IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
McNaught Place, DUMBARTON, G82 4NP

The view is from where Image crosses above the railway line. McNaught Place is ahead; the clubhouse of Renton Bowling Club is on the right. Back Street heads off to the left; the road was then being resurfaced: Image Image is in the left background.

This is a view towards the southern end of the street. Compare Image, a view along the same section of the street, but in the opposite direction. The entrance of Image is visible on the right.

Renton Primary school, War Memorial and the Tobias Smollet Monument. Tobias George Smollet was born at Dalquhurn, Dunbartonshire. He was educated at Dumbarton and at Glasgow University. He served an apprenticeship to a Glasgow surgeon, but except for a period spent as surgeon in the navy, 1739-44, he only practised in a desultory fashion. Smollett died at Leghorn, September 17, 1771. He was an unequal writer, but in parts he attains a higher level than even his contemporary Fielding, and created a gallery of characters seldom surpassed. In his book "Discovering Scottish Writers" Louis Stott describes Smollet as the "first Scottish novelist and he has never been surpassed." A monument to the novelist was erected in 1774 and now stands outside Renton Primary School. The inscription, written in Latin jointly by Dr Samuel Johnson, Professor George Stuart of Edinburgh and Mr Ramsay of Ochtertyre, themselves literary giants, a translation of the inscription on the wall reads: Stay Traveller If elegance of taste and wit, if fertility of genius and an unrivalled talent in delineating the characters of mankind, have ever attracted your admiration, pause awhile on the memory of Tobias Smollett, MD, one more than commonly endowed with these virtues which, in a man or citizen, you would praise or imitate. Who, having secured the applause of posterity by a variety of literary abilities and a peculiar felicity of composition was, by a rapid and cruel distemper, snatched from this world in the fifty-first year of his age.

The tall column on the right is Image The smaller War Memorial is just to its left: see Image for a better view in context. See Image for another contributor's earlier picture of the school; click on the end-note title for other pictures.

The War Memorial is in the right foreground. To its right, but out of shot, is Image; see Image for a view in context. See Image for another contributor's earlier picture of the school; click on the end-note title for other pictures.

The statue is located outside Image, and was unveiled on the 27th of August, 2011. It commemorates volunteers from Renton who joined the International Brigades to defend the Spanish Republican government against Franco's forces.

It is shown after Image, but only partway through the process of adding new parapets. The temporary structure through which utilities were diverted can be seen on the left; compare Image

The building, which was later(*) renamed the John Connolly Centre, is on Main Street. The statue of a bull, visible at the right, was unveiled in August of 2011: Image [(*) See the back page of the "Lennox Herald" of 15 Nov 2013.] When the first-edition OS map was surveyed in 1860, Renton had a Gaelic Free Church. The centre of that church was at about the south-eastern corner of the modern building shown here. For the rear, see Image