IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Smollet Road, DUMBARTON, G82 2LJ

Off Crosslet Road.

Bargain Store licensed grocer is on the corner of Crosslet Road.

The view is from a little footbridge that crosses the burn just to the north of Silverton Avenue in Dumbarton East. East End Park is directly ahead; the burn turns left to head SSW along the eastern margin of the park (as shown in Image) before flowing under the main road (Image).

Fast food shops at Crosslet Road, with Alclutha Avenue on the right.

On Alclutha Avenue.

On Alclutha Avenue. Gruggies Burn can be seen on the left.

In the 19th and early 20th century Britain's private railway companies competed vigorously but could also co-operate with one another. Hence the Caledonian and North British Railways both owned separate lines between Glasgow and Dumbarton, serving the same intermediate towns, but then jointly owned the line onward to Balloch for Loch Lomond. By the middle of the 20th century these alternative routes were described as duplication and the Caledonian route, generally keeping closer to the riverside and the Clyde shipyards, was closed. At about the same time the former North British route was electrified but west of Bowling, where the two lines came close together, a new connection was put in by British Railways and it was a section of the Caledonian line through Dumbarton East station that was electrified and the North British line that was closed. Since then the latter has become a footpath and cycleway and is seen here crossing playing fields behind Crosslet Road, a short distance east of where the joint Dumbarton and Balloch line had started.

Viewed from the bridge on Alclutha Avenue.

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 the bridge over the disused North British Railway line which is now a foot and cycle path.