Business

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'.

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 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.

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.

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.

HELENSBURGH and whisky go back a long way.

The news in March 2009 that a blended Scotch whisky was being specially bottled for the Helensburgh Homecoming celebrations by town firm Clyde Whiskies reminded local historian the late Pat Drayton that the burgh used to have its own distillery.

A LEADING Clyde shipbuilder who lived for many years in Shandon — as did shipbuilding pioneer Robert Napier over a century earlier — died peacefully of cancer at home on October 10 2008 at the age of 85.

Sir Robert Easton, CEng, FIMechE, FIMarE, FRINA, chairman of Yarrow Shipbuilders and pioneer of naval design, lived with his wife Jean at Stuckenduff, and was best known for steering the Clyde operation through the 1970s and 1980s — its most turbulent period.

HELENSBURGH’S famous Clyde family had two branches — the actors and the shopkeepers.

The acting branch included Andy, David and Jean Clyde, three of the six children of touring theatre company boss John Clyde, who was born in Rattray, Blairgowrie, on November 20 1860 and died in Helensburgh on November 1 1920.

A HELENSBURGH-born businesswoman who is one of the key figures in the world of British fashion is highly positive about the future . . . after three years running her own business.

The second of four children of a Welsh mum and an English dad, brought up near Portsmouth – where her father was based with the Royal Navy — she was born in the burgh on March 11 1959.

A HELENSBURGH man was the owner of a sailing ship trading from India to Scotland.

Glasgow businessman James Boyd, of Queensmount, Queen Street, had the four-masted steel barque Madagascar built for him by Russell & Co. of Port Glasgow, and the vessel was launched in May 1888.

A SHANDON engineer who built the mansion which became Shandon Hydro is still considered by many to be the “father of Clyde shipbuilding”.

Robert Napier was born in Dumbarton in 1791, the second son of a local blacksmith.

DELIVERING newspapers and selling clothes were the humble beginnings from which a young Helensburgh man rose to become one of the most successful businessmen in the United States.

Millionaire Richard Tait, 42 year-old founder of the American board games company Cranium which he sold early in January 2008 to toy company Hasbro for £39 million, spent most of his childhood in the town before going to the States at the age of 21.