A Stroll round 1960s Saltcoats

[mike mccann]

Wandering down Hamilton St in your 60's stroll may I add a post .
McNicolls the grocer shop is one which I knew well . When I was at primary school I spent a couple of summer
holidays delivering groceries on the message bike (with the basket on the front --- hard to handle ) and helping
with the van deliveries . Several years later when I was waiting to enter my National Service , I drove the van for
several months .
The shop was mainly run by " Bunty " McNicoll who was a very well known lady in Saltcoats . Her mother also
worked in the shop as did for a time her brother Alistair who was a banker and a member of the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Players.
When the shop closed , Bunty went to work at McPherson's Dairy where now stands Eglinton Court Sheltered
housing . When the dairy closed down she worked in Donald McPherson's shop in Caledonia Road .
Sometime I may do a post of how we worked in the shop before the days of supermarkets and pre-packing .

I can't find any reference to " Clayton McLachltan , Electrical Contractor " who had a shop near Mr Rankin's . Clayton ran the electrical business while his wife ran the shop . What was unusual about this shop was that she had a lending library in the back . It may be that this shop had gone by the time of your stroll .

[wellparkno9]

Hi, I remember Claytons Shop,but the one I remember was on the opposite side from Rankins.It was just past the Clydsedale Bank going towards the Lascala.I think its now an opticians.I can mind a big red headed guy working for Clayton,think his name was McCreadie???? then he went to sea. Sam.

[mike mccann]

Hi Sam.i'm pretty sure the shop was on Mr Rankin's side . You are thinking of Terry McCreadie who now lives in Irvine after years at sea .. . My brother Jummy also worked for Clayton for a while before he moved to England .
mike

[down south]

Thanks for all those interesting extra details about Hamilton Street, Mike. I sometimes wish I'd set up the Stroll in a better way for adding extra information; might put in a few extra internal links when it's all finished.

I find a C McLachlan, electrician is listed in the 1967 phone book with a house address of 65 Eglinton Road, Ardrossan, but there's no number for a shop . Certainly suggests he may still have been active then; it might easily have been still there, but slipped my mind. Could it have been a shop with the windows covered with grey wooden boards ? I have vague memories of somewhere like that, but it may have been somewhere else entirely.

Interestingly, in this list of Saltcoats shops in the forties and fifties written by your Ardrossan Road contemporary Margaret Hughes ( which I'm sure will interest you anyway ) I see she has " Gregor Watson , electrician " down just about where you suggest, by Rennie Howie's and the La Scala restaurant. Gregor Watson's was always in Countess St as far as I know, but she might have had the right shop and the wrong name.

http://www.threetowners.net/forum/viewt ... 179#p69179"

Susan

[morag]

The shop that will stick in my head forever is Claudie Dunn's. When my husband (we got married in Cucamonga, CA., yes, it is legal, I checked, lol!) came to Scotland to get 'properly' married, i.e. church, he had intended to wear a blazer and slacks, which was fine by me, mum wasn't having any. 'It's your uniform (air force) or a suit!' So off he was hours before we were to get married, to the said Mr. Dunn, got a suit off the peg, a first for him being 5'8 in a land of 6ftr's!
This stroll has brought back so many memories..I think we all went to Saltcoats for shopping / entertainment etc., and though, naturally, we each think our own townis best, gotta credit Saltcoats!

[Penny Tray]

Susan,

Your rear view of Town Hall is an interesting one although I'm not sure that many Threetowners will recognise it or readily admit to recognising it. To be familiar with it you would need (1) to have 'loitered' outside the Police Station in Green Street which wasn't always a good idea. The Police station was, of course, on the immediate left; (2) having a last drag on a cigarette before going to face the wrath of the magistrates at Saltcoats Burgh Court which was on the immediate right; or (3) entering or leaving the rear yard of the Police Station in a vehicle (i) to be placed in custody or (ii) having been in custody, then en route to Kilmarnock Sheriff Court. Take your pick!

Alternatively, you may have known that beyond the two outhouse type structures below the tower there was an entrance on the right which accessed the main foyer of the Countess Cinema. Very few however, seemed to favour this route.

If they had they might have won themselves some 'free prizes'. There was a side room in the police station into which 'suspects', usually for shoplifting, were placed by inexperienced officers prior to being interviewed. In the two or three minutes at their disposal, until the police officers got their hats and coats off, they would throw their ill-gotten gains out the window into the lane where the photographer has obviously been standing. On occasions other police officers going to and fro would find it and at other times, by the time the suspect admitted what he or she had done, the items had vanished.

A final alternative might be that you worked for either John McBroom, Painter and Decorator, or Michael Reilly, Egg Merchant, who premises faced the lane.

[down south]

Thanks for all those fascinating details, PT. I presume the back entrance to the Countess cinema you mention was the one you referred to earlier as your shortcut from the police station to the Station restaurant.

And it's time to move on to the Countess now; passing the little barber's shop between, we come to somewhere that up to the early seventies was one of the main entertainment attractions of Saltcoats, and somewhere all of us of the right age must have visited many a time.

