Kilmarnock, Football and My Family

My family's tenuous links to football in Kilmarnock

Partick Thistle play Kilmarnock this weekend, with the pleasant situation being that Thistle are safe in the Scottish Premiership for another year, but Kilmarnock still need to keep an eye on other results for their own safety. I've taken this as an excuse to investigate my family football connections in Ayrshire, which includes a few Juniors teams and one Scottish Cup winner's medal.

I like Ayrshire football teams. They just seem like genuine, long standing, integral parts of their local communities. I grew up in Maryhill supporting Partick Thistle. This means that over the years my team has often been found jockeying for league position with Ayr United or Kilmarnock and a short trip to Somerset Park or Rugby Park is always one that I enjoy. However, in terms of success, the Ayrshire Junior Football teams often eclipse their senior neighbours.

As children, my brother and me were sometimes taken to see Maryhill Juniors play at Lochburn Park, or Yoker Athletic down at Holm Park. In fact I think Lochburn Park is the only Scottish ground I've been threatened with being kicked out. As bored 7 and 9 years olds we were scolded by someone at the club for kicking lumps of harling off of a wall that was distracting us during a less than scintillating game. However, the real blood and thunder of Junior Football is best captured by a roll call of Ayrshire football clubs. Auchinleck Talbot, Hurlford United, Maybole Juniors, Irvine Meadow, Glenafton Athletic, Beith Juniors, Cumnock Juniors and Irvine Victoria.

My great-great granny came from Hurlford, just outside Kilmarnock and her husband was from Kilmarnock. Like many of his brothers and cousins in the area he was a coal miner. When Partick Thistle have played down in Kilmarnock in recent years I've enjoyed taking the chance to do a wee bit of local family history research down there. (I've written about some Kilmarnock tales on previous trips here.)

I have a big pile of old photographs and postcards that I got from my Kilmaurs-born grandad, and I've enjoyed trying to find out about the people in them. A lot of the family history research that I follow up on my Kilmarnock ancestors revolves around the same things: mining, trade unions, the ILP, the local masonic lodge and football. My great-great grandfather Robert Climie, was a coal miner born in 1843 in Kilmarnock.

Tom Climie and the Cranbrook Rovers football team c.1910

One of his sons, Tom Climie (above in the white "shorts"), a great-great uncle of mine, I could recognise in several of these old photographs which I have. I finally unpicked his story once I worked out where the football team he was photographed with in about 1910 were from. (I've written about it here.) He emigrated to Canada in 1907, where he worked as a coal miner and played football regularly there for his local team. He was 24 years old when he emigrated so it seems likely that his football education was in the junior teams around Kilmarnock.

Kilmarnock Hillhead Victoria FC

One other photograph that it has taken me a while to get to the bottom of is this one below. There just seems to be very little trace of a football club called Kilmarnock Hillhead Victoria FC. Also I had been unable to recognise any of the faces in it, but that was because I guessed the age of the photograph wrong by about 20 years.

Kilmarnock Hillhead Victoria FC

However I have now finally tracked this team down in a fantastic online archive some people have put together. They are trying to document all the football teams of Scotland from 1829 and at present it lists almost 7000 teams. In this file Kilmarnock Victoria Junior Football Club get the briefest of mentions, as they only existed from 1888-1889.  At that time there were numerous local junior teams just in the town of Kilmarnock alone. A booklet published in 1919 documenting the first 50 years of Kilmarnock FC maybe offers an explanation for the demise of the Kilmarnock Victoria team in 1889.

From "Fifty Years, Kilmarnock Football Club 1869-1919"

"The following season 1888-1889 a new team had to be rebuilt for a wholesale migration took place about this period.....the playing stock was replenished at the expense of the junior clubs - Thistle, Rangers and Victoria with such well known exponents as Bummer Campbell, Andrew Campbell, Tommy Lyle, John Brodie, John Johnstone, James Gray, John Porter, etc"

The other teams alongside Kilmarnock Victoria mentioned in this passage are Kilmarnock Thistle who played at Howard Park at this time and Kilmarnock Rangers who were on the go from 1887 to 1891. "Bummer" is a first name which I fear has drifted out of fashion in recent times and is maybe due for a revival.

