Halfway -my first blog

Hendy and I sat and surveyed our kingdom. Hendy was Henderson Gibson and lived next door to me in a close near the eastern end of Woodlands Crescent in Halfway, Cambuslang. Hendy was my best friend. Well he was my best friend when Billy Cochrane wasn't my best friend and vice versa. Loyalties shifted as fast as when Hendy thumped me at wrestling or Wee Bill slaughtered me at football in the street and both things happened often. Anyway, back to the story.

The arrow shows our building.

Our building, as mentioned before, stood at the eastern end of Woodlands Crescent at the top of Craigallian Avenue and comprised of eight flats divided between two closes  each with two flats downstairs and two upstairs. To enter our close you had to go up four or five steps and these steps were flanked by two 'pedestals'. These were our royal thrones for the day, mine to the left and Hendy's to the right.

Because the building was also situated on a hill, our vantage point afforded us a marvellous view over Woodlands Crescent, down Craigallian Avenue to the Halfway and yonder towards the Campsies in the far distance.

The view from almost the exact place Hendy and I sat all those years ago.

To the left we looked up toward our school, Cairns Primary and, to the right, the Glen,  our favoured play place. More about the Glen later.

Looking up at our building the close on the left (nearest the Glen ) housed four families. Downstairs, on the left, the Ray's, on the right Mr Russell. Above them the Irvines and Clarks.

The Irvines, Simon and Jenny, had two daughters, May and Norma. May was my mother's best friend and my godmother. May, my mother's cousin Nan Haddow and my mother could often be seen in Tony Piazza's cafe, sitting at the big table at the back drinking endless cups of tea and smoking numerous cigarettes.

Jim Clark was a friend of mine but the family moved to Lilybank Avenue and we lost touch. The Howdens were the family who took over the flat.
If my memory serves me right Mr Russell was the only person who owned a car at our end of the street.

Our close comprised of Frank and Betty Gibson in the flat downstairs left, with Henderson and his older sister, Heather. Downstairs right was where we lived. Me, with my mum and dad, Maisie and Robert Magowan. On the first floor were the Alexanders and the Finlays.

I apologise if this begins to sound like a telephone book but it is often the case that others who lived at around the same time like to recognise the names of people they knew.

Across the road were the semi-detached houses we called the Orlets. There were four at our end of the street. In the first house lived Mrs Kelly. You didn't want to kick your football into her garden as, after she had one window broken, she threatened to take a knife to the ball if it so much as crossed over her fence. I remember her as a redheaded woman who had her share of tragedy. In the early sixties, a group of kids were playing on the frozen-over river Clyde at Blantyre when the ice broke and they fell through into the freezing cold water and drowned. One of the poor wee souls was her grandson, Peter Carney.

The next house was Billy Cochrane's. Wee Bill lived there with his mum and dad, his two older brothers Bobby and Donny, and his sister Irene. Next door to the Cochranes lived Gordon and Elizabeth McEwan. I think they had an older brother called Tam. In the house nearest the Glen lived Mrs Paton who was the aunt of another pal, Jim McDonald.

The Orlets  continued halfway down Craigallian Avenue but I only remember the names of a few of the families. On the left side were the Sampsons. John and Jim were the two brothers but apart from Janice I can't  remember the girls' names. Stevie Docherty also lived on that side as did my pal Jim Mills. I remember three brothers, Rab, Jack and Laurie Mills but again, no memory of the sisters' names.

On the other side of the road I remember Jim Leighton, Jack Perry and of course the Boyles with Ed who is the author and custodian of a marvellous website about Cambuslang. It is with Ed's kind permission that I have been able to use some of the pictures on this blog. Thanks Ed. I also had family on Craigallian Avenue with my auntie Agnes Meikle living next door to Ed, if my memory serves me right.

Around the corner and along the lane were the Deans and my earlier mentioned pal, Jim MacDonald lived in a cottage here. I never knew his older brother's name as we always referred to him as 'Wee Yin'. Next door to him lived Jim's best friend, Edgar Ramage, whose family were local coal merchants.

To finish the 'telephone book' I'll name a few more names then maybe I can get into the business of reminiscing.

Going up Woodlands toward the school, in the first close lived Ralph Yardley, Elizabeth McCutcheon and Tom Brown who moved away to Burnside about 1960. Further along lived Jimmy Cooper and Billy Winning and Harry Keary. (Sorry if the spelling is all to pot, folks.)

Ross Thompson was another friend who lived on Rosebank Ave. He had a brother by the name of Archie.

