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Calderwood is a neighbourhood of the Scottish
new town of
East Kilbride
East Kilbride (; gd, Cille Bhrìghde an Ear ) is the largest town in South Lanarkshire in Scotland and the country's sixth-largest locality by population. It was also designated Scotland's first new town on 6 May 1947. The area lies on a rais ...
, in
South Lanarkshire. It lies on its north-east edge and is one of the largest areas of the town.
Location
Calderwood is the second oldest planned neighbourhood in East Kilbride,
[In Pictures: East Kilbride Memories - Housing of tomorrow](_blank)
East Kilbride Connect, 24 June 2016. built about 1950, shortly after
The Murray. Most initial residents moved in from condemned housing in
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
.
[East Kilbride - old and new](_blank)
South Lanarkshire Council
South Lanarkshire Council ( gd, Comhairle Siorrachd Lannraig a Deas) is the unitary authority serving the South Lanarkshire council area in Scotland. The council has its headquarters in Hamilton, has 16,000 employees, and a budget of almost £1b ...
It is the town's largest residential area, forming most of the
East Kilbride East multi-member electoral
ward
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a pris ...
, which had a recorded overall population of 14,308 in 2019; the remainder of the neighbourhood (west of Calderwood Road, east of the
Kingsway dual carriageway bypass, including Maxwellton) is in the
East Kilbride Central North ward. The one directly neighbouring area is
St Leonards St Leonards may refer to:
Places Australia
*St Leonards, New South Wales
**St Leonards railway station
*St Leonards, Tasmania, suburb of Launceston
*St Leonards, Victoria
Canada
*St. Leonard's, Newfoundland and Labrador
New Zealand
* St L ...
to the south. Calderwood is divided from the
East Mains and
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...
areas to the west by the bypass – there are no direct road-traffic links, only two
underpasses beneath the road and a footbridge over it.
History
The area includes
Hunter House Museum
Hunter House Museum was a museum in Calderwood, East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, Scotland.
Description
Hunter House forms part of the original Long Calderwood Farm, purchased in the early 18th Century by John Hunter, father of William Hunt ...
at Long Calderwood Farmhouse, once the home of the 18th-century medical and zoological pioneers
William
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
and
John
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Secon ...
, who were famous
anatomist
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...
s.
In 2011 the museum building was bought by the neighbouring Calderwood Baptist Church and converted into the "Hunter House Cafe", a space for the community and church use.
The building and estate had belonged to the Hunter family since the 17th century, when it relocated from nearer to East Kilbride kirktoun. The extant buildings date from the late 17th to 19th centuries, with a 20th-century extension from the building's time as a museum.
The area includes Calderwood Glen, the northern section of
Calderglen Country Park. This was widely praised as a picturesque and romantic attraction in the 18th and 19th centuries, and by the early 1900s recognised as a renowned beauty spot in the West of Scotland.
Calderwood Castle
Calderwood Castle was located in East Kilbride, Scotland. The castle was situated near the banks of the Rotten Calder Water in what is now Calderglen Country Park. Most likely constructed in the early to mid fifteenth century by the Maxwell fam ...
, demolished by the
Royal Engineers in 1951 after more than a decade of decline, was home for nearly five centuries to the Maxwells of Calderwood, including Sir James, second husband of
Lady Margaret Cunningham, the memoirist and correspondent. The Calderwood area was sketched by the 18th-century artist
Paul Sandby
Paul Sandby (1731 – 7 November 1809) was an English map-maker turned landscape painter in watercolours, who, along with his older brother Thomas, became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768.
Life and work
Sandby was ...
, and visited several times by British and foreign aristocracy, including
Princess Mary Adelaide and the
Crown Prince of Denmark
Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, Count of Monpezat, (Frederik André Henrik Christian; born 26 May 1968) is the heir apparent to the Danish throne. He is the elder son of Queen Margrethe II and Henrik, Prince Consort of Denmark, Prince Henri ...
. A second view by Paul Sandby shows Calderwood Linn, a waterfall currently known colloquially as Castle Falls, discovered in April 2015. Alongside a sister sketch, the wash drawing represents the earliest known view of Calderwood and of East Kilbride.
Much of Calderwood Glen forms a
Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for palaeontology and geology, designated on 1 August 1990. It is also known for endemic woodland species of flowers, mosses and fungi in pockets of natural and semi-natural ancient woodland, once parts of the primeval woodland of Central Scotland. Calderwood Glen was noted for scarce flora by botanists who surveyed the region, including Hennedy,
Hooker,
Hopkirk, Lee, Patrick and
Ure, and whose findings were all included in an edited regional survey of 2016.
Maxwellton Conservation Area
The 18th–19th-century weaving village of Maxwellton survives as the western part of the Calderwood neighbourhood. Once a rural community, it was the main area of settlement in the Barony lands of the ancient Calderwood Estate, where from 1400 until about 1900, the
Maxwells of Calderwood were the main landed family. Maxwellton became prominent locally and nationally from the 1960s onwards, when a dispute broke out between residents and the East Kilbride Development Corporation, which sought to condemn the settlement as a slum and demolish it to make way for part of the East Kilbride
new town development. The Burgh Council of East Kilbride sided with the villagers, and with backing from the
National Trust For Scotland
The National Trust for Scotland for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, commonly known as the National Trust for Scotland ( gd, Urras Nàiseanta na h-Alba), is a Scottish conservation organisation. It is the largest membership organi ...
, the campaign over subsequent years saved most of the village on historic, architectural and aesthetic grounds. Maxwellton village then joined the early statutory
conservation areas in Scotland, after nearby
Eaglesham
Eaglesham ( ) is a village in East Renfrewshire, Scotland, situated about south of Glasgow, southeast of Newton Mearns and south of Clarkston, and southwest of East Kilbride.
