Social History
Originally known as Kilbirnie Ironworks village, Glengarnock was the title chosen by the community when it became large enough to warrant its own identity. The original Glengarnock was a medieval castle whose ruins are still visible some 3 miles upstream and north of Kilbirnie. The community consisted of a number of migrant workers from Ireland and Lithuania who were brought in to man the works and housed in the "raws", i.e., rows of terraced cottages. A significant community existed with a number of local shops and facilities but these slowly dwindled when the community moved to better housing in Kilbirnie itself and by the 1970s had declined to only a small number of local shops. When the steelworks closed in the 1980s Glengarnock as a village consisted of two pubs, a hairdresser's and a post office.
One of the first libraries in North Ayrshire was formed by Mr William Rabey who opened a Reading room at the Steel Works.
Read more about this topic: Glengarnock
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or history:
“... black women have always found that in the social order of things we’re the least likely to be believed—by anyone.”
—Joycelyn Elders (b. 1933)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)