Bleachfields
It took me three Sunday afternoons wandering around the graveyard on Neilston Road, on the outskirts of Barrhead, before I finally found the memorial. I was on the point of giving up when I realised that the long low stone just a few yards from the place near the entrance where I parked the car on my first visit several weeks earlier, was the memorial. It looked nothing like the high monumental stone I had imagined. Today, I laid nine roses there; one for each of those who died suddenly and tragically on this night in 1842.
The Glanderston Dam memorial at Neilston Road Cemetery in Barrhead
The Glanderston Dam sits at the foot of the Craigie Hill (the ‘proper’ name of which is ‘Duncarnock’). A favourite destination for our childhood adventuring, the Craigie stands a mile or two south of Barrhead. It is a steep but rewarding climb, affording views north across not just Barrhead but the whole City of Glasgow, the Firth of Clyde, and beyond. The site of a mysterious ancient fort, I was also told as a child that Mary Queen of Scots stood atop the Craigie to watch a battle (though I suspect this is a myth).
At about 9pm, on 30th December 1842, the embankment on the southern edge of the Dam gave way under the pressure of water created by the storm. The Dam’s water, and everything that it gathered in its path, poured south, first to the Springfield printworks. Young James Maxwell’s father had just returned there, having carried goods through the storm. James was sent out to hang his father’s jacket to dry by the printworks’ stove. He was the first to be swept to his death by the flood, and the only to be lost at Springfield.
But the floodwater and its detritus flowed on, down the hill to the South Arthurlie printworks where eight more lives were lost. These are the eight names on the memorial, on which is inscribed;
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
MRS M’INTYRE, aged 48, and her daughter MARGARET, aged 8 years; also, ROBERT JOHNSTON, aged 45, and his wife, MARGARET M’NAE, aged 50, and their children, HENRIETTA, aged 26, ARCHIBALD, aged 21, and MARGARET, aged 17 years, also their grand-child, MARGARET HENDERSON, aged 4 years, daughter of HENRIETTA; who perished together in their own house at South Arthurlie Field, on the night of 30th December, 1842, in the flood occasioned by the bursting of the embankment of Glanderston Dam.
“Truly, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there is a but a step between me and death.” — SAM. xx. 3.
“Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” — PROV. xxv11. 1.
The tale of this tragedy was completely unknown to me until a few weeks ago, despite the fact that I lived in Barrhead for the first 20 years of my life. Indeed, I lived just a stone’s through from ‘South Arthurlie Field’ and from ‘the Works’ (as we called the long derelict South Arthurlie printworks in the 1970s). In other words, I was - admittedly across the centuries — an unwittingly close neighbour of all those named on the monument.
There’s a second connection between us. Around the same time that I was brought back to our new home as a newborn baby in 1967, the town’s old ‘White Kirk’ was being demolished to make way for Barrhead’s new Sports Centre. The Glanderston Dam memorial (and, I presume, the graves from the churchyard) were moved to the Neilston Road graveyard at that time.
For me, it has been strange and moving to finally learn such a dramatic part of the history of the place in which I grew up. Despite the 179 years between us, the loss of these lives seems strangely proximate tonight. For example, the six people, across three generations of one family, that died in the Johnston house, were gathered there in anticipation of a Hogmanay trip to relatives in Cumbernauld; the kind of trip any of us might make this New Year, in the casual, if reasonable, expectation that — for us — there will be a New Year.
However, the single fact about the memorial and the story that perplexes and troubles me most is that we never get to know the first name of Mrs M’Intyre. Despite being the first name on the monument, in the few sources I have found — as on the monument — while we learn that her daughter Margaret died with her and that her husband Daniel survived, no-one has thought to include her name. How strange that we know something so intimate as the hour and circumstances of her death, and yet she is nameless. She appears only as a tragically lost wife, not as a woman, not as a person to be mourned in her own right.
So, in the lyrics of the song that this sad story has inspired, I have tried to remember her somehow, despite the fact that we know so little about her; and I lament the fact that, like the calico that was bleached at Springfield in the years following the disaster, all that is left of her is this white-washed, hollowed-out version of her story; in which she is defined and remembered only in relation to those for whom she cared, and because of the circumstances of her death.
She deserved her own name, at least.
So, if you care to listen, please listen for her; and maybe light a candle or toast her with your dram tonight.
You can find the song here: https://fergusmcneill.bandcamp.com/track/bleachfields
This beautiful cover art (below) is by my talented niece, Kirsty Wiltshire.
Lyrics
I can’t find your first name
Though my fingers traced your last
On that long-cold stone memorial
From our hometown’s old churchyard
I can’t find your first name
Though I know the hour you died
With Margaret lost beside you
And Daniel left behind
I wonder if like calico
Laid out in old Springhill
They bleached the stains away from you
Pristine - as you were still
In the cold, cold wind
And the hard, hard rain
I can’t find your first name
Though I’ve learned the other eight
Who the water carried with you
From the hearth’s side to the grave
I can’t find your first name
Though that hill became my home
When the White Kirk came to ruin
And the printworks were long gone
I wonder if like calico
Laid out in old Springhill
They bleached the stains away from you
Pristine - as you were still
In the cold, cold wind
And the hard, hard rain
When in my cot they laid me
They lifted you in death
From one place to another
May all our souls find rest, from the
Cold, the cold wind
And the hard, hard rain