There wasn't much to see of it from outside. If it hadn't been for the big poster above the doorway, and a glass case in the porch showing stills from the current film , you would hardly have known out of hours that something more interesting than civic offices existed behind the facade of the Town Hall.

But when opening time came around, there would be queues stretching down the street. This 1967 advert gives the details of how the programmes ran then, but there was very little change over the years except that back in the fifties there was also a Wednesday matinee.

Inside was a long narrow foyer stretching back, with the ticket booth on the right hand side. At the end were doors to the body of the hall, and above them stairs carpeted in a rich dark red leading up to the balcony ; a wide first flight to a sweet and tobacco stall in the middle, and then I think they divided to either side ? The plush tip-up seats inside were the same dark red colour. Never remember noticing PT's secret back door, but then I wouldn't have thought anything of it probably.

The Countess was the scene of all my earliest cinemagoing. It was a Disney film I saw on my first visit at about six or so, Sleeping Beauty or the Sword in the Stone. It all seemed a little bit alarming at first; the huge figures on the screen, the booming whisper of the voices. But I soon got to love the thrill of these big family evenings out, right down to coming out still dazed and dazzled to catch a bus home in the dark. Everything was a fascination then, even all the adverts, travelogues and trailers ; and it was all in COLOUR, quite a novelty to a child of the early television age.

Susan

[down south]

I discovered once in the Herald files that the Town Hall was in fact the scene of the very first cinema show in Saltcoats, in November 1906.

But the idea of turning it into a permanent cinema venue, according to an article I have on its closure, only came in 1915, by which time the cinema craze had really got going . Several had opened in Saltcoats, inclunding the first purpose-built one, the La Scala, and the council thought joining in would be a good way to make some money out of the Town Hall, described by Councillor Mc Naughton at the grand opening in July 1915 as " a bad speculation that had never paid ". It still remained the Town Hall as well, used for other functions when required.

At first he and two other councillors managed the enterprise, but in 1921 it was leased to Mr J Buchanan Thomson. The lease continued in his family's hands , with first his widow and then his daughter Mrs Paterson continuing as lessee after his death ( though others may well have carried on the day-to-day management; I think Sam suggested earlier that Mr McSherry may have been involved ).

But in 1972 major expenditure in the form of electrical rewiring was needed , which the lessee felt unable to afford . The council weren't willing to pay either to keep the cinema going,so by this account it duly closed down at the end of September 1972.

According to another article I have, a year or two later grand plans were being discussed for demolishing the whole Town Hall premises except for the steeple, and redeveloping. I'm disappointed to see that the councillor I praised on another occasion for his desire to preserve local historic buildings, was all for the scheme. But obviously that all came to nothing, and the former Countess building survives to this day.

Susan

[Penny Tray]

Susan,

Mr. McSherry (Bob, I think, but always Mr to me) was a regular figure in the foyer of the Countess as I used the shortcut between Green Street and the Station Restaurant. I think he came to accept the takings rather than involve himself in the actual running of the cinema. Strangley, I had it in my mind that the lady whom I would have said run the cinema was a Mrs. Stark (?) and there was a connection in the town of Starks and McSherrys through marriage.

And was Willie Stark who lived/lives in Sharphill Road not the projectionist at the Countess for a time?

[mike mccann]

Hi Penny,
John McSherry married Archie Stark's daughter Jenny and eventually the McSherry's took over the running of the three Starks shops in Saltcoats . The only one left now is the newsagents in Hamilton St which is now run by Ross McSherry , John's son .

[down south]

Would I be right in thinking the shop in Hamilton Street is the one in the former Cafe Colette, Mike ? I didn't know at the time that the newsagent's that opened there was a Stark's enterprise , but it makes sense.

As to who ran the Countess , I know only what it said in the article. The Stark/ McSherry family would have been good candidates for running the sweet stall concession, so maybe that was their connection ?

Here, courtesy of a photo posted earlier by Sam, is the Town Hall frontage as it looks today.

http://www.threetowners.net/forum/viewt ... 653#p78653"

Back in the sixties it looked particularly smart; I have a feeling the frontage may have been painted white then, with the raised decoration and lettering picked out in bright colours. It seemed to be just waiting for the provost in robes and chain to emerge on the balcony and greet some cheering crowds. I believe something of the sort used actually to go on at Sea Queen time, but that event was dying out by my day, and if it happened I missed it !

There's also more about the parts of the Town Hall other than the cinema, in further posts in that topic.

The big door in the middle under the balcony will have been the main entrance to those other rooms. So it was probably in there, rather than by way of the Town Steeple as I'd always thought I remembered, that I went on my one and only visit, as a pre-schooler; up to the big room above the library, to try out the dancing class held there that one or two others have recently mentioned.

I was very keen to go dancing; until I got there. But the first lesson we did no dancing at all; just had to stand on a picture of A is for Apple chalked on the floor. Worse, I had to hold hands with a BOY ! So I took a scunner to the dance class, and didn't go again. What a wimp ! Still, it only postponed the inevitable discovery that I had two left feet when it came to dancing. ( But maybe if I'd learned properly at an early age, I might have done better, who knows ).

Susan

[Meg]

Would that have been Mrs Kemp's dance class Susan?

Meg