East Renfrewshire

East Renfrewshire
Aest Renfrewshire
Siorrachd Rinn Friù an Ear
Coordinates: 55°47′54″N 4°17′27″W / 55.7984°N 4.2907°W / 55.7984; -4.2907Coordinates: 55°47′54″N 4°17′27″W / 55.7984°N 4.2907°W / 55.7984; -4.2907
Admin HQ Giffnock
Government
 • Body East Renfrewshire Council
 • Control Lab + SNP + Ind (council NOC)
 • MPs Kirsten Oswald
(SNP – East Renfrewshire)
 • MSPs • Jackson Carlaw
(Conservative – Eastwood)
• Tom Arthur
(SNP – Renfrewshire South)
Area
 • Total 67 sq mi (174 km2)
Area rank Ranked 28th
Population (2010 est.)
 • Total 91,000
 • Rank Ranked 24th
 • Density 1,330/sq mi (515/km2)
ONS code 00QN
ISO 3166 code GB-ERW
Website http://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/

East Renfrewshire (Scots: Aest Renfrewshire, Scottish Gaelic: Siorrachd Rinn Friù an Ear) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. Until 1975 it formed part of the county of Renfrewshire for local government purposes along with the modern council areas of Renfrewshire and Inverclyde. Although no longer a local authority area, Renfrewshire still remains the registration county and lieutenancy area of East Renfrewshire.

The East Renfrewshire local authority was formed in 1996, as a successor to the Eastwood district, along with Barrhead, which came from Renfrew district. It borders onto the City of Glasgow, East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, Renfrewshire and South Lanarkshire.

East Renfrewshire Council

Logo of East Renfrewshire Council

The leader of East Renfrewshire Council is Cllr Jim Fletcher (Labour - Giffnock & Thornliebank) and the Civic Leader is Provost Alastair Carmichael (SNP).

Honorary Freemen

The following six persons have been appointed as Honorary Freeman of East Renfrewshire under section 206 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 for being persons of distinction or persons who have rendered eminent service to the area:

Walter McCreadie, JP (Former councillor of Renfrew District Council and East Renfrewshire Council)

Marianne Grant (Holocaust survivor)

Alex McLeish (Former manager of Scotland football team)

Sir Harry Burns (Chief Medical Officer for Scotland)

Ian Drysdale (Former councillor of Strathclyde Regional Council and East Renfrewshire Council)

Allan C Steele, MBE, JP, ACII (First Provost of East Renfrewshire Council (two terms); former councillor of Eastwood District Council and Strathclyde Regional Council)

Readers Digest Poll

In a 2007 Reader's Digest poll, East Renfrewshire was voted the second best place in Britain to raise a family, ranking just behind East Dunbartonshire on the northwest side of Glasgow.[1]

In January 2008 East Renfrewshire became the first Scottish local authority to create a Facebook page to publicise its services.[2]

Political composition

Party Members
Labour 8
Conservative 6
SNP 4
Independent 2

Demographics

The results of the 2001 census were as follows:

A 2001 survey showed that about half of Scotland's Jewish population lives in East Renfrewshire.

Business

East Renfrewshire is home to many small to medium businesses. The interests of these businesses are looked after by the East Renfrewshire Chamber of Trade & Commerce

The local newspapers are the Barrhead News, covering the local authority with emphasis on the town of Barrhead and the villages of Neilston and Uplawmoor, and the Glasgow South and Eastwood Extra, which is delivered free to homes and businesses.

History

The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is traces of an iron-age fort in the Busby area and a pre-Roman settlement in Overlee. These early buildings that predate any maps show the land around would have been suitable for farming, which retained its importance thousands of years later, when the earliest documentation of habituation was of the 230 residents of Muirend in 1435, when the village was surrounded by farmland. The villagers however, were predominantly Irish and worked at the paper mill on the nearby river cart. The farmlands were owned by the Maxwells, a rich and influential family who owned land and important buildings all over Glasgow, growing and building more with each generation, including the building of the local landmark, Pollok House in Pollok Park in C.1700.

