THIS quaint-looking edifice faces the north side of the old highway through the eastern suburb of Camlachie, a few yards east from modern East Neilson Street. Although now much disfigured, this house was at one time a place of some note. It is over 150 years old, having been built in 1720. The date is incised on the eaves.
When erected, the district was quite rural. The lands of Camlachie, on which it stands, extend to about twenty acres on both sides of the highway. On the east and south they are bounded by the burn of Camlachie, which, although it cannot now lay reasonable claim to Arabian fragrance, was in the olden time a trouting stream with grassy banks, and where it skirted the lands, was lined with trees. In some of the old leases still extant, the farmer of Camlachie was taken bound to preserve these from injury by his cattle in watering at the burn and otherwise.
During immemorial time coal was wrought at Camlachie, and a small hamlet of thatched houses existed on the south side of the highway, occupied chiefly by colliers, then little better than slaves, and who, when lands were sold, passed to the purchaser much in the same way as the negroes on an American plantation.
Originally the house and offices stood a short way back from the line of road. It had a parterre in front and a large garden behind, It was an entirely isolated building, no other houses being on the same side. Indeed, during many years it was the only two-story house in that district. The old highway which intersected the hamlet was known as "Camlachie Lone," and was both steep and narrow.
The person who built the house was the third and last John Walkinshaw of Camlachie and Barrowfield. His residence was in a fine old mansion on the latter estate, at one time the property of George Hutcheson, one of the founders of the Hospital. There had been no mansion, however, on the adjoining lands of Camlachie, and the house in the photograph was erected to supply that want and to form a residence for the dowagers of Barrowfield.
The last John Walkinshaw was somewhat notable. His paternal grandfather, of the same Christian name, was a younger son of the old Renfrewshire family of Walkinshaw of that Ilk, and became a wealthy Glasgow merchant. He purchased both the lands of Wester Camlachie and Barrowfield the year after the Revolution. His son, also named John, succeeded, and was equally eminent as a merchant. Then came the builder of the house on Camlachie.
His mother was a daughter of Principal Baillie. One of Mr. Walkinshaw's sisters was the mother of Lord Kames. Another was grandmother of Sir Hay Campbell of Garscube, Lord President. He himself espoused in 1703 a daughter of Sir Hugh Paterson, Bart., of Bannockburn. Mr. Walkinshaw was a keen Jacobite. He was "out" in 1715, and taken prisoner at Sheriffmuir. He escaped from Stirling Castle by the adroitness of his lady, who, in one of her visits to her imprisoned husband, changed clothes with him and remained in his room.
After the amnesty for state offences, Mr. Walkinshaw returned to Barrowfield, and it was soon after this that he built the house at Camlachie. He was also the founder of Calton, on his lands of Blackfauld : and Bridgeton stands principally on his old estate of Barrowfield. Mr. Walkinshaw had no son, but ten daughters. Of these, six were married into families of note. A seventh held many years a situation of trust in the household of the Princess Dowager of Wales, mother of George III. (1)
In 1734, the house, and the lands, were sold to John Orr, an eminent Glasgow merchant, who enclosed and greatly improved the latter. He was succeeded by his son, William, during whose proprietorship the house was temporarily occupied by a celebrated officer. In these days, no barracks existed in Glasgow, and when a regiment came to town the soldiers were quartered on the inhabitants. In March 1749, Lord George Sackville's regiment arrived under the command of its Lieutenant-Colonel, James Wolfe. He fell to the lot of Mr. Orr, who assigned to him, as quarters, the Camlachie mansion. Wolfe was then only twenty-two, but had seen much service in Flanders, having entered the army at the early age of fifteen, under his father, a Veteran General, and only three years before his arrival in Glasgow, had been at Culloden. A number of Wolfe's letters are preserved, written from this queer old house in Camlachie. In one of these to an intimate brother officer, dated 2nd April, 1749, Wolfe delivers himself of the following piece of high-treason, - "The women here (Glasgow), are coarse, cold, and cunning, for ever inquiring after men's circumstances. They make that the standard of their good breeding. You may imagine it would not be difficult for me to be pretty well received here if I took pains, having some of the advantages necessary to recommend me to their favour . . ."
When Wolfe terminated his brilliant career, ten years afterwards, at the capture of Quebec, which gave Canada to Britain, old citizens of the last generation recalled his appearance, tall and slender, riding to and from his Camlachie quarters, on a spirited grey charger. The house was well identified, and his name is associated with it as a designative to the photograph. In 1753 Mr. Orr granted a lease of the edifice, apart from the lands, to a company for carrying on the woollen manufacture. The terms were rather remarkable. The rent was to be £16, 13s. 4d. per annum, with a grassum of £20 every twentieth year, and the duration was to be "one million of twelve months, after Whitsunday 1753."
But the company soon after collapsed, and the house has since belonged to a succession of minor proprietors. Comparatively modern buildings now press upon it; the old steep and narrow highway has been raised and widened, and the suburb greatly improved. But the house of the Walkinshaws and the residence of General Wolfe still lingers there, and is by far the oldest edifice in the whole eastern district. [1870.]
(1) The youngest, Clementina, named after the wife of "the Old Pretender," a grand-daughter of the renowned John Sobieski, King of Poland, is memorable for her probable marriage to Prince Charles Edward Stuart. The French King created her la Comptesse d'Alberstrof. She died at Fribourg, Switzerland, at an advanced age, in November 1802. Her daughter the accomplished Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany, is commemorated by Burns as "the bonnie lass of Albany."
All these Barrowfield ladies must have been often in this now unheeded Camlachie mansion.
Back to Contents