[BITList] Birkmyre Brothers

[John Feltham]

On 4 Mar 2015, at 7:26 pm, HUGH <chakdara at btinternet.com> wrote:

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.

Quite some time ago I corresponded with a descendant of the Birkmyres. I think that she lived in the Bahmas or West Indies.

You can Google Birkmyres - there is quite a lot there if you dig hard enough.

ooroo


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