From Darnley to Barrhead :-)

Well really, I suppose it should be from South Shields to Barrhead then Darnley to Barrhead, for after the Friday morning exam I was ‘off like a shot’ to spend the weekend with my in laws. The exam which had been responsible for many a blog free and sleepless night went without too many hitches, well lots of hitches, clove hitches, half hitches and timber hitches actually Though I did make serious mess of the ‘west country stopper’

 

a hitch used to take the strain of a mooring rope whilst transferring it from capstan to bollard. Not something we do on the Striven very often and when we do I’ve used a rolling hitch in the past but the MCA  http://www.dft.gov.uk/mca/ don’t like that. The part that I had been dreading was the visit to ‘Cyclops’ the 1949 mock  cargo ship that dominates the ‘seaman’s hall’

for the myriad of nomenclature associated with cargo handling vessels ‘as old as the ark’ had just not been sinking in. I was still getting my ‘gooseneck’ confused with my ‘duckbill’ and my ‘spider band’ with my ‘topping lift’ hardly surprising really  for the last time I saw a rig like this was on the bottom of Mounts Bay courtesy of one of these.

Surprisingly enough that part of the exam went very well so I will no be able to go back to work and load cars properly.

 

MacBraynes "RMS Loch Seaforth"

My old Ford Prefect being off loaded at Armadale on the Isle of Skye from the Macbraynes steamer Loch Seaforth. The car was loaded at Mallaig. The crew handling the crane dropped the car from a height of about two feet and broke a rear spring. The Loch Seaforth had been displaced from its usual duties by new "Roll on Roll Off’ ferries.

Just like we did in the old days Many thanks to Robert Chappell http://www.flickr.com/photos/52150321@N02/6807546598/ for that image.

I have to say that I just loved that mock up ship with all it’s winches, cables, chains, and pulleys but it has no relevance to 21st century seamanship, should go to a museum  and the whole ‘cargo handling’ part of the syllabus be revised.

Anyway, I was pretty pleased with my A- and got a lift to Barrhead with an equally chuffed B+ The one tiny shred of ‘silver lining’ in this whole college ‘carry on’ being that I have at least had chance to visit my sick father in law at weekends. Something that I’d be hard pushed to do during term time and working on the Striven.

The ICI connection and Mary Queen of Scots

In truth I don’t see a great deal of wifey’s dad as he’s spending more and more time in his bed, the ‘wee drams’ and B&W westerns we shared in weekends past are becoming fewer by the day. Still it gives wifey’s mum a break and I can take wee Charlie out for long walks, something that he loves and now associates with me  

Being something of an alien to this ‘urban life’ I try and escape from it whilst here, surprisingly enough it is quite easy and with a little research extremely interesting. Following on from last weeks jaunts around the Barrhead dams https://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/sore-necks-in-south-shields/ I thought I’d start from the other end so to speak.

 

Last week I’d walked from Barrhead up around the southerly end of the largest reservoir and to the railway line and back. Today I discovered the ‘Darnley Sycamore’ online,

image from http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3507&start=120 a site I’ve been visiting frequently of late

It’s a fine old tree in this urban sprawl, of that there is no doubt, but 500 years old??? I’d be very surprised if it was the actual tree. Anyway, MiL dropped Charlie and I off in the car after we’d driven past some lovely houses on Parkhouse road, the last time I passed there it looked like this.

Before that some ten or twelve years ago it resembled Beirut

 

Not sure if that’s the exact spot, in fact it looked worse but I lifted it from another wealth of info here http://urbanglasgow.co.uk/ftopic261-0-asc-10.php

After perusing the tree through the camera lens from the other side of the road we set off into the ‘Dams to Darnley’ park http://www.damstodarnley.org/ past the old mill, which is now an Indian restaurant and up along the Brock Burn.

   

There are several old bridges across the burn and one or two paths that lead off in different directions but with a little common sense and help from the signposts it’s easy to wind your way up towards the old water works and reservoirs.

What I did come across unexpectedly was this old ruin

which was kind of difficult to photograph due to the undergrowth and very boggy ground.

 

It must have been a grand building at one time, wooden panelled and with a lovely curved gable but no fireplaces, suggesting some industrial purpose. At first I thought it was some kind of old mill but that would not seem to be the case.

