Giffnock, United Kingdom

In 1854 Giffnock and Orchard Quarries were taken over by the former foreman and clerk, De Hort Baird and William Stevenson. They formed the firm Baird & Stevenson, which became a major force in Scottish quarrying; they later owned Locharbriggs Quarry in Dumfriesshire, thus supplying Glasgow with both blond Giffnock and red Dumfries sandstone. By 1866 the Busby Railway was built, allowing them to transport the stone by rail. Originally, a lower level line was laid from Giffnock railway station into the Orchard Quarry to facilitate the extraction of the stone.

Sandstone from the Giffnock quarries was primarily used within the nearby city of Glasgow and can be found in older parts of the University of Glasgow and the interior of Kelvingrove Art Gallery. A small amount of trade was done with Belfast, and some of the finer "liver rock" was even transported as far as America and South Africa to build both buildings and monuments.

Quarrying in Giffnock continued until 1912 when, due to flooding and the high cost of extracting stone, work ceased. Numerous ventures tried to revitalise the quarries for other purposes, including the cultivation of mushrooms in the tunnels. As the pits began to fill with water, it became an issue that needed to be resolved. In the early 1930s, William Bearmore & Co began tipping slag from the production of steel into the Giffnock quarries. The slag tipping continued until 1969, when Derek Crouch Limited began scrap metal extraction, which lasted until the late 1970s. Today the ground is a wasteland.

Coal mining was also carried out in Giffnock, between 1850 and 1926. The coal produced was of a very poor quality and was of little value to householders. The main use of Giffnock coal was with commercial and industrial customers such as Busby Gas Works.

The opening of Giffnock railway station in 1866 allowed business people to build sandstone villas and commute daily to the city. At the time, it was much more desirable to live in Giffnock than to live in the smog-polluted city. By the early 1890s, residential Giffnock began to grow around the railway station and Eastwood Toll, and by 1892 gas was introduced to the area. Gas street lamps were erected by Busby and District Gas Company in 1893; however, these were supported by a voluntary subscription that many households refused to pay, leaving many areas unlit. It was not until October 1896, when Eastwood Parish Council took over street lighting, that the area was consistently lit at night.

In 1903, two more railway stations were built on the edge of Giffnock, at Williamwood and Whitecraigs. These stations lay on the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway, originally built to provide a through route from the Lanarkshire coalfields to ports such as Ardrossan on the Ayrshire coast.

The growth of Giffnock was furthered in 1905 by the arrival of the first Glasgow Corporation Tramways tram in the town. The addition of this tram link and the nearby Whitecraigs railway station helped the popularity of Giffnock as a weekend destination and lead to the opening of Rouken Glen park in 1906 by Archibald Corbett (later Lord Rowallan), the M.P. for Tradeston. The Giffnock tramline was one of Glasgow Corporation Tramways's most profitable routes; up to 15,000 travelled to Giffnock on a Sunday to visit Rouken Glen.

During the great housing boom of the late 1930s, Giffnock began to grow rapidly. Between 1930 and 1940, as many as 3,000 dwellings were constructed, and the population rose dramatically, from 1,425 to 3,471 in 1939 and 9,144 in 1951.

On 7 May 1941, during the Greenock Blitz of World War II, the Nazi German Luftwaffe dropped a group of bombs over Giffnock, but only two houses were destroyed.

On 10 May 1941, Rudolf Hess, a prominent Nazi politician and deputy to Adolf Hitler parachuted out of his Messerschmitt Bf 110D near Waterfoot. Hess had flown solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom. He was detained by the Home Guard in the battalion headquarters in the Giffnock Scout hall, where he was questioned by Major Donald, the Assistant Group Officer of the Glasgow Royal Observer Corps before being transferred to Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow the following day. The wreckage of Hess's aircraft was salvaged by 63 Maintenance Unit (MU) between 11 and 16 May 1941. Part of the aeroplane is now in London's Imperial War Museum.