Also in the 15th century began the building of Cathcart Castle, completed C.1450 with an impressive view over the landscape in all directions. It was at this castle Mary Queen of Scots supposedly spent the night before her defeat at the Battle of Langside in May 1568. The Castle was Demolished in 1980 for safety reasons.

The surrounding lands were known collectively under the name “Lee”, but separated into the smaller districts as they are today in 1678, when John Maxwell, owner of the lands was found guilty of assisting the covenanting cause and forced to give up his lands, and his servants were sent as slaves to the West Indies. The area’s around his house were named ‘Williamwood’ after the mansion itself and the lower parts of the lands of ‘Lee’ were adequately renamed ‘Netherlee’.

Clarkston, although the busiest of the modern districts, was the last village to be built, starting in 1793. It expanded rapidly when many of the workers of the Giffnock Quarries (opened in 1835 and whose honey-coloured stones can be found in Glasgow University, Central Station, the old Co-op building on Morrison St, and many buildings worldwide) moved there due to the linking of the two sites by rail in 1866.

Around this time the lands towards Glasgow, (predominantly Netherlee and most of Muirend and Cathcart) remained farmlands, dominated by the massive ‘Bogton’s Farm & Dairy’ building (situated where the former Safeway supermarket - first in Scotland - now stands on Clarkston Rd) owned by John M. Hamilton, dairy farmer and horse enthusiast. The lands to the left of his farm were a training ground for his horses, and his favourite was a Spanish horse by the name of “Toledo”, which cinema builder William Beresford Inglis took as the name of his Toledo Cinema which was built on that spot in 1933. The cinema was closed on 21 October 2001 to make way for 30 new 2 bedroom flats, but the art-deco façade was kept and restored.

The building of the cinema was in response to the need for entertainment in the area, which had since grown to a population of around 4,000. New stone residential buildings had been built over the period of 15 years due to resource shortage during the war, the last house not being finished until 1925, at first being used to house evacuees during World War I.

In 1941, Rudolf Hess, one of Adolf Hitler's top deputies within the Nazi Party, parachuted into a field near Eaglesham on a secret mission to meet the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon for peace negotiations. The botched landing led to his capture and arrest.

Growth continued slowly during the second half of the 20th century, however tragedy struck when at around 3pm on 21 October 1971, a huge gas explosion tore out the heart of the Clarkston shopping area. The blast killed 20, and injured more than 100, as the blast caught a passing bus and forced the upper-level car park to collapse. A plaque mourning the event can be found at the entrance to the train station, together with an anniversary plaque and tree in the car park of nearby Clarkston Library/Halls.[3]

East Renfrewshire has a strong legacy in education and in 2007, St. Mark's RC Primary in Barrhead received an outstanding HMIe report with 11 'excellents', making St. Mark's the highest ranked school in Scotland. The second highest ranked school in Scotland is also in East Renfrewshire; Our Lady of the Missions Primary School in Giffnock achieved nine "excellents" in its HMIE report in October 2006.[4] However, the reputation for excellence in education was damaged in 2011 when East Renfrewshire Council opted to close Robslee Primary School and to give the Robslee building over to Our Lady of The Missions Primary from August 2014. This was a hugely unpopular local decision and the consultation met with strong local objection.[5] Despite this, Director of Education, John Wilson OBE,[6] recommended to the council that Robslee should close to give their accommodation to Our Lady of The Missions Primary School.

References

  1. ↑ BBC News - Scots areas top happy family poll - 18 April 2007
  2. ↑ Scotsman - East Renfrewshire uses Facebook to boost its libraries and sports centres - 31 January 2008
  3. ↑ Information on the Clarkston Gas Explosion.
  4. ↑ BBC News - Primary School 'best in Scotland' - 23 October 2006
  5. ↑ http://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=676&p=0
  6. ↑ "Praise for retiring education chief". Herald Scotland.

External links


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