Sandfield was the house my Gran, Jean Weir Baird (nee Macfarlane) was born in. Her parents were Duncan Macfarlane and Agnes Gray. Ages had lived just up the road at Craigholm prior to her marriage.
My mum, Agnes Margaret Duncan (nee Baird) had many memories of her grandparents, Duncan and Agnes, seen in this photo standing in front of the summer house in the front garden of Sandfield.
She wrote : My Grandmother would spend hours out here [the summer house} in the summer, reading, There was a mass of white heather to the left of the summer house and in the autumn I can remember going up the moor with my Gran to collect purple heather which was put into a shoebox along with White Heather. Holes were punctured on the ends of the box so that customs could see that it was only heather and it was posted out to Nan in Canada. Gran did this every year.
There was a flat paved area in front of the house then there were two rose beds on either side of a short path that laid up to a sundial. There was a grass slope leading up to a flat area of grass from the road. This was quite high and we were always told to be careful and not fall over onto the pavement. At one time there had been railings around this area but they had been removed as part of the war effort.
At the back of the house there were two plots. A pathway ran between them. Papa had the right hand side and Mr Mills from the upper flat of the villa had the left side. Papa loved his garden and grew lots of veg. To the left of Mr Mills plot there was the wash house and drying green.
There was no hot water of course, and that had to be heated in the boiler before you could start the washing on the right of Papa‘s plot. There was a road which ran from Mugdock Road from the main road to the right was a grass bank, Papa‘s large green workshop then four houses which I believe had been used for animals and storage. These have been refurbished and turned into cottages. The first in my time was occupied by Mr and Mrs. Ferrier and Sandy, the second Mr and Mrs Young and their two boys. In the last cottage where Mr and Mrs Blackadder he was a butcher and my mum used to go into his shop in Maryhill to get the Sunday roast.
I presume the wash house was used by all those families. Mr and Mrs Alec Young had cottages two and three turned into one house. They had two boys, the elder one had brittle bones and had to be very careful or his bones could just break. Mr Young had been a Japanese prisoner of war. He must have suffered terribly. Both Mr and Mrs Young were artists and she had worked as a student with Mr. Allan (my friend Kathleen Philp’s father). When [my brother] Ronnie died in 1984 Mr Young cycled over to the crematorium in Clydebank in order to attend his funeral.
Craigachan 