Penny Tray wrote:A brilliant 'read' Tom.

Hear, hear. Wonderful stuff Tom. Hope you will come on the site with more memories.
JD.

Brilliant info. Late mothersancestorswereminersand livedauchenharvierowsandseabank. Street.

A brilliant 'read' Tom.

We moved to 3, Seabank Street in 1943 having been living in one room in Glasgow Vennel, Irvine previously occupied at some time by Robert Burns. It was a rodent infested slum and is now a museum.
We had two rooms upstairs which only had gas for cooking & lighting with those fragile gas mantels. I can remember when electricity was put in before we left in 1947 - magic. One of my earliest memories is of being taken away by ambulance suffering with diphtheria. At the bottom of Seabank Street was a bridge over the railway where we used to stand in the smoke from the trains. The beach and the 'sauny knowes' were off limits during the war. After the war a mine was washed up onto the beach and remained there for years. My Auntie lived in Robertson Crescent where she had been raised with her siblings just along Arthur Street and my grannie lived at the bottom of Guthrie 'Brae'. The icecream factory was McAllisters and they had huge blocks of ice delivered. It was dropped off lorries onto a soft sack but pieces broke off and were grabbed by children. A great treat from there was a 'double nugget' slider. The garage on the Stevenson Road charged our accumulator for the wireless.
Behind the Seabank Steet drying green was an enclosure where the greengrocer kept his horse.
All day long horse-drawn rubbish carts with rubber tyres wended their weary way to the 'cowp' beyond Saltcoats Victoria football ground. The smell was terrible in the summer. A caravan park has been built on top of it.
There was a shop in a little hut on the footpath from the bungalows into Saltcoats where my grandpa bought his pipe tobacco. It was a hard block of plug he shaved pieces off with his penknife.
Auchinharvie House was still there and my grannie had been in service there for a few years.
We used to get fresh rolls every morning from a shop at the end of Canal Street passing a house with a lion on its gatepost. Is it still there I wonder?
All of the houses and bungalows suffered from mining subsidence which did for them. Those remaining I notice are braced with steel.
All my relatives worked at Ardeer in various capacities but with the start up of ICI Wilton we moved to England in 1947. Such were the fond memories of her childhood in Robertson Crescent in the 1920's my mother requested her ashes be scattered on the 'sauny knowes'.

I was brought up in Seabank Street.
Can still remember the smell from the ice cream factory even now.

Hi Martin,
These houses where pulled down in 1976-77 they where pulled down for the slaughter house to open a can factory for caned food but it did not happen so they made a golf course sham these where great wee hooses i stayed right next to the shore great in the summer.


Bestwishes Jimmy

Many thanks. This is great. Do you know why these streets were cleared and when?

Hi Martin,
Here are three photos to let you see where Seabank Street used to be you will see the Funeral parlour that was the Ice Cream Factory and the spare ground you see at the back where i am standing is where you dad stayed and you will see where Arthur Street once wasfrom where iam standing in the Second photo was as close to Seabank Street now it is a Golf Course hope this help you .

Where the Bungalows once was and theirs my mum looking back on old times in the Bungalows a place she loved very much

Where Seabank Street once was

Arthur Street is the road where the brickwall is now and Seabank street is i would say where i am standing it was a turning to the righthand side off where i am .

manythanks for this. I feel like a dectective in my own life! Only just found out about these things. I remember the cheese hill and walking the Old Caley line to see where it went. M

Hi Martiboy

This map of the Auchenharvie pits was drawn by the colliery manager after an accident in 1895. The low road from Saltcoats to Stevenson and the GSW Railway are still in the same place and Auchenharvie Academy sits roughly where Seabank is shown.
The Cheese Wedge or Cheese Hill was at Pit Number 4 and I think was part of the winding mechanism for the lift. Also (much later) about the same place was the dog track - which I think was called Grand View - my brother worked there, and made a lot of money from side bets, in the early sixties. The pits and the dog track are long gone and the whole place is now covered by Auchenharvie Golf Course and a Caravan Park.

There is an excellent booklet on the Auchenharvie Colliery by Stenlake Publishing:

Hughson, Irene The Auchenharvie Colliery, An Early History, Stenlake, 1996, pp36. Pb. NEW. A carefully researched history. £3.95 ISBN 1 872074 58 8

I think you can get this from them by mail order.

Scott McCallum - Glasgow

Seabank street was demolished in the mid 70s, The only part still standing is the old Ice Cream Factory, Which is now used for other Business.


Neil

jUST FOUND OUT MY GREAT GRANDFATHER ON MY MOTHER'S SIDE DID NOT AS i THOUGHT COME FROM dALRY BUIT sEABANK sTREET, sALTCOATS. iS THIS STILL STANDING. i BELIEVE HE WORKED IN TRHE AUCHENHARVIE PIT, BEFORE IT FLOODED. MY DAD USED TIOO CALL IT THE cHEESE HLL, IF ITS THE SAME PLACE. ANY HELPERS?