So this allowed me to date the photograph above to about 1888, which is much earlier than I had thought it was from. So rethinking who would have been about the right age at that time I think that I can see my great-great uncle George Climie in the photograph, who would have been about 17 years old. See what you think. These two photographs below are taken about 10 years apart. Do these two people, a 27 year old soldier and a 17 year old Kilmarnock Victoria FC player, look like the same man?

George Climie?, born 1872

For me the best way to check this is for Kilmarnock  to manage to stay in the Premiership for another season. If so my first stop on our next away game in Kilmarnock will be to the local archives to try to dig out some old newspapers with Junior Football match reports from 1888. I'm sorry to say that would be a happy way to spend a morning for me.

Sam Clemie

Of all my Kilmarnock ancestors only one of them truly made a name for himself as a footballer, a close cousin of those mentioned above. As well as winning a Scottish Cup winner's medal with Kilmarnock in 1929, his claim to fame is that he was the first ever goalkeeper to save a penalty in a cup final. 

My ancestors were not as fastidious as we are nowadays about spelling their names consistently, and although Sam Clemie's dad, James Climie, usually spelled his name the same way as my branch of the family. Sam (and many other of my Climie relatives) went for Clemie. Born in April 1904 in the hamlet of Cronberry in Ayrshire, Samuel Turner Clemie was a blacksmith to trade. His father was a coal miner, describing his job in census returns as a "drawer in pit", the man who was employed to take the full tubs from the coalface and return with empty ones. When he married Mary Turner in 1893, James Climie was living in Lugar in Ayrshire, a mile down the road from Cronberry and just outside Auchinleck and Cumnock. 

Lugar is a village 16 miles south east of Kilmarnock whose 1500 residents at that time were employed in the local coal mines and the Lugar Ironworks. After 1928 work became harder to find locally when the Lugar Ironworks closed down. As a young man Sam Clemie was playing in goals for his local juniors team, Lugar Boswell FC, in 1925 when he signed for Kilmarnock FC. 

Badge of Lugar Boswell Thistle FC

Lugar Boswell, known as The Jaggy Bunnets, were founded in 1878, and still play at their home ground of Rosebank Park in the village, although since 1945 they have been called Lugar Boswell Thistle. Another notable player who learned his trade at Lugar Boswell Thistle was Andy Kerr, who played for Partick Thistle between 1952-59 before moving onto Manchester City (for a fee of £11,000 in 1959!), Kilmarnock, Sunderland, Aberdeen and Glentoran.

At the time that Sam Clemie was playing for Lugar Boswell, their nearest rivals were Cronberry Eglington FC, who played a mile up the road. In 1931 Bill Shankly began his football career playing right-half for Cronberry Eglington FC after his home town team, the Glenbuck Cherrypickers where he played as a reserve, was wound up in 1930. Cronberry Eglington took their name from the Eglington Iron Company that had built the villages of Lugar and Cronberry to house their workers.
Once Sam Clemie joined Kilmarnock he eventually became the regular keeper in 1926-27 season.

Sunday Post report from 1926, Sam Clemie (spelled this time as Climie) keeps Celtic out

Between 1926 and 1932 he made 200 league and Scottish Cup appearances for Kilmarnock, an ever-present in the 1930-31 season. On the way to the 1929 Scottish Cup final, Kilmarnock had beaten Glasgow Uni, Bo'Ness, Albion Rovers, Raith Rovers and then Celtic 1-0 in the semi-final. They met Rangers in the final, who were the clear favourites. Having just won the league title, and only losing one of their previous 43 league and cup games, Rangers were expecting to seal a "double double" in front of the 115,000 strong crowd.  

Sam Clemie in goals for Kilmarnock in 1929 Scottish Cup Final

After 16 minutes the referee awarded Rangers a penalty and although Tully Craig struck it well, Sam Clemie leapt to save it at his top left corner. Two goals from in the second half from Aitken and Cunningham secured Kilmarnock the 2-0 victory. As well as being the first ever penalty save in a cup final, there was also the first ever red card in a Scottish Cup Final as Buchanan of Rangers was sent off for un-gentlemanly conduct, as Rangers' frustration boiled over and he swore at the referee in the dying minutes of the match.

Sam Clemie in the middle of the back row as Kilmarnock display the 1929 Scottish Cup

It is reported that when the victorious team returned to Kilmarnock the crowd shouted down the Provost who was greeting them and demanded to hear from Sam Clemie. 

