KEN SMITH
The West of Scotland doesn’t really do picturesque villages. They tend to
rear up on either side of a main road with a housing scheme tacked on at
the back, and then disappear again. The village green with bell-toiling
church, village inn, and thatched cottages must have appeared too effete
for the Scottish psyche, and never took hold.
So that is why Eaglesham is such a pleasant surprise. Halfway between
Glasgow and East Kilbride it somehow over the generations managed to
preserve its vast green space in the middle, the Orry, as well as keep its
old coaching inn, and many of the eighteenth century, white-washed cottages
around it. I like the fact that Orry is not some ancient Scots word meaning
the forest of owls or whatever but is the prosaic fact that it was known as
the Common Area, and it eventually slurred its way into becoming simply the
Orry. Growing up in the West End of Glasgow, all I knew about Eaglesham was
the former coaching inn, the Eglinton Arms, known to everyone as the Eggy
Arms, when even young men from the West End occasionally ventured there as
folklore talked of comely South Side young women attending its weekend
discotheques.
Now Eaglesham has the largest windfarm in Europe, Whitelee, just three
miles away, and while the windfarm does not overpower the view as much of
it is out of sight, it has brought with it money. And where there is money
there is usually discord. Not families at war, troops in the street type of
discord, but the middle-class mutterings of where is the money going, and
is the council to blame for not spending enough of it in the village.
When the windfarm was established, a fund was set up by the power company
to help local communities, a benign bribe as it were for building so many
wind turbines next door to you. East Renfrewshire Council is given about
£100,000 a year to bestow on the towns and villages beside the windfarm.
Great news for Eaglesham where the Eaglesham and Waterfoot Community
Development Trust, a voluntary group, works to protect and enhance the
local environment. They have worked hard. They have created a heritage
trail in the village with stone cairns dotted around, many of them on the
Orry, with plaques explaining Eaglesham’s unique history. I read that
Scottish villages were often created by the landowners, and it was
Alexander, the 10th Earl of Eglinton, who planned the layout of the
village, making it one of the best planned villages in Scotland. He might
have achieved more if he had not been shot dead by a local poacher. The
Orry, broader at the bottom than at the top, and with a road bisecting it
as actually a letter A denoting Alexander’s initial. Good job he wasn’t an
Ian as the centre of Eaglesham would then have been far less spectacular.
The village though fell into disrepair and it was not until after the
Second World War that attempts were made to restore it. I read on another
plaque on the heritage trail that Kathleen Whyte, a prime mover in
Eaglesham’s restoration, described it as “a pleasant place but with so many
gaps and blemishes – rather like a smile ruined by bad teeth.” Now it is a
much sought-after commuter village where folk can live the village life so
near to the city.
When the Windfarm Fund was established six years ago, money was sought by
the Trust to put new play equipment on the Orry’s swing-park and it has
been a success, filled with screaming delighted children in the summer
months. It has a zip slide for goodness sake – you could only dream of such
luxury when I were a lad. The Old Carswell Church was renovated as the
Carswell Hall, the Boys Brigade company was given a new marquee, and
Eaglesham Primary School was given new play equipment.
But then came the suspicions locally that East Renfrewshire Council had
become a tad avaricious, and wanted to use the fund for projects they
should have been financing out of their own budget. You can hardly blame
the council as its budgets have been squeezed, but some locals felt school
play equipment should have come from the council’s own funds like any other
school. Then the council used windfarm money to install traffic lights. Now
that really should have come from the council’s own cash, say many locals.
Then the boundaries of where they money should be spent became more
flexible in the council’s eyes, and schemes further and further away from
the windfarm have benefitted. It is not helped that the committee set up to
disperse the funds is mainly made up of council officials – local
representation is minimal. There used to be a member of the local community
council on the committee but then East Renfrewshire Council disbanded the
local community council. People in Eaglesham do not believe they are being
listened to. And there are a lot of people in Eaglesham with a point of
view. Even the voluntary development trust cannot please everybody. One of
the cairns it erected on the Orry is at the bottom of a popular sledging
run in the winter and some folk want it moved. In fact it now has sandbags
surrounding it to cushion the blow if anyone sledges into it. The snag is
that moving it would mean all the maps explaining where the cairns are
would be obsolete so whether the cairn should move divides opinion.
Jim McLean, chairman of the development trust, says the windfarm fund is
very welcome. “It’s just the way it is managed by the council that’s the
problem,” he says.
The next big project the development trust would like to see is the
renovation of the football pitches and pavilion at the Orry – the pitches
are so waterlogged they are unplayable in the winter. But will the council
spend the windfarm fund on it? One suspects there will be a lot of hot air
being blown in that debate before a decision is taken.
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