The 2011 census revealed that the village had 3,114 occupants, do ...
in 1968.
The campaign to save the village reached cabinet level in the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
and gained national publicity, mostly due through Judith Hart MP and Fred S. Mitchell. Mitchell was a memoirist, a topographical historian for Calderwood and a Maxwellton resident, on the reference staff of the
Mitchell Library
The Mitchell Library is a large public library and centre of the City Council public library system of Glasgow, Scotland.
History
The library, based in the Charing Cross district, was initially established in Ingram Street in 1877 following a ...
in Glasgow. After the rescue, the village began to receive backing from the Development Corporation originally intent on its destruction. The result was the national press sponsoring the restoration of one derelict cottage – thereafter referred to locally as the Express Cottage, as the
Scottish Daily Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
issued regular national coverage of its attempts to restore the house to fashionable conservation standards. The interest in the village then led over a thousand buyers to bid for the 23 run-down Maxwellton cottages. The efforts to restore the village and the Development Corporation's publicity led to an unveiling of the show cottage by the
Marchioness of Bute, which received national press coverage.
Along with a townscape of weaving cottages, Maxwellton preserves the original Calderwood Estate's endowment school, founded by Sir William Alexander Maxwell, 8th Baronet of Calderwood, in 1839. This was seen as advanced for its time in providing funds, materials and facilities for a superior educational experience and extensive provisions for educating the poor. The school received an annual endowment from the Barony of Calderwood to support pupils and teacher salaries. The advances by Sir William sufficed for Maxwellton School to be cited and studied several times as an issue in the history of education in Scotland. It is now a private dwelling named Alma, classed as a Category B
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
.
Facilities
The Calderwood area has the John Wright Sports Centre, named after a prominent 1960s new-town provost and offering a full-length athletics track opened in 1972. Calderwood Square is the main neighbourhood centre for retail and food outlets, Nearby amenities include Calderwood Community Hall, the Alison Lea Medical Centre, and the Moncreiff
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland ( sco, The Kirk o Scotland; gd, Eaglais na h-Alba) is the national church in Scotland.
The Church of Scotland was principally shaped by John Knox, in the Reformation of 1560, when it split from the Catholic Church ...
parish church, named after a prominent disruption minister connected with East Kilbride and Calderwood,
Sir Henry Wellwood-Moncreiff, 10th Baronet
Sir Henry Wellwood-Moncreiff, 10th Baronet, originally Henry Moncrieff (21 May 1809–4 November 1883) was a Scottish minister, considered one of the most influential figures in the Free Church of Scotland (1843-1900), Free Church of Scotland in ...
. Calderwood had a local library that has since been converted into a place of worship: the East Kilbride Islamic Centre.
Housing
The original housing in the area (each with plumbing and electricity and separate bathrooms and kitchens – a noted improvement for residents used to overcrowded, crumbling inner-city city slums) followed a similar pattern to other parts of the town:
individual dwellings were mainly in short terraced rows facing onto streets, or less commonly with an access road and parking area skirting the houses, accessed by footpaths and sometimes with a communal green space.
Flats also featured, constructed in either a traditional-style common close with individual balconies, usually three storeys high, or in standalone angular blocks of three or four storeys off a central stairway, providing 9, 12 or 16 apartments. This type grew increasingly commonplace in the 1960s as the neighbourhood was extended and efforts went into meeting ambitious housebuilding targets with less space available than before.
Six
tower blocks
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdicti ...
of 15 storeys were built in two clusters in the north of the area, providing a total of 522 residences.
Current schools
Calderwood has five primary schools: Long Calderwood Primary, Maxwellton Primary, Hunter Primary, Greenburn Primary (catering to children with special needs), and St Leonards R.C. Primary. Under South Lanarkshire's Schools Modernisation Programme beginning in the mid 2000s, these were rebuilt and modernised.
Until the summer of 2007, there was a secondary school in the area named
Hunter High School. As part of a modernisation programme, this was merged with the nearby
Claremont High School in
St Leonards St Leonards may refer to:
Places Australia
*St Leonards, New South Wales
**St Leonards railway station
*St Leonards, Tasmania, suburb of Launceston
*St Leonards, Victoria
Canada
*St. Leonard's, Newfoundland and Labrador
New Zealand
* St L ...
to form
Calderglen High School, next to the former Claremont High campus. The Hunter High building was demolished. Most of the land where Hunter High and the older Hunter Primary stood has been built over by modern housing, including Gamekeeper's Wynd.
Notable people
*
Joanna Baillie
Joanna Baillie (11 September 1762 – 23 February 1851) was a Scottish poet and dramatist, known for such works as ''Plays on the Passions'' (three volumes, 1798–1812) and ''Fugitive Verses'' (1840). Her work shows an interest in moral philoso ...
, poet and dramatist
*
Matthew Baillie
Matthew Baillie FRS (27 October 1761 – 23 September 1823) was a British physician and pathologist, credited with first identifying transposition of the great vessels (TGV) and situs inversus.
Early life and education
He was born in the mans ...
, physician
*William and Jim Reid, musicians (
The Jesus and Mary Chain
The Jesus and Mary Chain are a Scottish alternative rock band formed in East Kilbride in 1983. The band revolves around the songwriting partnership of brothers Jim and William Reid. After signing to independent label Creation Records, they re ...
)
*
Ally McCoist
Alistair Murdoch McCoist, (; born 24 September 1962) is a Scottish former footballer who has since worked as a manager and TV pundit.
McCoist began his playing career with Scottish club St Johnstone before moving to English side Sunderland in ...
, footballer (
Rangers and
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
)
*
Julie Wilson Nimmo, actress
Julie Wilson Nimmo
IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...
biography
References
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Areas of East Kilbride