"I can save penalty kicks but I canae mak' a speech"

To rapturous applause he sat down again. With the cup winning team he toured eastern parts of Canada, New York, Ohio and Massachusetts playing 17 matches against local teams in May and June 1930. Sam Clemie is standing on the far right of the photo below as they head off on their tour.

The Killie team at Glasgow Central Station on their way to Canad 1930

In his final game for Kilmarnock in 1932, he was in goals whilst then first choice keeper Willie Bell was rested for the 1932 cup final the following week. Sam let in 7 goals as Cowdenbeath won that match 7-1 and Killie lost the final after a replay. Sam Clemie moved on to East Stirlingshire FC in 1932 where he made just five league appearances and his senior footballing career came to an end. Aged 65 he died in 1970.

The footballing genes obviously went down another side of my family, as the highlight of my football career was playing in goals for Maryhill Primary School when St Mary's Primary beat us 14-0 on their red blaes pitch. However I plan to try and take in a game or two at Lugar Boswell Thistle next season now that I've found out about those in my family more skilled at the game than me. Who knows, maybe I'll spot the next Kris Doolan who joined Partick Thistle from Auchinleck Talbot? This season, 2014-15, he has just become the first Partick Thistle player since Jimmy Walker in the 1950s to score 10 goals in five consecutive season.

My Family's Part in World War One, Canadian Association Football and the Yukon Gold Rush

I've been trying to dig up some information on my ancestors and their activities during the First World War. However in doing this I think I've finally solved a mystery over a 100 year old photograph I've had for a while of a bunch of football players. I had thought they were a British team, from Cranbrock, but I was mistaken.

The Home Front

Taken about 1910, there are three of my ancestors in this
group photo of members of the local Kilmarnock Masonic Order

My great grandfather, Charles Climie, was born in Kilmarnock in 1884, the son of a bonnet weaver and a coal miner. In the above photograph he is standing in the back row, second from the right. His brother Robert is 16 years older than him, third from the left in the front row. On his left is my great-great grandfather, Robert Climie, an ex-colliery fireman, born in Kilmarnock in 1843.

Charles as a foundry worker in Kilmarnock and then later as a shipyard worker in Govan, Glasgow, was in a reserved occupation and thus exempted from military service. He was the second youngest of seven brothers and four sisters. I had been trying to find out about his nephew, Robert Climie, who was aged 24 at the outbreak of war. In 1917 he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector. His father (also Robert Climie) trained as an engineer and as a young man had been a sergeant in the Volunteer Brigade of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He soon became a socialist, joined the fledgling Independent Labour Party and was involved in opposition the Boer War. Between 1899 and 1902 he spoke regularly at the Kilmarnock branch of the ILP's outdoor meetings in opposition to the war. After the war ended he continued to be active in trade unionism and politics. He served as a local councillor in Kilmarnock from 1905 until 1924, when he was elected as the local MP for Kilmarnock. As an ILP councillor he was particularly interested in public health and housing and was convener of both these committees. It was during this time that Kilmarnock's first council house scheme, Middleton Park, was built. As an MP he was part of the first Labour government, a short lived minority Labour administration that introduced the 1924 Wheatley Housing Act. This act increased government subsidies for local authorities building housing for rent to low paid workers. A hundred years later and it seems that we are needing a government to propose these types of policies again.

Robert Climie MP, born 1868

When he became president of the Scottish Trade Unions Congress (STUC), four months before the outbreak of World War I, Robert spoke in his presidential address on the need for the people to get control of Parliament and control of the army, in order to stop them being used against the workers.

George and Willie Climie in their
Kings Own Scottish Borderers uniform

The war was soon affecting his family. His oldest sister Maggie, was left to bring up her four children alone after her husband, William Cairns, died in battle, in France in 1917. Two of Robert's older brothers, George and Willie Climie were career soldiers and had served in the King's Own Scottish Borderers at the end of the 19th century. Willie was a Lance Corporal stationed with the army in Cawnpore, India in February 1900, where one of his children was born. George Climie rejoined the army during World War I. Serving with the Royal Scots Fusiliers he landed at Gallipoli in June 1915 and took part in the evacuation from Helles seven months later. He was then in Egypt and his division were involved in the defence of the Suez Canal. He was killed in action in April 1917 in Palestine at the Second Battle of Gaza, and he is buried in the British Military Cemetery in Jerusalem. He was 44 years of age.

George Climie in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, service number 200769

Alaska and the gold rush

Postcard home from James Climie, April 1906

By the outbreak of war three of the older brothers had already emigrated, to Australia, Canada and Alaska.

Post card from James Climie 1910

The first to leave Scotland was James Climie. In 1898 he joined the Yukon gold rush, starting out at Dawson, before heading further west to Nome in Alaska. In 1906 he came home to Scotland for a while before heading back across the Atlantic on the SS Furnessia. His postcard which I have, above, to his younger brother Charlie reads "We are leaving the Irish coast now and we will soon have our last look ...of  Bonnie Scotland. How sorry I was to leave you all today without me staying here to explain...Goodbye, your brother, Jim"

He was still digging for gold in 1908 when Agnes Fraser, whom he had known back in Scotland, came from South Africa to be his wife and they settled in Rampart, Alaska. For another 14 years they stayed in Rampart whilst he was engaged in placer mining, which meant sifting through the silt from the bottom of the riverbeds for gold dust. I have laid my hands on a nugget of gold which he sent home as a souvenir. It was made into a tie clip and my grandad's cousin owns it now. He seems to have been happily making a living at it for many years, without ever getting rich. This post card on the left he sent to his brother Robert Climie in 1910 from Rampart, Alaska. It reads "This is the way they do things on a rich Claim. We have to be content with smaller ways., although none the less sure, Jim".

Placer mining in Alaska

By 1926 he had moved with his family to Anchorage in Alaska where he lived out his days. He was employed by the Alaska Railroad, starting as a labourer, he became a blacksmith's assistant and then, until his death in 1940, a carpenter with the railway company. Throughout his railway career he was active in the trade union, becoming president of the American Federation of Government Employees in Anchorage. His obituary in a local newspaper states that "his death took one of the leaders of the labor movement in Alaska....(he) was known from Fairbanks to Seward among railwaymen". Remembering the family photograph at the top at the Kilmarnock masonic lodge, his Alaskan obituary also notes that "he was a member of the Anchorage Igloo of the Pioneers of Alaska, the Alaska Yukon Pioneers and continued his membership of the St. Marnock Masonic Lodge number 109 in Scotland."

Canada and  football

Post cards from Tom Climie 1907 and later

Of the other emigré brothers Willie ended up in Australia, but about ten years after Jim first did it, Tom Climie headed across the Atlantic too. Tom was born in Kilmarnock in 1883. In June 1907 on his arrival in Philadelphia he sent his sister Kate the postcard above. He settled in western Canada, using skills he'd learned back home, working in the coal mines near Hosmer in British Columbia. The right hand card above reads "This photo is taken with one of our work cars. You must have seen this kind of wagon at home, Tom".

Like his brother in Alaska he becomes involved in the local trade union. The British Columbia Historical Newspaper Archive website is a fantastic resource. From browsing through these old newspapers I can see that "At a meeting of the Hosmer local union No. 2497 UMW of A (United Mine Workers of America) held last Saturday evening at the school house JA Tupper resigned his office of president and Thomas Climie was elected to fill the vacancy". Another newspaper report in 1910 documents deaths and injuries to local mine workers including "a digger named Thomas Climie had his right wrist badly cut with a piece of rock last Friday". From the papers I can find out that he was regularly singing at the local Presbyterian church and that his wife was running a laundry in nearby Moyie.

However where his name comes up most often in the local newspapers is with him playing football (the term soccer doesn't seem to have made it into the local vocabulary by this time). Most reports are of matches between nearby towns. In one tale the trade union complains that the players from Hosmer got thrown off the train on their way to play a match in Coal Creek and had to walk the last 3 and a half miles to the game. The report complains that the miners had been on strike for 3 months and that nobody ever gets asked to pay for their ticket on their way to play football matches in Coal Creek.

One edition of the District Ledger, a newspaper produced by the UMW of A, reports on a football match in July 1909. When Bellevue "could not raise the expenses to attend their league game" in Hosmer. A game was therefore arranged between "Scotland" and "England" with Thomas Climie playing for Scotland in front of a "fair turnout of spectators".

The match report is quite entertaining so I have copied it here on the right in its entirety. Scotland ran out 7-2 victors over the old enemy and Climie scored four goals.

At this time the beginnings of professional football was taking shape in Canada with soccer/association football following the lacrosse league by going professional. In 1910 the "British Columbia Professional Football League" was formed and on March 25, 1910, the first professional football match in Canada was played.

According to the contemporary newspaper reports that I found this was between the "Rovers and Callies" although the newspapers don't give much more information than that. It was played at Recreation Park in Vancouver. These seemed to be the only professional teams in the league and it collapsed after one season. The "Callies" were The Calgary Caledonians, again showing the Scottish origins of much of the sport in the area. The Rovers are a harder mob to pin down. They later seemed to evolve into the Sapperton Rovers. The New Westminster neighbourhood of Vancouver was called "Sapperton" after the Sappers, or Royal Engineers. In the first two decades of the 1900s their team was called the "Westminster Rovers". By the 1920s it was a team called Sapperton AFC that was playing at Con Jones Park in this part of Vancouver.

Rovers Football Team, Cranbrook BC, Canada

So back to my photograph from the early 1900s of a "Rovers Football Team" featuring a promising Scottish forward called Thomas Climie. Is this him playing for the Westminster Rovers, the team who played in Canada's first professional football game? I suspect not, this looks more like his local amateur team have a "Rovers" tagged onto their name? Maybe they called themselves Hosmer Rovers or Cranbrook Rovers but the full name hasn't made it into any of the newspaper reports that I found. Maybe someone reading this in Canada with an interest in local history could shed some light on this question for me.

Whatever the truth I like to think that Tom Climie, third on the left in the long white shorts, who scored four times for his local Scotland team, had a chance of being a player in Canada's first professional league game.

However in March 1910 the Climie family certainly had their minds on other matters. Thomas Climie took out a notice in three consecutive editions of the newspaper to state that "I will not be responsible for any debts contracted by my wife Elisabeth King Dunlop (or Climie)."

Notice in newspaper, 1910

A few years later he and his wife had left British Columbia and he was living in Edmonton, Alberta and working as a baker.

Tom Climie, front left, in the Canadian Expeditionary Force

On the 4th of April 1916, aged 32 years of age, he signed up to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was sent to Europe to fight. His Canadian army papers show that he left Halifax on the SS Olympic on the 14th of November 1916 and arrived in England a week later. A month later, from Rugby in England Tom sends a cheery postcard back to my great-grandad, his brother Charlie in Kilmarnock, reporting that he has influenza. In Canada he leaves behind his wife and three children Robert, George and Annie Climie. Does this postcard have the first ironic use of the word "not" in inverted commas? "...and I have developed a lovely case of Influenza 'not'."

In June 1917 he was wounded in action, a gunshot wound to his right ear, a close shave. The Canadian Expeditionary Force were involved in the Battle of Arras at this time. After 3 days at hospital he is returned to his unit. In the Third Battle of Ypres he is wounded again in August 1917 he spends 16 days in hospital and doesn't return to his unit until December 1917. On the 29th of December 1917 he is granted permission to marry and given 14 days leave on 26th January 1918, where this presumably happens. In July 1918 he is given 7 days detention for being in Boulogne without a pass. He is discharged from the army in April 1919 at the rank of corporal, with the "distinguishing feature" of a gun shot wound scar behind his right ear. He settles in Rugby with his new wife and lives there all his remaining days.

Any help in finding out more about this early Canadian football team would be appreciated. And whilst you are at it, maybe you can help me with another old photograph of my grandfather's, in which I haven't been able to recognise ant familiar faces. Who on earth were Kilmarnock Hillhead Victoria FC?

Kilmarnock Victoria Hillhead FC

(P.S. 12.5.15 - I have found out about Kilmarnock Victoria FC now and written about them here)

Visit Kilmarnock: Football Away Days Kilmarnock vs Partick Thistle

With Partick Thistle back in the top tier of Scottish football I wasn't expecting to see some great leap forward with regards to the football on offer (and in that respect my expectations have been met) but one thing I was looking forward to was re-visiting some grounds that I haven't been to for years. Already this season it has been nice to re-acquaint myself with Easter Road and also with St Mirren's new ground. One other old rivalry I was looking forward to re-visiting was with Kilmarnock FC. The earlier fixture at Firhill ended 1-1 with a Kris Boyd equaliser in the second half. However since then both teams have struggled to pick up points so I (naively) fancied our chances at Rugby Park.




