News

AN art collector who has just bought a second painting by ‘Glasgow Girl’ Bessie MacNicol would like to find out more about its Helensburgh history.

Last year Jim Smith bought Bessie’s 1904 work, ‘Lady with a Fan’, a portrait of a model known only as Deborah. Early in June he learnt that another painting by her, entitled ‘Margaret’, was going under the hammer at Great Western Auctions in Glasgow — and he made a successful bid.

THE last book by a very talented Helensburgh librarian and author has just been published and is now on sale.

'The People's Army: Home Guard in Scotland 1940-1944', by Brian D.Osborne, is available now online and in bookshops.

TWO blocks of apartments built recently in Upper Sea Road, Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, have been named Helensburgh Court and Baird Court.

Helensburgh Court (pictured) contains two-bedroom apartments going for some £150,000 each, and the adjacent Baird Court contains three-bedroom apartments at £175,000. Both were built by developer Laing Homes.

A PIECE of Helensburgh's history has turned up in a rather unexpected manner.

Heritage Trust chairman Stewart Noble says that it emerged from an application submitted for planning permission to demolish the closed Clyde View Eventide Home and to replace it with a new form of sheltered accommodation.

THE search is on for Helensburgh people who were evacuated to the town after the Clydebank Blitz.

Amena Hasan, of Finestripe Productions in Glasgow, who is working on a TV programme for the BBC, is looking at 'Home Front' experiences during the Second World War.

THE major part of a mansion built during the golden years of Helensburgh villa architecture has been put on the property market at an asking price of over £420,000.

Towerville, at 46 George Street, was built in 1858 and was one of the early works of renowned architect John M.Honeyman (1831-1914), who 20 years later was the architect of the Municipal Buildings in Sinclair Street — replacing an old theatre which had also served as the Town Hall.

A UNIQUE tribute was paid on Wednesday March 3 in memory of a Kilcreggan man who had a huge impact in spreading the joy of music amongst people of all ages and abilities.

The Ronnie Walker Memorial Concert was held in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall in aid of the Musicians Benevolent Fund and Cancer Research UK.

HELENSBURGH Heritage Trust members were invited by Argyll and Bute Council to a special event on Thursday March 5 in Helensburgh Library, West King Street.

It was entitled "Slate, Sea and Sky - a journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing", and was a poetry reading by Norman Bissell accompanied by slides of photographs taken by Oscar Marzaroli.

THE Anderson Trust annual exhibition for 2009 is a joint venture with Helensburgh Photographic Club entitled ‘Then and Now’.

The exhibition opened to the public on Saturday January 17 after a private ceremony the previous evening, and is on view until June in Helensburgh Library in West King Street during normal library hours.

HELENSBURGH man Stephen Park, manager of the British Olympic sailing team at Beijing, is to receive the OBE.

The award, announced in the New Year's Honours List and one of many for the highly successful Olympic team, is for services to sport.

ONE of Cove and Kilcreggan’s largest and most historic buildings, Craigrownie Castle, is on sale with a price tag of £795,000.

Savills Glasgow are marketing the castle, which dates from 1854 and is the only castle designed by famous architect Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson. He was 34 at the time.

A HELENSBURGH charity shop’s funds have been boosted by more than £1,000 . . . thanks to an old book.

Caroline O’Brien, a staff member at the Cancer Research UK shop in Sinclair Street, found a rare first edition novel dating back to 1788 as she sorted through a bag of donations.