After some research into this building, I have come to the conclusion that the house was part of Upper Darnley and the Darnley Bleach fields. This to my mind is a significant finding. The Darnley Bleach fields were owned and run by no lesser figure than Charles Tennant 1768 –1838 who in 1799 in collaboration with Charles Macintosh invented a new bleaching powder that revolutionised the bleaching industry. One of the truly significant developments of the industrial revolution.
Charles Tennant moved on to start up the St. Rollox chemical works; which in the 19th century was the largest chemical works in the world, it also had the Largest chimney stack in the world. Tennants Company went on in later years via mergers and buyout to be come Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. (ICI).

Once more lifted from http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3484

‘Bleachfields’ were places where cloth was laid out in the open to bleach naturally in the sunshine,

 

a process that required lots of clean water and of course sunshine, so it was a summer only task. This perhaps explains the lack of chimneys on the building which could have been accommodation for the workers, though they’d still need to eat??

 

Anyway this process proved to somewhat of a ‘bottleneck’ and it was Charles Tennant himself that solved the problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Tennant

Charles was quick to learn his trade (weaving) but also to see that the growth of the industry far surpassed the development of bleaching methods, which were very primitive. An important aspect of the weaving industry was bleaching cloth. At that time this involved treatment with stale urine and leaving the cloth exposed to sunlight for many months in so called bleaching fields. Huge quantities of unbleached cotton piled up in the warehouses. Charles left his well paid weaving position to try to develop improved bleaching methods. This led him to start his own bleaching fields in 1788, at Darnley, near Barrhead, Renfrewshire. From his father he inherited an untiring capacity for work. A neighbour, William Wilson of Hurlet (and wife Margaret Penman), initially had been very hostile at the introduction of a bleachfield next to his farm. He changed, after watching with admiration as Charles worked from dawn till late at night in his bleachfilds. his admiration led to a social invitation which had a great impact on Charles’ life, for he met and later (in 1795) married Wilson’s daughter, Margaret (1766–1843). Their marriage lasted forty-three years and she bore him nine children.

Charles Tennant’s Darnley Bleach Fields c.1800

Having acquired his bleachfield, Charles turned his mind and energy to developing ways to shorten the time required in bleaching. Others had already done much work on this problem and managed to reduce bleaching time from eighteen months to four by replacing sour milk with sulphuric acid in the bleaching process. Further, in the last half of the eighteenth century, bleachers started to use lime in the bleaching process, but only in secret due to possible injurious effects from the lime. Charles had the original idea that a combination of chlorine and lime would produce the best bleaching results. He worked on this idea for several years and was finally successful. His method proved to be effective, inexpensive and harmless. he was granted patent #2209 on 23 January 1798. He continued his research and developed a bleaching powder for which he was granted patent #2312 on 30 April 1799.

While still working in the bleachfields around the year 1794, Charles formed a partnership with four friends. the first of these, Dr. William Couper (His three sons married Charles’ three youngest daughters.), was the legal advisor to the partnership. The second partner was Alexander Dunlop (His brother married Charles’ eldest daughter), who served as accountant to the group. The third partner, James Knox, managed the sales department. Charles Macintosh, an excellent chemist, was the fourth partner. He is known for his technique of macintosh waterproofing and he also assisted in the invention of bleaching powder. Charles was indeed fortunate to have these men as his partners.

Immediately after granting of the patent on bleaching, Charles and his partners purchased land on the Monkland Canal, just north of Glasgow, to build a factory for the production of bleaching liquor and powder. The area was known as St. Rollox, after a French holy man. It was close to a good supply of lime, and since the area was rural, the land was cheap. Additionally, the nearby canal provided excellent transportation. Production was swiftly moved from the earlier bleachfields in Darnley, to the new plant in St. Rollox. From the first it was a splendid success. Production increased from fifty-two tons the first year, 1799, to over nine thousand two hundred tons the fifth year. Later a second plant was built at Hebburn, raising production of bleaching powder alone to twenty thousand tons by 1865.

All was not smooth sailing however. In 1798 James Knox and Robert Tennant (Charles younger brother), went to Ireland where they struck a deal with the Irish bleachers, for the use of the process. Although the Irish bleachers admitted a saving of over GB£160,000 in 1799 alone, by using the Tennant process, they never paid for its use as agreed. They welched on their word and on the contract. As a result the partnership lost a great deal in time and money. Further losses came from challenges to the patents in England and Ireland and the outright pirating of the process. In spite of these worrisome problems the partnership as a great success. It continued for fourteen years when the rights under the patents expired.

