IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Cockels Loan, RENFREW, PA4 0PF

It took a lot of research to pin point this location but thankfully with the use of NLS maps I was able to pinpoint fairly accurately the location. The site today is in a middle of a housing estate. Renfrew Airport closed in 1966 and the site at Abbotsinch became the airport for Glasgow. The dockside cranes along the River clyde can be just made out in the background.

Looking east from the Arkleston Road bridge towards Junction 26. The matrix sign warns of surface water. This stretch of the motorway was built along the line of the main runway of the former Glasgow (Renfrew) Airport, which closed in 1966 when the nearby Glasgow (Abbottsinch) airport opened.

The path is in Image, so called after a Cockles Hill that appears on the first-edition OS map (surveyed 1857) at about Image, where there is (at the time of writing) a Shell filling station beside Paisley Road. "Cockles Hill: a hill so called having a trig station thereon it is also intersected by the turnpike road from Paisley to Renfrew" [OS Name Books, c.1860]. "Cocklees" appears (between Knock and New Mains) on the 1796 John Ainslie "Map of the County of Renfrew". It is "Cockles" on his 1821 "Map of the Southern Part of Scotland", and on John Thomson's 1832 map of Renfrewshire.

The park is at the south-western extremity of Renfrew. The nearest houses are on Image The path in the left foreground is shown in Image (that picture was taken from just a short distance further back along the path). The same path, viewed in the opposite direction, is shown in Image

The fence on the right is marked on the 1:25000 map, and encloses the grounds of a large fitness centre. The path is in Image, at the south-western extremity of Renfrew. Followed in this direction, it leads from Arkleston Road to Cockels Loan (Image). The picture of Image was taken from just a short distance beyond the point from which the present picture was taken. For a view in the opposite direction along the same path, see Image

Looking east from the Arkleston Road bridge towards Junction 26. The matrix sign warns of surface water. This stretch of the motorway was built along the line of the main runway of the former Glasgow (Renfrew) Airport, which closed in 1966 when the nearby Glasgow (Abbottsinch) airport opened.

The houses are on Gleniffer Road. The view is from beside the path shown in Image / Image / Image The 1939 revision of the OS map shows a building 25 metres ESE of the location of the blocked hole just ahead (which was presumably associated with it), with a couple of smaller buildings (too small to be houses) not far to the north of that building. They are not labelled, but their general layout suggests that they were associated with a water tank or some other kind of waterworks.