Helensburgh Heritage
Helensburgh Heritage Trust
THE MAN who organised the reunions of Helensburgh and district service personnel who fought in the First and Second World Wars was a highly respected town resident.
Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Laird MacConnell, DSO, TD, served the community over many years and in 1950 gifted his then home, Clyde View in East Montrose Street, to the Church of Scotland for use as an eventide home.
AN IMPROMPTU visit to a charity shop on Merseyside transported retired journalist Robin Bird to the Gareloch and Helensburgh of April 26 1940.
For there was a large scale plastic model kit of an Arado 196 A floatplane, the same type of floatplane that crashed that fateful day.
A YOUNG Helensburgh naval officer who was a nephew of Andrew Bonar Law was shot by a sniper in a World War One trench battle.
Sub-Lieutenant John Pitcairn Robley, whose aunt Annie was the wife of the future Prime Minister, was the younger son of dairy proprietor William Pitcairn Robley and his wife Edith.
AN OVERNIGHT stay in Helensburgh in 1941 would have seemed a very welcome contrast to spending countless hours in Catalina seaplanes searching the grey Atlantic for U-Boats.
Alas that is not how it turned out, retired Merseyside newspaper editor Robin Bird — an expert on the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at RAF Helensburgh — has discovered.
THE VIEW down Charlotte Street in Helensburgh and across the Clyde must have been a very welcome change for a World War Two soldier hero when he returned from captivity.
The Helensburgh and Gareloch Times reported his return to the burgh in the early summer of 1945 with the headline ‘Repatriated’.
A HELENSBURGH man who made a dramatic escape from a mini-submarine in Loch Striven serves as an example of the talent to be found in the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at RAF Helensburgh during World War Two.
Joiner’s son Duncan Gay was born in Helensburgh on March 15 1913, and educated at the then Hermitage School in East Argyle Street. He started his career in dental mechanics and prosthetics.
A HIGHLY respected World War One officer from Helensburgh who was a nephew of Lord Strathclyde died in strange circumstances in Italy early in 1918.
Captain Ian Ure MC, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders died of accidental injuries when a bomb exploded on February 2 1918 at the age of 32.