Visit East Renfrewshire Places

Visit East Renfrewshire Place – things to do & explore

  

East Renfrewshire places overview by Walkfo

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East Renfrewshire history

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The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is traces of an iron-age fort in the Busby area and a pre-Roman settlement in what is now Overlee Park, in Clarkston. These early buildings that predate any maps show the land around would have been suitable for farming, which retained its importance thousands of years later, when the earliest documentation of habituation was of the 230 residents of Muirend in 1435. At the time, the village was surrounded by farmland. The village was mostly in modern-day Glasgow but did cross slightly over into modern day Netherlee, which is part of East Renfrewshire. The villagers were predominantly Irish and worked at the paper mill on the nearby White Cart Water. The farmlands were owned by the Maxwells, a rich and influential family who owned land and important buildings all over Glasgow, growing and building more with each generation, including the building of the Pollok House in Pollok Park in C.1700. The surrounding lands were known collectively under the name “Lee”, but separated into the smaller districts as they are today in 1678, when John Maxwell, owner of the lands was found guilty of assisting the covenanting cause and forced to give up his lands, and his servants were sent as slaves to the West Indies. The areas around his house were named ‘Williamwood’ after the mansion itself and the lower parts of the lands of ‘Lee’ were adequately renamed ‘Netherlee’. The higher parts of the lands of ‘Lee’ were named Midlee and Overlee. Today, the name Midlee has gone and much of what used to be Midlee and Overlee is now the neighbourhood of Stamperland, which has a park named Overlee Park located within, as well as the old Overlee farmhouse. A small neighbourhood on the other side of the railway is still known as Overlee today. Some suburbs also retain the name Williamwood, North Williamwood, located in Netherlee, and the much larger South Williamwood, located in Clarkston. South Williamwood also has Williamwood railway station located there. Williamwood House was rebuilt multiple times, but the house still exists as a care home in North Williamwood, overlooking Williamwood Golf Course. Giffnock expanded rapidly when many of the workers of the Giffnock Quarries (opened in 1835 and whose honey-coloured stones can be found in Glasgow University, Central Station, the old Co-op building on Morrison St, and many buildings worldwide) moved there due to the linking of the two sites by rail in 1866. Around this time the area around the border with Glasgow (East Renfrewshire’s Netherlee and most of Glasgow’s Muirend and Cathcart) remained farmlands, dominated by the massive ‘Bogton’s Farm & Dairy’ building on the Glasgow side (situated at what used to be the first Safeway supermarket in Scotland, but is now the Muirend Sainsbury’s supermarket) owned by John M. Hamilton, dairy farmer and horse enthusiast. The lands to the left of his farm were a training ground for his horses, and his favourite was a Spanish horse by the name of “Toledo”, which cinema builder William Beresford Inglis took as the name of his Toledo Cinema which was built on that spot in 1933. The cinema was closed on 21 October 2001 to make way for 30 new 2 bedroom flats, but the art-deco façade was kept and restored. The building of the cinema was in response to the need for entertainment in the area, which had since grown to a population of around 4,000. New stone residential buildings had been built over the period of 15 years due to resource shortage during the war, the last house not being finished until 1925, at first being used to house evacuees during World War I. This area would become known as Netherlee. In 1941, Rudolf Hess, one of Adolf Hitler’s top deputies within the Nazi Party, parachuted into Floors Farm, near the village of Waterfoot, on a secret mission to meet the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon for peace negotiations. The botched landing led to his capture and arrest. Growth continued slowly during the second half of the 20th century, however tragedy struck when at around 3pm on 21 October 1971, a huge gas explosion destroyed a large part of a building on Clarkston’s main street. The blast killed 21, and injured more than 100, as the blast caught a passing bus and caused the upper-level car park to collapse. The building was repaired and in parts rebuilt, and a plaque mourning the event can be found on the building, by the entrance to the neighbouring Clarkston railway station, together with an anniversary plaque and tree in the car park of the nearby Clarkston Hall. East Renfrewshire has a strong legacy in education and in 2007, St. Mark’s RC Primary in Barrhead received an outstanding HMIe report with 11 ‘excellents’, making St. Mark’s the highest ranked school in Scotland. The second highest ranked school in Scotland is also in East Renfrewshire; Our Lady of the Missions Primary School in Giffnock achieved nine “excellents” in its HMIE report in October 2006. However, the reputation for excellence in education was damaged in 2011 when East Renfrewshire Council opted to close Robslee Primary School and to give the Robslee building over to Our Lady of The Missions Primary from August 2014. This was a hugely unpopular local decision and the consultation met with strong local objection. Despite this, Director of Education, John Wilson OBE, recommended to the council that Robslee should close to give their accommodation to Our Lady of The Missions Primary School.

You can visit East Renfrewshire places and use Walkfo East Renfrewshire to discover the history & things to do in East Renfrewshire whilst walking with our free digital tour app. Walkfo East Renfrewshire has 46 places on our East Renfrewshire map with history, culture & travel facts that you explore the same way you would at a museum or art gallery with information audio headset. With Walkfo, you can travel by foot, bike or bus throughout East Renfrewshire, being in the moment, without digital distraction or limits to a specific walking route – you choose where you want to go, when you want to go and Walkfo East Renfrewshire will keep up.
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With millions of places including tourist walks, East Renfrewshire travel destinations, National Trust locations converted to audio experiences, our East Renfrewshire places AI guide will help you get the best from your visit to East Renfrewshire & the surrounding areas. The East Renfrewshire places app for iPhone & Android delivers hidden history, interesting culture and amazing facts in interactive audio stories in response to where you walk at National Heritage sites, tourist attractions, historic locations or city streets, with no predefined walk map requirements.

“The Walkfo AI has curated content for millions of locations across the UK, with 46 audio facts unique to East Renfrewshire places forming an interactive East Renfrewshire map for you to explore.”

Walkfo’s Visit East Renfrewshire Places Map
46 tourist, history, culture & geography spots

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East Renfrewshire historic spot	East Renfrewshire tourist destination	East Renfrewshire plaque	East Renfrewshire geographic feature
Walkfo East Renfrewshire tourism map key: places to see & visit like National Trust sites, Blue Plaques, English Heritage locations & top tourist destinations in East Renfrewshire

  

Best East Renfrewshire places to visit

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East Renfrewshire has many places to explore by foot, bike or bus. Below are a selection of the varied East Renfrewshire’s destinations you can visit with additional content available at the Walkfo East Renfrewshire’s information audio spots:

East Renfrewshire East Renfrewshire is one of 32 council areas of Scotland . Until 1975, it formed part of the county of Renfreyshire for local government purposes . It was formed in 1996 as a successor to the Eastwood district, with the Levern Valley being annexed .

Cathcart Cemetery Cathcart Cemetery is a cemetery in East Renfrewshire, Scotland, which was opened in 1878 . It is named after the nearby neighbourhood of Cathcart on the southern outskirts of Glasgow, but does not actually fall within the city boundaries .

Mearns Castle 15th-century tower house in Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire, south of Glasgow, is a Category A listed building . The castle has been restored and is now part of a church . It also gives its name to a nearby high school .

Visit East Renfrewshire plaques