Milngavie

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Milngavie (popularly Millguy), a small town in the Stirlingshire section of New Kirkpatrick parish. It stands, 190 feet above sea-level, on Allander Water, at the terminus of the Glasgow and Milngavie branch (1863) of the North British railway, by road being 5¼ miles ENE of Duntocher, 4¼ N by W of Maryhill, and 7 (9½ by rail) NNW of Glasgow. It presents an irregular and somewhat straggling, yet cheerful and prosperous aspect; consists chiefly of plain, two-story houses, many of them whitewashed; contains more respectable shops than are found in most towns of its size; carries on extensive and vigorous industry in a print-work, a papermill, two bleach-fields, etc.; and has a post office under Glasgow, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments, an hotel, gas-works, a mechanics' institution, a public library, etc. A. B. Stirling (1811-81), the self-taught naturalist, was a native. An Established church, built as a chapel of ease about 1840 at a cost of £1500, in 1873 was raised to quoad sacra status. There are also a U.P. church (1799; 517 sittings) and St Joseph's Roman Catholic church (1872; 300 sittings). A public and a Roman Catholic school, with respective accommodation for 400 and l02 children, had (1882) an average attendance of 319 and 65, and grants of £290, 7s. 6d. and £51, 18s. Milngavie is a police burgh under the General Police and Improvement Act (Scot.) of l862. Its municipal constituency numbered 436 in 1884, when the annual value of real property was £6804, and the revenue (including assessments) amounted to £394. Pop. of town (1831) 1162, (1861) 1895, (1871) 2044, (1881) 2636, in 518 houses; of quoad sacra parish (1881) 2927, of whom 167 were in Dumbartonshire.—Ord. Sur., sh. 30, 1866.

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available, or use the map tab to the right of this page.

Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer