THE formerly finely wooded vale
of the Kelvin was one of the most favourite haunts conveniently
accessible to our citizens; many of the older inhabitants, we have no
doubt, must find its name a talisman capable of exciting their sweetest
langsyne memories. The former village of Partick was pleasantly and
romantically situated on the western bank of the Kelvin, at its junction
with the Clyde.
In the immediate vicinity of Partick, and also on the
western hank of the Kelvin, until the past few years, there stood
a ruinous edifice of no great extent, which by some was supposed to have
been erected as a country residence at an early
date, by one of the bishops of the See of Glasgow. Around the
spot a number of fine old trees were scattered, the
scene altogether was just such a one as a
dreamy poet or painter would have loved to linger by,
peopling the desested walls with the forms of other days.
The appearance of the venerable structure has been
preserved by a loving pencil; and a goodly number of years ago a poet
of considerable merit was addressed to it by some
nameless bard in one of the local periodicals. The following verse of
the production is all that we have been able to
recover from the leaky memory of a friend who committed it to heart in
his boyhood, and who thinks that it was in a
number of the Bee or the Glasgow Magazine that he must
have seen it originally :—
Lo, Partick Castle, drear and lone,
Stands like a silent looker-on,
Where Clyde and Kelvin meet;
The long rank grass waves o’er its walls;
No sound is heard within its halls,
Save noise ot distant waterfalls,
Where children lavo their feet."
The great antiqiuity of this building, we may mention
has been recently denied, on the authority of certain papers preserved
by a descendant of Mr. George Hutcheson, one of
the brothers who founded
the hospital of that name in the
city, and who, according to these papers, also
erected the
house in question. One of the documents alluded to
is a contract with
William Miller, mason in Kilwinning, for the erection of
the stonework of the aforesaid house, wherein the
standard of measurement is pawkily stated to be according
to the length of
"Ye said George’s ain fute."
In corroboration of this
statement also, we find in Hamilton of Wishaw’s
Description of Lanarkshire a passage to the following effect:
"Above this, where Kelvin falls into Clyde, is the house of Pertique, a
well-built and convenient house, well planted with barren timber and
large gardens, which are enclosed with stone walls, and which formerly
belonged to George Hutcheson in Glasgow, but now to John Crawford of
Myltoun."
It would therefore seem that The Castle, as it
was generally called, was not of so ancient a date as was traditionally
supposed. It is certain, however, that the proud prelates of Glasgow had
for many years a favourite rural residence in the vicinity of Partick
and nothing is more probable than that it was situated at this spot,
which in those days must have been invested with a landscape beauty of
no ordinary kind.
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