NEWS AND UPDATES
This page is a progress log where you can find information about significant updates that have been made to the website. (Note that we sometimes to update this page so no comments do not necessarily mean that there have been no updates.)
Most recent updates at the top of the list.
9 May 2013: Added contribution about Jamestown Amateurs FC. View >
4 May 2013: Added note by Jim Biddulph about the National Museums of Scotland's "Colouring the Nation" project. View >
25 Feb 2013: Added a history of the Loch Lomond based Clyde Canoe Club. View >
16 Feb 2013: Added a history of Jamestown Parish Church. View >
11 Feb 2013: Added an interesting account of Prince Albert's visit to Loch Lomond and Balloch in 1849. View>
5 February 2013: We have added two new pages to the site that will be of interest to a few people. These are on youth organisations and the Boy's Brigade in the Vale. View >
28 November 2012: We found an image showing McKenzies bar from around 100 years ago, which solved the story about it once being called the "Motor Bar". See submission on 2009 discussion page for 8 April. View >
25 November 2012: Billy Scobie has produced a speculative but interesting case for the often disputed location of the Robin Hood legend being in our area. View >
21 November 2012: Added a series of nostalgic articles about life in 1950s Vale of Leven by Eleanor Thomson, a writer and ex-pat who now lives in France. View >
6 October 2012: Added an article by A. Graham Lappin about trams in the Vale of Leven. View >
26 July 2012: Added a more detailed description of "The Slunger" in the place names page. View >
22 July 2012: Added story of the crash landings of a flight of Fairey Swordfish aircraft in the Boll o' Meal in 1941. View >
28 June 2012: Added background to the aerial picture mentioned below. This also includes some fascinating detail of a Home Guard exercise that took place in the Gartocharn area in 1943. View >
25 June 2012: Added an aerial picture of the Vale that was taken by the Germans during WW2 when they were planning to target the RNTF for a bombing raid. View >
8 June 2012: Local writer James Barr published an account of his recollections of the Disruption of 1843 including some memories of the Rev. Gregor. Graham Lappin provided a downloadable PDF of this account. View >
26 May 2012: Harry Summers has written a detailed account of the the war memorials in the district.
View >
14 April 2012: Billy Scobie has contributed an article on the hill-fort on Carman Muir, which was discovered by aerial photography in 1954. The database of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland describes it as, “Citadel Fort of Dark Age type C measuring 150 yards in diameter, with stone ramparts, ditches, and sunken approach roads.” View >
1 March 2012: Dumbarton library has a "Sports in the Locality" exhibition running from today March 1st until 28th April. For this exhibition the "Loving Cup" has been borrowed from the SFA museum at Hampden. It will be on display in the library for anyone who would like to see it. The story of the loving cup is on this page.
11 November 2011: Added a downloadable copy of Andrew Stewart's poetry. View >
6 November 2011: Added link from Wars page to article describing the sinking of the newly built K13 steam powered submarine during trials in the Gare Loch in 1917. Although not specifically a Vale of Leven incident it has sufficient local interest for it to be included here. View >
5 November 2011: Added Wildlife in the Vale article. View >
Added history of Bonhill Parish Church. View >
4 November 2011: Added a list of answers to Andrew Stewart's poem, " A Quiz for Jeely Eaters". Can you help with this? View >
29 October 2011: Added more TA stories from Malcolm Lobban. View >
22 October 2011:
- Added Vale Memories, a contribution from Malcolm Lobban about life in the Vale from the 1930's to the fifties. View >
- Added two articles to the Vale in the Wars page. One of these is a brief history of the local fighting units in Dunbartonshire in the past 2 centuries and the men who served in them, by Mike Taylor. View >
- The second article is The Evolution of 3 (Argyll 1 Sutherland Highlanders) Coy. of the 51st Highland Volunteers by Malcolm Lobban. View >
17 October 2011: Added an interesting submission about Jimmy Lappin's commando and SAS army service in WWII. View >
14 October 2011: Added new content to Vale Songs and Poetry page. View >
12 October 2011: Added article to Wale in the Wars page. View >
16 September 2011: Added Graham Lappin's article about Turkey Red Trade Tickets. (Note that this is a PDF of about 17Mb so it may take a few seconds to download.) View >
21 August 2011: Added article about Alexandria's Black Bull pub, which stood at the fountain. View >
18 August 2011: Added article from W. Scobie about William Wallace's possible visit to Bonhill. View >
17 August 2011: Added another detailed and excellently researched contribution from A. Graham Lappin about the Chartist movement in Alexandria. View >
17 August 2011: A. Graham Lappin has donated a copy "Balloch and Around", the excellent and highly entertaining memoirs of James Barr's Balloch 1820 - 1845. View >
3 May 2011: Added Vale Empire theatre page. View >
18 March 2011: Added Babcock and Wilcox page. View >
6 March 2011: Added video page. View >
15 November 2010: The Roots of Alexandria St Andrews Parish Church - a contribution by Harry Summers (with contributions from several others) has been added. This is another fascinating article with some interesting pictures. View >
17 October 2010: Added an image of the Vale of Leven FC to the sports pages. Have a look at this and get in touch if you have any information to offer about this image or the people in it. View >
20 September 2010: Added an article submitted by Tommy Crocket on the Haldane Film Society to the contributions page and a poem submitted by Hazel Mills to the poetry page.
28 August 2010 - Added information and images to the sport page of a Scottish cup medal won by John McDougall of the Vale of Leven FC in 1877.
14 July 2010: An entry has been added to the discussion pages regarding a story about the Vale of Leven FC's strip being the basis for that worn by the Scottish international football team. Read >
12 July 2010: A new (redesigned) website has been launched. Apart from some background functionality improvements I have tried to make it a bit more vivid and colourful. I would appreciate your comments on this (critical or otherwise). Any suggestions as to how it could be further improved would be very welcome.
With regard to content, some minor freshening up has been done. We are still looking for appropriate contributions of images and stories so if you have anything that you think may be of interest to Vale people we urge you to get in touch.
23 June 2010: A short article about a Vale man's war during WW1 has been added to the Vale in the Wars page.
28 May 2010: A link to a silent film of the Vale of Leven Gala day shot in 1972 has been sent to us by Tommy Crocket. Some of you will remember these gala days. This one took place probably just before the time when the Vale stopped being ... well "The Vale" that many of us remember.
The film quality is not great and there is no sound but there is a lot of interesting stuff there. You may even see faces that you recognise. The footage includes coverage of football, ladies hockey, beautiful baby competition, highland dancing, judo and a motor bike stunts team. The beautiful babies will all be approaching 40 years old now!
Please have a look at this and if you see yourself or anyone you know let us know and we'll put your comments on here.
26 May 2010: An interesting image donated by Graham Lappin has been added to the Balloch Navy page. Graham saw this advertised in the Chicago Tribune and bought it for the website. LINK >
18 May 2010: Many of you reading this will no doubt have attended Bonhill Public School (as I did). The old school is to be demolished and it is closing at the end of this term. The new school opens on the first day of the new term after the summer holiday.
An event has been organised to take place on June 5th in and around the old school and all former pupils and others are invited to come along from 1pm till late evening and join the party. See the Myspace page for more information.
9 April 2010: After a lengthy period of hard work and dedication Strathleven Artisans have established a King Robert the Bruce Heritage Centre in the building that was formerly Renton Station.
The opening ceremony was attended by members of the Bruce family who are descended from this former king of Scotland, on Saturday 27 March, 2010. A report from the Lennox Herald can be seen here.
Members of Dumbarton Cine Video and Digital Club filmed events surrounding the opening ceremony and they are presently working on the preparation of a film. A taster for this film can be seen here.
The Centre is open to the public between the hours of 12 and 4 pm on weekdays and 12 and 5 pm at weekends. The volunteer staff will be happy to see you.
