ONE of the most attractive buildings in the east end of Helensburgh is the Victoria Infirmary, built in 1895.

The work of one of the town’s leading architects, William Leiper, the former cottage hospital looks in fine condition from the outside, but inside only the ground floor is in use as part of today’s Victoria Integrated Health Care Centre.

Iain Hope penned this tribute to his brother-in-law, Helensburgh Heritage Trust company secretary and treasurer John Johnston, who died on October 5 2012.

JOHN JOHNSTON first came to live in Helensburgh in 1945 when his parents, Jack and Muriel Johnston, chose to move their young family from the London area to his father’s ancestral town.

This article, believed to have been written by Walter W.Blackie about 1943, was originally published in the Scottish Art Review XI, No.4, 1968, by permission of Miss Agnes A.C.Blackie who found it among her father’s papers. It is published here by kind permission of two of the author's grand-daughters, Kathleen A.Salzberg and Ruth Currie, who kindly supplied the images from the family collection.

IN the early spring of 1902 my wife and I, having decided to leave Dunblane where we had lived for some seven years, were fortunate enough to happen on the site at the crown of the hill in Upper Helensburgh where ‘The Hill House’ now stands. We took the feu, and decided to build.