We never knew the Auld Kirk Road as such. We always just called it the 'Back roads.' The only names I remember from there were Lucky Shearer and the murderer, McGilvray. My mother told me that McGilvray was a quiet lad who would often walk me in my pram for her so she was shocked when she learned that he had killed someone. On the subject of murder, it was also in the mid fifties when we had a serial killer on the loose in Lanarkshire. He was an American born man called Peter Manuel who is believed to have murdered nine people. I remember as a wee five year old hearing stories about him prowling about in the Glen. It was nonsense of course. We all tried to impress each other by tales of personal sightings of the monster. Manuel was hanged at Barlinnie prison in 1958. As was usual, loudspeaker vans were out selling special edition newspapers immediately after the occasion and that is my only memory of the event.

We tended to play with those who lived in the immediate neighbourhood, rather than classmates who lived elsewhere. There are a few names I remember from Cairns Primary school: Archie Patterson was one name. Another was Ian Collingham who lived above the CO-OP on Hamilton Road. Then there were John Simpson and John Smith, both of whom lived on Cairnswell Avenue. I can't remember many of the girls at school, but two who spring to mind were Janice Hughes and June Fleming.

Phew! There were a few names to conjure with.

My family were from the Halfway except for my maternal grandmother who hailed from Springwell Terrace in Blantyre. Her name was Martha Graham and she was from a Blantyre mining family of eight. She married my grandfather, George Meikle from Castle Chimmins Avenue. He was also a coal miner and they lived in a building beside Gateside Pit about where MacDougal Drive is now. I never knew my grandfather though as he died in 1939 at Tynecastle Park in Edinburgh watching his beloved Celtic in a cup-tie against Hearts.

The building where my mother grew up.

The cause of his death could be up for discussion as although the official version was that he died of a heart attack, his brother-in-law and his father-in-law, both experienced miners who identified his body were convinced by the appearance and colour of the skin that the real cause was gas poisoning. He was a safety officer at his pit and on the morning of the game he closed some of the workings due to the presence of gas. He had complained of feeling unwell all day and collapsed and died at the match. The family's suspicion at the time was that death was attributed to heart disease in order that the colliery could not be found liable to compensation claims.

Their daughter, Martha, usually known as Maisie was my mother and was an only child. She went to Gateside school.

Some years after George's death, my granny married again to the man I always knew as my Grampa, Thomas Weanie. Tammy, as he was known, was born and brought up at 5 Mill Road. He served in the Royal Engineers in the first world war in Egypt, Gallipoli and France before returning to the Halfway where he worked as a coal miner for the rest of his life. He married Agnes Thomson and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. Lizzie married a Welsh soldier called Hubert King then moved to Wales before spending many years in East Africa, returning to Wales in 1961. Betty died in 2013. Her sister, Margaret, tragically died young and within a short time her mother also passed away.

Tammy visited their grave at Westburn cemetery every Sunday and it was there that he struck up a friendship with my granny who was also there to tend her husband's grave, the two of them accompanying each other on the walk back to the village. The friendship grew and after the second war they married. My granny was a staunch member of Flemingston church and the Women's Guild and the minister, Mr Sillers, was a frequent visitor to their home. Tammy's hobby was the bowls and he was a keen member of the Halfway Bowling Club.

The two of us spent many a Sunday walking in the area when he would point out his old workplaces, the now disused pits, and tell me stories of working underground. We would walk for miles and my wee legs never seemed to tire when I was with him. The occasional bar of Fry's Five Boys chocolate helped a little bit as well.

He pointed out things that I would never have noticed, such as the wartime aircraft searchlight overgrown with grass near Kirkhill Station, or the ice cold spring on the East Kilbride side of Dechmont Hill. He would buy me a cone at Piazza's cafe, probably to keep me quiet, then we would go across the road to the courtyard behind the old tenement building where he would play pitch and toss beside the wash houses.

The pitch and toss was behind the building on the right.

My father's family also lived in the Halfway and my father was born in 1929 in the family home at 46 Gateside Avenue. My grandfather was Alexander Magowan (Papa) and my grandmother Mary Magowan (nee Eadie). My father was Robert Magowan and he went to Hallside Primary and then later to Hamilton Academy. He had three brothers and two sisters - George, Samuel and Alex, Nessie (Agnes) and Maimie.

46 Gateside Avenue, arrowed

Papa Magowan was a keen photographer and cyclist and I heard that he was one of the founders of the local cycling club. After the war, my father was a member and the club would have holidays where they would travel by train to places like North Wales then tour the area by bike for a few days before returning home.

When my parents married, they lived with my granny and grampa at the house beside Gateside pit, 220 Hamilton Road. When I was a baby they moved to a new flat at 286 Woodland Crescent. Not long after this my grandparents also moved, to a brand new house at 109 Cairns well Ave.

My paternal grandparents died in the 1950's and are buried in Westburn cemetery. My uncle Alex married his wife Cathy and they lived in the house at Gateside Avenue for a while longer.

Well, I think that's enough background and namedropping for now. Next time I will write about our daily life as kids in the fifties.