built into a tenement block that was originally called Grange Place: Image Below that inscription there used to be the additional text "Erected 1906", but it has fallen off or, more likely, been removed, at some point in the intervening century and more. In addition, the name Grange Place may have appeared above the surviving inscription.

The nearest house on the left has an inscription in a roundel beside one of its upper windows; that roundel (shown in close-up in Image) can be seen in the picture, and its inscription reads as follows: "DUMBARTON BUILDING SOCIETY Lᵀᴰ ESTABLISHED 1873 ─────────────── ERECTED 1923 IN COMMEMORATION OF JUBILEE YEAR" Dumbarton Building Society had acquired 3¼ acres here from Dr Douglas White (for whom, see Image / Image / Image) in order to build the houses shown on the right, that is, on the eastern side of the street; they are of red sandstone construction. The memorial stone of this scheme was laid on Sat 31st Jan 1914 by Dr White. To protect the land from flooding, a concrete wall was built on the south side of nearby Gruggies Burn (see Image, taken at the far end of this Avenue); the wall extended from the bed of the burn to one foot above road level. The cost for building the protective wall was borne by the North British Railway Company, Dr White, and the building society. In fact, when the houses on the right were built, there was large grassy expanse in front of them (as well as the road to Silvertonhill Farm; as mentioned below, that road corresponds to the line of present-day Silverton Avenue). The houses on the left employ red sandstone on their front only, and, as indicated by the text in the roundel, quoted above, their construction began in 1923; those houses were completed and occupied by the early part of 1925. Compare the above inscription with Image, which can be seen 265 metres to the west, at the corner of Bruce Street and Glasgow Road. That building was called Grange Place, and it was, as the presence of that inscription implies, the work of the same building society; the building itself is shown in Image A part is missing below the inscription: it originally said "Erected 1906". It therefore pre-dates both sides of Silverton Avenue. The name Grange Place, which is no longer employed for that building, perhaps appeared above the inscription. Further information about these building projects (and the Society's others) can be found in the "Jubilee Souvenir of Dumbarton Building Society Ltd 1873—1923: Fifty Years' History" (James Lyon, 1923). - - • - - Silverton is the name of a part of Dumbarton East that grew up around the farmhouse of Silvertonhill. The farm is recorded as "Silvertownhill" on Roy's Military Survey of Scotland (1740s—50s), as "Silartonhill" on a 1777 map by Charles Ross, and as "Silverton Hill Farm" in 1832. The farm buildings survive in a modified form at Image, a little beyond the far end of this avenue. The L-shaped building there retains some elements of the layout shown on the second-edition map (1896/97); at that time, the buildings formed three sides of a square (N/W/S), but the northern part has since been replaced by a more modern detached structure (Hartfield Cottage), leaving the western and southern parts that form the L-shape. The building stands beside a short lane, Silvertonhill Lane. Though now in the midst of housing, it still has, I think, something of the look of a farmhouse about it. - - • - - The line of Silverton Avenue is interesting in the following respect: if you were to leave Glasgow Road to follow Silverton Avenue, then, at the end of that street, cross the little footbridge over Gruggies Burn (see Image, taken from that bridge), and, finally, continue in almost the same direction along the short Silvertonhill Lane, you would be following the course of a road that is marked on the first-edition map (surveyed in 1860). That road led from the main road (present-day Glasgow Road) to Silvertonhill Farm. Even by 1860, when the first-edition OS map was surveyed, the line of that road had been interrupted by a railway line, running NW—SE, just north of Gruggies Burn. That railway line is long gone, but its former course survives as a present-day footpath, which is also a cycle path.

Looking towards Glasgow from Gruggies Bridge.

The A814, looking east at Dumbuck Gardens.

The picture was taken from the main road (Glasgow Road). Buchanan Street is parallel to the burn, on the right (Image). Only the nearest few metres of the burn's course are in the OS grid square from which the picture was taken. For a view from further ahead, where the burn flows under the railway bridge, see Image The burn is usually deeper; there had been little rain in the weeks before this picture was taken.