Down Memory Lane

Shear skill: This picture, sourced from the very aptly named Alec Lamb by local historian Charlie Todd, depicts a then state-of-the-art sheep shearing demonstration – using a Lister engine. This is one of hundreds of images of farming life as it was lived in the early 20th century, mainly in the Thankerton/Symington area, preserved in Charlie’s collection. While the equipment in use here has long been superceded by more modern gear, sheep-shearing is still a recognised skill among today’s farming community. Even when this photograph was taken, the mechanisation that would transform working life on our farms was starting to make its inroads. The farmers watching this display would have been more familiar with the use of old-fashioned shears, much like those used by many farming generations before them. In fact, one of the very few constants in farming life from the time of this picture are the farmers’ traditional headgear, the bunnet!

50 YEARS AGO

n Lanark Town Council drew up a £268,000 plan for the complete modernisation of New Lanark village, making bigger houses while retaining the existing external appearance of the village as much as possible.

n Goods worth over £500 were stolen during an early morning break-in at Alexander Brooks drapers, Hamilton Street, Carluke. The thieves had gained entry by removing a pane of glass from a skylight window.

n Carluke Councillor Robert Brooks suggested at a Lanark County Council meeting that smoking should be prohibited in certain council departments and offices, particularly where young members of the community were employed.

n Carluke’s only go-kart racer, 19-year-old Drummond Pringle of 36 Glenmavis Crescent, won the Larkhall Kart Club Championship with four wins out of five races.

n The first Tom Scott Memorial Road Race was the following day from Law to Motherwell, in memory of the Law runner killed while travelling to compete at a race in England in 1961.

100 YEARS AGO

nPractically every seat at St Leonard’s Church in Lanark was occupied, as the choir, under Mr Morton, gave a superb rendering of ‘David’.

n Two Lanark men were charged at Lanark Police Court with stealing three bags of oats and one bag of chop from a granary at Jerviswood Mains Farm. The accused pleaded not guilty and, after hearing the evidence on both sides, Bailie Lamb returned a verdict of not proven.

n Films ‘For The Sake of His Child’ and ‘The Cowboy and the Outlaw’ went down well at McAndrew’s Electric Theatre in Lanark.

n A man suspected of having set fire to eight farm steadings in the district of Thornhills, Dumfriesshire, was arrested by local police at Carstairs Junction.

n Kirkfieldbank school was broken into and desks in several rooms ransacked, after the thieves had gained access via unlocked windows.

n Braidwood was commended as being a great place to visit, in a Caledonian Railway Company book entitled ‘The Uplands of the Lowlands’.