Charles continued to expand his horizons during this time. When the partnership ended he purchased the company. As a forward thinking business man, he was in a class by himself. His company, during the 1830s and 1840s was the largest chemical plant in the world.

As a dedicated reformer Charles played his full part in the movements of the day. A great deal of unrest followed the Napoleonic wars, which had the effect of increased wealth for the manufacturing classes but poverty for the working classes. Charles and his son John were active in a time liberal views could be construed as treason. He worked for many years in the reform movement, but it was not until he reached the age of sixty-four that his effort bore fruit with the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832. His ideas and active support helped create one of the most productive periods of social progress and reform, in almost every area, in Scotland’s history.

Charles Tennant, in spite of the many demands on his time from outside sources, never lost sight of the main business in his life, the St. Rollox chemical works. By the year 1832, St. Rollox was consuming thirty thousand tons of coal a year. The system had not been designed to handle this volume. It just could not do so efficiently. He plunged into a study of possible solutions to the problem. His imagination and interest were fired by a new way of transporting people and freight. This involved using wagons, pulled by a steam engine, on iron rails laid on a level roadbed. He had heard of this from his good friend George Stephenson, the great railway engineer. he quickly realized this was the answer to his problem at St. Rollox. From 1825 until his death he was one of the prime movers in railway expansion. He was mainly responsible for getting a railway into Glasgow, over the fierce opposition of the canal proprietors.

Never one to overlook a sideline, Charles decided he must not forget the waterways. In 1830 he started his younger sister Sarah’s son, William Sloan, with some small schooners. He saw this as a way to control the transportation of chemical products to nearby markets. At the time of Sloan’s death in 1848 they had the largest fleet in Glasgow, and were running nineteen vessels.

A little further up the path you start coming upon the old water works and it’s associated buildings.

This one being a relic of the former ‘Glasgow Corporation Water Works’

 

and this being another.

 

  

Fine sandstone memorials to the Victorian engineers and craftsmen that built them

Just look at the stone work on the sides of this steep channel that drops some 20m from the reservoir to below the buildings.

 

Notice how the stones are laid in such a way as to reduce the ingress of water, pure genius

Immediately above the water works is the first reservoir and from here on we were onto familiar ground.

   

 

 

A sole swan giving Charlie and I the ‘bums up’ we also saw a dipper in the fast flowing burn above the first waterfall.

Not my photo, but one from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipper and the last time I saw one of these was in Trout Beck at the bottom of Kirkstone pass in the Lake District when I was about 13 http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/d/dipper/index.aspx

Another rescue

I wish I had a pound for every halfwit that I’ve rescued from the north end of Raasay. My phone went off at 20:00 and came up ‘swineherd mobile’, immediately I went into panic mode for I’d spoken to a very tired wife some two hours previously just after she’d finished feeding the pigs and sorting out the ‘Arnish eggs’ after a hard day on the post. My son had been in bed all day sick and she was ready for her bad at 18:00 so why was she phoning me on the mobile as there’s no reception at the house. First thing that goes through my mind is that my boy has taken a turn for the worse, fortunately not.

Now if you don’t like swearing read no further, I know I said I was giving it up but I’ve had a few drinks, my father in law is really sick, my son ill, my wife full of the cold and two hundred miles away from her family and some pair of jakey’s turn up needing a lift to the village eleven miles away. I rather despair, these clowns being too tight fisted to bring their car over to Raasay had left it at Sconser and decided to walk up to the bothy http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/bothy-details.asp?bothy_id=27  (on the recommendation of a blog reader who should have known better). Do they get the 9:25 ferry so they can make the gruelling walk in the daylight, not a chance, do they get the 10:25 ferry then they can get there in the dusk, nope. These numpties get the 11:30 and buy a Mickey Mouse torch at the Co Op get lost, get tired, and need running back to the village. Of course they are eternally grateful and give wifey a full £10 for her trouble, an hour away from home and sick child, a gallon of fuel, their generosity is rather outstanding.

edited when sober in the interests of local harmony and a possible law suite