History
Wemyss Bay was created in the early 19th century as a 'marine village' and watering-place by Robert Wallace of Kelly, whose lands were adjacent to the bay. Wallace became Greenock's first MP and was instrumental in establishing the penny post.
London merchant James Alexander further developed the area by constructing the first steamboat pier, which was swept away by a hurricane in 1856. Its successor suffered a similar fate and was replaced by the current railway terminus and pier.
The opening of the railway connection in 1865 brought even grander houses. Among the village's notable residents included Sir George Burns, who with Samuel Cunard founded the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (later the Cunard Line), and his son John (later 1st Baron Inverclyde) who lived at Castle Wemyss, which stood on Wemyss Point above the bay itself. Alan, 4th Baron Inverclyde was briefly married to the actress June, who was one of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest leading ladies in the 1927 film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.
Read more about this topic: Wemyss Bay
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)