2024 Week 39: Homestead

 This is not the tale of one home or even one plot of family land. It would be nice and simple if my paternal grandparents had stayed put in one house after they married, or moved a couple of times. However, my research over the years and, more recently, information given to me to my eldest living paternal cousin paints a very different story.

My grandparents John and Christina married in 1887 at Greenhill in Shotts Parish, Lanarkshire. Christina had been born in Greenhill in 1868. They started off their married life in Greenhill, and about ten years later they moved a short distance away to Whitehill, living at 139 Shotts Road. John was a coalminer, employed at that time in the Greenhill colliery. This old map shows the location of the colliery in relation to the areas of Greenhill and Whitehill.

It's likely they resided in accommodation provided by the mining company such as that detailed below:

By 1911, they had moved again, as they are found in the 1911 census at Fernieshaw Farm Cottages, still in the same district. Why all this moving around? Nowadays, people tend to move into bigger accommodation as their families grow. That does not seem to be what was at play here. According to census records, in 1901 at Shotts Road, they had two rooms with a window each, and the same at Fernieshaw 10 years later. Maybe the floor area was greater - certainly in 1911 they would have needed it, given there were 10 people living there - 9 family members and a boarder!!

Unfortunately none of these homes still exist. However, in 1914 they had moved again. This time to a stonebuilt cottage called Silvermuir Cottage at Bellside, near Cleland, still in the same general area. This was the house where my dad was born. This was described in the 1921 census as also having only two rooms with windows. This cottage is still there today. Unfortunately it is in a pretty sad state. 

Silvermuir in 2022

Its last occupant, a second cousin of mine, died in 2022 aged 97. I presume it has been passed on to on to one of her daughters, but no-one is living there at the moment and it and the small cottage garden that extends round the back look derelict. Given my dad was born there, I do feel an attachment to it, so it is sad to see it deteriorate.

My grandparents actually left that cottage in the 1930s, when they handed it over to my grandmother's niece and her husband ( my grandparents had actually brought up this niece). This time, they moved to the other side of Cleland, to Sunnyside. This was to be the last home they shared together. My grandfather died there in 1946. Shortly after that my grandmother moved in with her son, my Uncle Will. My Uncle George stayed on at Sunnyside with  his wife Margaret. As a child/teenager I used to visit them a lot. George and my dad were very close. I can remember the cottage and its beautiful front garden. Out the back of the cottage, my uncle grew chrysanthemums for sale in two large greenhouses. My cousin Chris also lived there for a time in the 1930s. She remembers it fondly. She can recount all the flowers that our grandparents grew and remembers the chickens that they used to keep. She has tales of all the walks she used to go on in the surrounding woods and how much she enjoyed living there.  However, it, like Silvermuir, is no longer at its best. The front garden has gone and the large back garden now appears to have been turned into some sort of storage facility. How times have changed!

Sunnyside in 2024

It's hard to explain why I feel sad seeing these buildings, but I do.