Stewart
Active Member
Thornliebank lies on the fringe of Eastwood, surrounded on three sides by the meandering Cart. A small village, of about five thousand people, it is a commercial ruin when compared to its glorious past a century before when almost all were under the employ of the local calico printworks, a gargantuan operation known worldwide, owned by Walter Crum.
These days, however, long grass stands on the site of the factory and the skyline is free of tall stacks and their venomous clouds. And there is little work to be found other than in the small, independently owned shops that pepper the sole thoroughfare which was, for simplicity’s sake, named Main Street.
A few buses pass through while completing a circular route that always ends in Glasgow, almost seven miles north. The trains, however, cut through the village on their more direct passage to the city from nearby East Kilbride, a town which, when the railroad was first built, did not exist.
Main Street, as the name would suggest, is the focus of the village. Local businesses, such as bars, grocers, and bakeries sit there comfortably alongside the newer introductions to the economy, namely Spar, Farmfoods, and McDonalds.
Such comfort, however, is not prevalent in Thornliebank. In fact, the village could be looked at as one of divisions. The shops, for instance, are on one side of Main Street while, across the busy road, flats built in the past fifty years house the majority of the inhabitants. Not directly, the shops are the cause of a widening generation gap, as the elder citizens spend their day lazing around in the local teashops while the children spend lunch in the less than satisfying fast food outlets. Religion, however, is the biggest divider of all.
There are two churches in Thornliebank, representing Catholic and Protestant sensibilities, and there are also two bars that, unofficially, assume the religious feeling of the churches when Sunday has not yet arrived. The religious differences can be traced back to the village’s boom when many Irish immigrants were introduced to the locale, an event which promptly instigated the making of an Orange Order that, to this day, brings crowds onto the street in July to sing, applaud, and hate.
The bigotry today, of course, is related less to religion than it is to football and Thornliebank, it would surprise some to know, has its own sporting past which has, like the calico industry, slipped into the dustiest of history books. In 1880, the village team made it all the way to the Scottish Cup Final but were beaten three goals without reply by the dominant team of the time, Queen’s Park.
The school, at the furthest point from the old factory site, has an eventful history too. It was built, like most of the surviving buildings, by the generous wallets of the Crum as they worked upon their “model village” vision. A fire at the tail of the 19th Century caused the school to close but, a few years later and it had reopened. A cenotaph, cut from marble, stands just outside the school grounds. The grim list of losses from the World Wars, cataloguing the village’s grief, is brightened, aesthetically only, by a trio of poppy wreaths.
And standing at the entrance to Thornliebank is the Crum Library, a memorial to Alexander Crum after his death in 1897. Surrounded by the marvellous green leaves of horsechestnuts, the library has closed only once in its history, an event necessitated by a need to follow suit with the rest of the village and modernise.
A garden surrounds the library, complete with sundial and stonecut benches that, on a fine summer afternoon, the older residents can relax on and reflect. Perhaps they are looking at the huge chestnut tree that stands before the library, the tree that has become the emblem of Thornliebank. Maybe, when they look at it, they offer thanks that in this ever changing world, there’s something that has remained the same for as long as they can remember.
