[BITList] Three Queens Liverpool, 2015

[HUGH]

Mike,

The Glen Mill, so called from being a mill at the Glen, was the Port Glasgow 
and Newark Sailcloth Co Ltd.  The Birkmyre's mill was a very much bigger, 
certainly higher, affair at the other (east) end of the town. Birkmyre made 
canvas and ropes, to name only  few. The Glen Mill, a single storey area, is 
long gone, not a trace remains, and so has all the single storey area of the 
Birkmyre mill.  Still standing is the 6 storey solid red brick bit the mania 
for demolition missed.  It's now expensive flats. In a way it's a memorial 
to the whole "mill" history of the town, and the brewing industry that 
preceded it with its smattering of German incomers.  The bottom 4 storeys of 
the Birkmyre building were a brewery in another life.  The Birkmyres were a 
typical "started from nothing" West of Scotland family, "nothing" being what 
some of my ancestors were satisfied with.  They did good works, the best 
known being a hospital. One of the brothers was a millwright in the mill, 
lived "up a close" in the town with a cousin of the poet James Thomson (The 
City of Dreadful Night, etc).

The Birkmyre millworkers would have had the chance of a great view of the 
Queen Elizabeth going down the river - I can't say if they got a few minutes 
off to take the chance.  I'd like to think they did.

Hugh.