A Stroll round 1960s Saltcoats

[down south]

The other side of Vernon Street has changed hugely as well from the way it used to look in the sixties. Instead of the car-park that's there now, marked off by a low wall, younger readers should imagine the wall at full height, with a goods yard behind it. No need to get nostalgic about all that either; it meant that Vernon Street back then was a grimy, gloomy canyon, not much enlivened by the large poster hoardings that covered most of the wall space on that side.

Here's the only picture I know that shows the street as it looked then , courtesy of our old friends the bus enthusiasts:

http://www.mikesbuspages.com/A!SER1.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You get a good view there of the station bridge, looking really quite elegant; and the train shed , poking up above the wall. Though not of the trees and bushes that bravely survived the soot and whose tops could be seen waving above the wall further along.

Or of the other vanished landmark that loomed over the scene from the other side of the railway; the two big gasholders, mostly grey with some dark bands, that belonged to the old gasworks.That had ceased production by my day, though the gasholders were still in use.

They loomed even larger close to ; and I well remember walking with my mother quite often when I was small by a little path that ran from somewhere by the station bridge, and climbed up right past them to come out on the bridge known as the gasworks brae. ( Goodness knows why; we must have been " exploring " ). It had a pretty white picket fence; quite an incongruous contrast with the ironclad monsters beside it.Anyone else remember that route ?

Susan

[Milda]

Yes I remember it well,Sam,Maggie T and I were all brought up near there ,as I am sure others on this site were.

[wellparkno9]

Hi, I think the route you are talking about took you out at the wee cabin on the Gasworks Brae, Sam.

[Milda]

Yes that's right Sam,it seems so long ago,since that wee cabin was there.Well I suppose it is.

[howiesboy]

Well, yes, it was a long time ago. My memories of that wee area are mixed. First, I see the cabin as a wooden hut, maybe green and not very big, not more than 2 or 3 inside maximum. Immediately next to it a white gate leading down to a lane parallel to the track - can't remember whether straight onto the platform or out next to the Victoria pub. I think the latter.

Also, I remember the old St Mary's school, where I was an angelic pupil. Normal access was through the gate at the foot of Springvale St. into the playground but, when there was an event in the League Hall upstairs, the door out onto Union St would be opened, just next to the bottom of Wellpark St.

I have a vivid memory of being in the ground floor class on the Union St/Wellpark St corner around 1963 where the Heidy, the famous JJ McCann, was teaching us classic Scottish songs. He'd ping his tuning fork off a desk to set us off roughly in unison key-wise and then bang the desk to stop us in mid-refrain and the idea was to say what they next word in the lyrics was if you were singled out to answer. We were doing some dirge called, I think, "Barbara Allen" which had a line something like "for the love of Barbara Allen" when I was called to supply the next syllable. I'd presumably added a beat and blurted out "Bra" when JJ had been hoping for a safer "Barb" and I'm not sure which of us was the more embarrassed. I was 10 and he was a bit older.

A big annual event at the school was the Jumble Sale where many of the parents gave up there time on a Saturday to run the various stalls in the League Hall and all sorts of furniture was sold in the playground. Local companies would donate their vans and trucks to enable guys like Tommy Anderson (ShellMex driver, Sannox Drive) to collect the furniture and then deliver it to successful bidders. I remember Tommy letting me drive one of the trucks for a couple of miles on a quiet road on the way back from delivering leftover clothing to Garngad in Glasgow. I was 15. He was a great guy who, sadly, died far too young.

Finally, I have a very vague memory of havin been in the house which stood on the opposite corner from the school, ie. more or less opposite the cabin. I can't remember why or anything about who lived there but I know that it really spooked me and I was glad to get out! No offence to whovever it was who lived there but there was something sinister about the place.

Just remembered a final, final memory of that area. I can see graffiti directly across from the playground relating to Colin Stein, the prolific Rangers striker of the late 60s / 70s. It read "Colin Stein is a ...", well, you get the idea. It seemed to remain there for a long time before being overpainted. Sorry to lower the tone. Again.

[down south]

Thanks for all those great memories , Howiesboy.

I can't pretend to have been at all familiar with the Union St area myself ( that's why I was surprised we ever went on that path ), but I do remember the look of the school on the corner quite well, with its playground round in Springvale St, and the big door in Union St...painted the usual school-door shade of green. Also the big, dingy-blue gates to the gasworks area further along on the other side, pretty permanently closed by then.

It all looks very different today, with even the school replaced by this block of flats :

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... 73.92,,0,0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

and almost all the other familiar landmaks gone from round there too.

Susan

[Penny Tray]

Sam,

I'm lagging a little behind on the stroll but you're absolutely correct about Bob Waugh moving on to a role with the Traffic Commissioner Scotland agency when he retired from the police. I had long since forgotten this.

[Penny Tray]

Howiesboy.

In the mid-50s, perhaps into the early 60s, Ardrossan Winton Rovers had, I think, two brothers called Anderson who played for them. One of them was a Shell driver. I remember seeing him pass Eglinton School in his tanker during the week and then playing at the Winton Park on a Saturday. The name Jackie Anderson was ringing in my mind more than Tommy but I see that between 1953 and 1955 St. Mirren had an inside forward called Tommy Anderson who was bought from the Rovers. He played 26 matches and scored 3 goals for the Paisley club before transferring back to the junior club.

Is there any connection that you know of with the Tommy Anderson you mention?

[Penny Tray]

The following obituary, which isn't mentioned in the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald this week, appears today in the Glasgow Herald:

Mae Fleming (26/2/15 - 9/4/11) - peacefully at Arran View Nursing Home, Saltcoats, beloved mother of Eirene, grandmother and great-grandmother.....at rest now with her dear husband Willie.....

I'm trusting this is the lovely lady who ran a florist shop in the town for many years and who has previously been mentioned on this stroll?

[howiesboy]

Sorry PT, don't know anything about Tommy Anderson and the Winton.

[mike mccann]

I remember seeing a Winton left wing partnership of Anderson and Cochrane , both good players .
As I recall , Anderson went to St Mirren and Cochrane to Hearts .
The Tommy Anderson who drove the Shell tankers played for Star Of The Sea in the same team as Bobby's brothers Eric and Andy Lennox .

[down south]

Think it was suggested earlier, PT, that Mae of the flower shop was in fact a McNicol(l ) ? And, PS. Sam has since confirmed that , though he doesn't know if she was related to any of the other shopkeeping McNicol families.

It would certainly be presumptuous of me who didn't really know the Union St/ Raise St area, to try to take you on a tour round when so many of you grew up there and/or knew it well. So instead I'll direct readers to an earlier topic where there are many detailed memories of the area as it was in the 1950s and before, starting from this post on:

http://www.threetowners.net/forum/viewt ... 823#p38823

Must have been still a lively and thriving community back then. But by the sixties, with a lot of people having moved out, many of the everyday shops that served them had gone too. These adverts would probably be more typical of the sort of business you'd find round there by then:

The Auto shop, we've heard elsewhere, was another branch of a firm that had one in Glasgow St in the sixties. But the antique shop had already replaced this one by the start of the seventies. Must have been plenty of neglected treasures around for them to uncover in those days before the Antiques Roadshow was ever heard of.

The betting shop meanwhile wasn't the only one around belonging to Nellany's; as we've heard from Sam in this topic, they also owned this one run by his uncle, at the bottom of Raise St.

http://www.threetowners.net/forum/viewt ... 553#p85553"

Susan