Neighbourhoods
Radnor Park
By Bill Simpson
Radnor Park formed part of the estate of George Park MacIndoe, a grand-nephew of William Dunn who had acquired estates in the Barns o' Clyde area during the 1830s. It was mostly farmland and two large farms were Kilbowie Farm and North East Boquhanran Farm. Before the arrival of the Singer factory in Kilbowie in 1882, settlements consisted of little more than some houses on Radnor Street and Granville Street.
"The Holy City"
In 1890, a proposal to extend the Burgh to include the area later known as Radnor Park was rejected as "premature". The following year, a Glasgow businessman who owned land on Kilbowie Hill at Radnor Park erected a small number of villas for rent, in an area known as the Skypes.
In 1904 when Robert McAlpine & Sons were building the latest extensions to the Singer factory, the contractors decided to invest in 140 acres of land on the west side of Kilbowie Hill and build houses. By 1906 the firm had built 151 tenements, providing some 1,200 houses in the area. The estate acquired the nickname "Holy City" because the white, roughcast, flat-roofed buildings reminded observers of postcards of Jerusalem.
It was claimed that, since this area lay beyond Clydebank's boundaries and McAlpines did not have to adhere to the Burgh's building regulations, the houses were sub-standard. This was refuted and it was counter-claimed that the rents were lower than those "down the hill" in the Burgh. In 1905, however, residents campaigned against what they believed were excessive increases by their landlords and set the precedent for subsequent Rent Strikes.
The Radnor Park area was annexed by the Burgh on 29 November 1906, increasing Clydebank's population by almost 10,000 to about 35,000 and making it one of the largest burghs in Scotland.
Shops
In commerce terms, there were rows of shops below the tenements down Kilbowie Hill and along Second Avenue. The area also had its own Co-operative Society which was quite independent of Clydebank Co-operative Society founded in 1881. Although there were attempts to join the two societies over the years, it was not until 1908 that they were united.
Boquhanran Park
Boquhanran Park is sometimes referred to as the High Park, and sometimes as "Hielanman's Park". The ground was gifted to the Burgh by Dr Thomas Strang (1909-1936), a Medical Officer of Health, and was sometimes referred to as "the gift ground". It was also known as the "Watery Brae" after the reservoir at the top of the hill behind Radnor Park Hotel. By the terms of the gift, no houses could be built on the land.
The Clydebank Blitz
German bombs devastated the area during the air raids of 13 and 14 March 1941 and destroyed or damaged many important public buildings.
Radnor Park Elementary School, opened in 1900, was one of the first buildings to be hit and Boquhanran Public School, opened in 1906 to cater for the influx of children to the Holy City, was destroyed and never rebuilt. In 1947, the new Clydebank High School opened in Janetta Street.
Radnor Park Congregational Church, built in 1910, was completely destroyed and was not rebuilt until 1961. Radnor Park Parish Church, which had opened as a Sunday School in 1886 and became a church in 1895, was badly damaged. It was restored, then burned down during the great storm of January 1968. Undaunted, the congregation rebuilt the church again.
Another victim of the Blitz was St Peter's Boquhanran, which had opened in 1909. The church was rebuilt after the war and re-opened in 1954. It changed its name to St Andrew's when it joined with the Union Church in 1976. A further union, this time with Kilbowie Parish Church in 1990, created Kilbowie St Andrew's and resulted in the demolition of the 1954 building.
One building which surprisingly survived the bombing was the local picture house, La Scala. This substantial building in the art deco style was opened on 16 February 1938. During the Blitz, patrons who had been watching child star Shirley Temple in Young People sheltered inside from the bombs. In 1969 the building was converted to a combined cinema and bingo hall. The cinema closed in 1983 but the bingo hall remains open in 2004.
After The War
The reconstruction of Clydebank began immediately after the war and the Holy City was substantially rebuilt. Six twelve-storey flats of forty-six three-apartment houses were erected there in the early 1960s, an innovation for the Burgh. These flats, using rapid methods of assembly and making good use of vacant or cleared sites, were initially very popular. Only after tenants began to experience the malfunction and breakdown of systems and the claustrophobia of multi-storey living did the authorities begin to question the wisdom of such buildings. Experiments in housing types were not new to the area - apart from McAlpine's Garden City movement style in the Holy City and the erection of Atholl steel houses, there had been a number of bungalows built in West Thomson Street, constructed from reinforced concrete to the designs of Thomas Rae, the Superintendent of the Clydebank and District Water Trust.
Kilbowie Primary School opened in Radnor Park in 1949. A new school was built in 1995 in the playground area of the old one, before the latter was demolished.
In 1966 The Hub was opened and has provided the community with facilities for indoor sports and meetings of all descriptions under the umbrella of community education.
Health
HRH Princess Alexandra opened the Clydebank Health Centre on 5 May 1973. Employing thirty-five family doctors and caring for 65,000 patients, it was the largest such complex in Britain at the time. It was run by a Management Committee chaired by Dr Alistair Clark and in 1977 Dr Alan Wade established a research unit there.
Boquhanran
The area described as Balquhanran (meaning "Conran's Building") in the land acquired by William Dunn in the 1820s was predominantly farmland until the Second World War. Some private building had been introduced to the area, notably in the villas and semi-villas of Albert Road and Janetta Street and in smaller brick terrace-style housing at Green Street, Osborne Street and Second Avenue, much of it built by Robert McAlpine & Sons in an estate that was nicknamed "The Better Land".
After the war, in February 1948, the Council applied for a compulsory purchase order to acquire approximately 70 acres of the Radnor Park and Boquhanran areas. The Central Redevelopment Plan, as it was called, allowed for 226 new houses to be built on land at Boquhanran. On this occasion, the streets were named for writers and poets such as Dickens, Shakespeare, Shelley and Byron.
In 1969 a care home for the elderly with 37 beds and run by the local authority, Boquhanran House, was opened situated between Dickens Avenue and Shakespeare Avenue.
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