Helensburgh Heritage
Helensburgh Heritage Trust
A LEGENDARY figure in Scottish piping first learnt to play the pipes as a young man in the Helensburgh district.
Known as the Blind Piper, Archie McNeill was born at 23 Lambhill Street, Govan, Glasgow, on February 23, 1879, the son of Donald McNeill, a merchant seaman, and his wife Jessie, nee Napier, who were married at Kippen on December 21 1877.
A PAINTING of great significance to Helensburgh was on show in the Anderson Trust exhibition at Helensburgh Library in West King Street.
The enigmatic rear view portrait aroused interest and comment from visitors, and the importance of this painting to Helensburgh and to this collection of paintings cannot be overestimated.
A PROLIFIC and talented Helensburgh artist who died in 1985 at the age of 75 is certainly not forgotten.
That quickly became obvious after the Heritage Trust received a request for information about Allan M.Fraser from Kirkmichael-born Johnnie Booth, who now lives in California and owns one of his paintings.
A YOUNG Helensburgh fiddle player and singer is already making an international name for herself as a traditional musician.
Eilidh Steel, whose parents have lived all their married life in Ardencaple Quadrant in the house her grandparents lived, started playing the fiddle at the age of six — after seeing a fiddle being played when she was four and begging dad Frank to buy her one.
ONE of the paintings owned by the Anderson Trust and which has been on show in Helensburgh Library is the work of a distinguished artist who lived in Portincaple and is buried at Faslane Cemetery.
Best known for his paintings of harbours and Clyde scenes, James Kay RSA RSW was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran on October 22 1858, but lived for some 33 years in the Loch Longside village in a house called Crimea (below right) and worked in a studio at 79 West Regent Street, Glasgow.
A HELENSBURGH singer with a real talent was much mourned when he died from cancer in February 1945 at the age of only 35.
Joseph O'Rourke — known to all as Joe — was the ninth of the fourteen children of mason's labourer James O'Rourke and his wife Hannah, who were married in the burgh on September 16 1892 and lived at 6 Maitland Street.
MASSES of information is available about Helensburgh’s iconic film star Deborah Kerr . . . but few of her fans know much about the interesting life and tragic death of her young brother.
A bow tie-wearing journalist and TV news executive who covered the Aberfan disaster and many other important stories, Edmund ‘Ted’ Charles Trimmer died on August 23 2004 after a road rage incident.