Business

AN impressive Helensburgh building which began life as a lemonade factory later became an antique business and twice a garage.

It stood at the junction of East King Street and Lomond Street, where Fruin Court now stands.

TURKISH baths on Garelochside were once a magnet for the rich and famous of the late Victorian age.

The attraction which brought them flocking from all over Britain was Shandon Hydro, a stately mansion which housed some of the finest state-of-the-art hydropathic baths, swimming and even indoor tennis facilities of its day.

A HELENSBURGH man who was a captain of Scottish industry will also forever be associated with a charity which helps terminally ill cancer patients.

Douglas Hume, C.B.E., LL.D, was the last of four generations of his family to run the internationally-renowned Glasgow-based engineering firm James Howden & Co. Ltd., where he was managing director from 1964 to 1987 and chairman in 1988.

THE old maxim ‘take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves' was one of the slogans of the Helensburgh Penny Savings Bank. 

Another was ‘persevere in the habit of saving, and you will soon acquire not only money, but comfort, respectability and independence'.

A HELENSBURGH boy who emigrated to Australia at the age of just eleven went on to become one of the pioneers of early professional photography.

Despite being orphaned soon after arriving Down Under, burgh-born Thomas Mathewson (right) started a family dynasty in the photographic business.

MOST Helensburgh people know that the Baths Inn — later Queen’s Hotel — business on East Clyde Street was started and run by steamship pioneer Henry Bell and his wife.

But not many could name the next owners of the hotel, which was converted 30 years ago into the luxury Queen’s Court flats.