8 March 2010: Some significant additions have been made to the web site over the last few days.
- Added page which will feature information about the Vale during war time
- Added page about the Balloch Navy.
- Added page with aerial photographs of the Vale taken in 1947.
- Added picture of Castle Danger
15 February 2010: Two new images have been received. These are of the Scotts farming at Overton farm in 1938. View >
27 January 2010: A new image has been added to the discussion page for the article below.
11 January 2010: See the 2010 discussion page if you can offer any information about the memorial stone in the middle of the copse of trees in the field at Duck Bay.
27 November 2009: We have added an excellent and highly detailed contribution from Harry Summers. This is a history of the Bonhill Parish Pipe Band from 1931 until 1979.
24 November 2009: Apologies - I have not been updating this news page of late but without going into detail there have been some interesting additions to the discussion page. Have a look.
11 July 2009: I have added some interesting images from Eddie Shovelin. These are of a group called the "Independent Order of Good Templars", the Levendale Cycling Club outing and one taken on the platform of Renton railway station in 1922. If anyone can offer further information about these images please get in touch. (Discussion page)
8 April 2009 - The Motor Bar: Do you remember the time when McKenzies Pub in Main St. Alexandria was known as the "Motor Bar"? (Discussion page)
24 March 2009: We have now added a search feature to the website, which should greatly enhance the website user's experience . This is a free search facility supplied by Google that appears above the menu on every page. We would appreciate your feedback on this.
9 February 2009: The "Appin Murder" was contributed by William Scobie. It is an interesting tale that offers a local link to this notorious murder, which was featured in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel “Kidnapped”.
15 January 2009: As a matter of interest I thought I would post
the top twenty website visitor statistics for the last six months of 2008.
Obviously the UK provides the vast majority of visitors but that still leaves a large number from around the world.
The English speaking countries will always provide the largest number of visitors followed by our near European neighbours due to the number of ex pats living there. Other countries outside of the top twenty that have provided traffic include, Serbia, Taiwan, Pakistan, Mexico, Libya, Kazakhstan, Japan, The Bahamas, Namibia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. The Internet is providing information about the Vale, B'nill and the Ranton to people all over the world!
14 January 2009: The Dumbarton Reporter is looking to do a story on any expatriate Scots who are returning to the area during this Homecoming Year. If you are one of them or you know of any others who will be making a visit during 2009 please let us know.
12 January 2009: We received some interesting pictures and humourous material from Colin Elliott, whose father was John Elliott of Elliot's garage in Jamestown. This has been added to the Jamestown page.
5 December 2008: Added an article called "Bridging the Leven". This was contributed by Gordon Burns - a history of the River Leven's Bridges.
3 December 2008: Added a sitemap, a navigational aid to assist users to find the information they are seeking.
3 December 2008: Added a page on the history of the Jamestown Primary School.
11 September 2008: Added entry to ex-pats page along with some new images and information about the Haldane Smiddy on the discussion page.
5 September 2008: Images added to the Jamestown page.
5 September 2008: We have added interesting pictures of the Bonhill Pipe Band and the Jamestown and Vale of Leven Brass Band.
4 September 2008: The Famous Vale of Leven Folk pages has been added today. We hope that this will generate interest and lead to suggestions of other famous folk from the Vale that we have missed. It is difficult to define "famous", but for the purposes of this website, we have tried to identify people whose names and activities are recognised not just in the Vale, but also on a Scottish and UK level, and in some cases internationally.
3 September 2008: The local newspaper, "The Lennox", ran a feature on us this week so we will be getting lots of new visitors and this will be a busy period for us.
3 September 2008: I received an email from Tommy Crocket who has created a nice little photo display of the Vale of Leven. This is available on YouTube.
2 September 2008: The Bonhill pages are almost complete. These contain lots of excellent images.
27 August 2008: We have had a contribution of an Excellent history of the Loch Lomond Steamers. This was written for us by Graham Lappin. Click here to view.
