Events

AN expert on the history of Henry Bell and the Comet gave a fascinating talk to Helensburgh Heritage Trust's second open winter meeting on Wednesday October 31.

John Ransom spoke to members in the meeting room at Helensburgh Tennis Club about his new book 'Bell's Comet: How a Paddle Steamer Changed the Course of History', which he wrote to mark the Comet's bicentenary this year.

SOME help is needed by Helensburgh Heritage Trust for the Comet Bicentenary celebrations!

At the pier car park on Saturday August 4 Helensburgh will be celebrating one of the most important events in its history, and indeed in the history of the West of Scotland.

THE Helensburgh area had two legal distilleries — and many illicit stills.

John Ashworth OBE, retired chief executive of the Chivas Brothers group, told the Helensburgh Heritage Trust meeting in Helensburgh Tennis Club on Wednesday evening that one distillery was at Altdonaig, Rhu, and the other behind the Victoria Hall in the burgh.

HELENSBURGH Heritage Trust's first meeting of the 2012-13 winter season had four speakers instead of the expected one.

A good attendance in the upstairs meeting room at Helensburgh Tennis Club on Wednesday September 26 were expecting to listen to the Trust's hon president, Malcolm Baird, speak about how his father, John Logie Baird, related television to print. However Professor Baird had a very sore throat, and his talk was read for him by Trust chairman Stewart Noble.

MEMBERS of Helensburgh Heritage Trust enjoyed a fascinating talk by J.Craig Osborne of the Scottish Maritime Museum on 'The Comet and her Creators' at the final open meeting of the winter season in Helensburgh Tennis Club on Wednesday March 28.

Mr Osborne, author of a booklet with that title in 2007, spoke and showed images of the men who built Henry Bell's Comet, telling the story of the inventor from his birth in Torphichen in 1767 and the men with whom he worked to build and operate the two Comet steamships.

"Surely this is a spelling mistake?" That was the reaction of many people when they saw the title of the talk which Simon Green of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland gave to Helensburgh Heritage Trust on Wednesday January 25. However, it was no mistake!

The baffling title was "The Bute-ifying of Scotland". The solution to the conundrum came in the subtitle to the talk, which was "The Architectural and Archaeological Patronage of the 3rd and 4th Marquesses of Bute". And what a patronage it was.