Maryhill - History

History

Hew Hill, the Laird, or Lord, of Gairbraid, had no male heir and so he left his estate to his daughter, Mary Hill (1730-1809). She married Robert Graham of Dawsholm in 1763, but they had no income from trade or commerce and had to make what they could from the estate. They founded coalmines on the estate but they proved to be wet and unprofitable, and their property ventures are best known for an acre of ground they did not sell. It is still known as Acre today.

No doubt they would have continued with the struggle, but on the 8 March 1768 Parliament approved the cutting of the Forth and Clyde Canal through their estate, which provided some much-needed money. The canal reached the estate in 1775, but the canal company had run out of money and work stopped for eight years. The Government granted funds from forfeited Jacobite estates to start it again and the crossing of the River Kelvin became the focus for massive construction activity. Five locks, the great Kelvin Aqueduct and, between two of the locks, a dry dock boatyard were built. A village too began to grow up and the Grahams fed more land for its development; Robert Graham attached one condition that was to immortalise the heiress of Gairbraid, his beloved wife and the last in line of centuries of Hills of Gairbraid after the death of her father Hew Hill. The then village was to be "in all times called the town of MaryHill".

The new canal waterway attracted industries including; boat-building, saw-milling and ironfounding to its banks within Mary's estate. By 1830 the scattered houses had grown to form a large village with a population of 3000 people. The building of the Glasgow, Dumbarton and Helensburgh Railway passing through Maryhill in the 1850s, and the proximity of the Loch Katrine pipeline, led to further growth and in 1856 Maryhill became a burgh in its own right ('burgh' is an old word for town in Scotland). It was later absorbed into the city of Glasgow's boundaries in 1891.

A part of the Antonine Wall runs through Maryhill, in the Maryhill Park area, where there is the site of a Roman fort adjoining the wall in nearby Bearsden.

Maryhill had the first Temperance Society in the United Kingdom after lawlessness filled the streets in the Victorian era.

Maryhill also boasts one of Glasgow's original Carnegie libraries, deftly designed by the Inverness architect James Robert Rhind.

Maryhill Barracks was opened in 1872 and once dominated the area that is now the Wyndford housing estate. It was home to the Scots Greys and the Highland Light Infantry, and famously held Adolf Hitler's second-in-command Rudolf Hess during World War II after his supposed "peace" flight to the UK. The barracks were decommissioned in the early 1960s. However the Territorial Army unit, the 52nd Lowland, 6th Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Scotland continues to be based at the adjacent Walcheren Barracks. 32 (Scottish) Signal Regiment is also based near Kelvinside, with 105 Regiment, Royal Artillery in nearby Partick.

Maryhill was known as the Venice of the North for its canals and also for being the centre of the glass industry, with its Caledonia Works and Glasgow Works.

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