I wasn't just wanting to pick up a Killie pie and a Killie bunnet when I was in town (that's the Alexander Brothers singing the Big Kilmarnock Bunnet song above). Another reason I was looking forward to this wee jaunt down to Ayrshire is that one wing of my family comes from down Kilmarnock way and I fancied trying to have a wander around the town to see what it has to offer. The Visit Scotland website isn't exactly bursting with suggestions of what to look out for so I thought I'd start by trying to track down any addresses in town inhabited by my ancestors which are still standing. A few years ago I got quite into tracing the old family tree and found that at the end of the 1700s my great-great-great-great grandfather, a weaver from Paisley, moved to Kilmarnock. His son worked in the town, also as a weaver, but as industrialisation moved on apace his son left that trade and was a coal miner in the local pits. In the 1860s he was living at Back Street, which I found was bulldozed to lay out Portland Street. His wife, an immigrant from Ireland, according to a census of 1861, helped make one of Kilmarnock's famed products which featured in the Alexander Brothers' song, as she was a bonnet knitter. Their son married Lizzie Jane Hay, a domestic servant from nearby Hurlford, so I started there.

Railway Tavern at Riccarton Road, Hurlford

She lived on Riccarton Road in Hurlford and this is a postcard she sent home once when visiting relatives there. Although the town was once home to Jimmy Knapp of the RMT Transport Union, there hasn't been a train station in Riccarton since 1955 and Riccarton Road today was less picturesque than it was 100 years ago, although the children did appear to own shoes nowadays.

Riccarton Road going under the railway line, Hurlford today

One thing which Hurlford is known for is its junior football team which plays at Blair Park and it has a reputation as a "football nursery" with professional players Ian Bryson, David Calderhead, William Goldie, Jack Picken, Sandy Turnbull, Arthur Young and Colin Douglas all calling Hurlford home at one time. I have a couple of old photographs of my Kilmarnock ancestors in football teams but can find no trace of Kilmarnock Hillhead Victoria FC now.

Blair Park, Hurlford

So as there were nothing standing of the places my family used to live in Hurlford maybe I'd have better luck if I headed into Kilmarnock. My great grandfather when he married lived at number 5 East Netherton Street in Kilmarnock in 1906. This house is still standing, no longer a family home, but a dental surgery.

5 East Netheron Street, Kilmarnock

Later they moved around the corner to 14 High Glencairn Street, which I was also able to visit, and order some chips and curry sauce from their old front room, as it is now a Chinese takeaway. Underneath the "Ocean Sun" frontage you can clearly see there is a good, solid, old house there. A lot of Kilmarnock seemed to be like that. There are swathes of the town centre flattened as industries have come and gone or brutalised, such as with the concrete monstrosity of a shopping mall which lies beside old buildings at Kilmarnock Cross. The nearby winding streets struggle to show their former handsome selves.

14 Glencairn Street, Kilmarnock

Harland and Wolff shipyard workers, Govan, Glasgow. "Moulders"

Climie Place, Kilmarnock

Like the character in the Kilmarnock bunnet song, my great grandfather put on his bunnet (maybe one his mum knitted him as it was her occupation) and headed to Glasgow, where he worked as an iron moulder in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. He is in the photo above, the guy with the bunnet on. One of his brothers stayed in Kilmarnock, Robert Climie, working as a draper's clerk. Then he worked as an engineer in the Britannia Engineering Works in Kilmarnock, owned by the Dick, Kerr Company, which made locomotives and tramcars. There he became active in the trade union movement and the Independent Labour Party (ILP). In 1914 he became chairman of the Scottish TUC. His obituary mentions one of his successes in getting £50,000 in back wages for the women workers of the Singer Manufacturing Company. He worked for many years on the town council and stood in parliamentary elections for Kilmarnock and represented the town as MP in 1923 and 1929. I've a great photo of him standing beside Keir Hardie in another blogpost here.  He has a short street in the town named after him for his efforts, so a quick visit to Climie Place was my next destination.

 

A lot of this information here I gleaned from previous visits to the archive at the Dick Institute and now a lot of this old archive is stored at the Robert Burns Monument Centre where a statue of Robert Burns looks out over Kay Park.

Robert Burns Monument, Kilmarnock

 

Another association Kilmarnock has is in the phrase "Kilmarnock Edition". Robert Burns's most famous work "Poems Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect" was published in Kilmarnock in 1786 (around about the time my relatives moved to town) and is more commonly known by that phrase. A swanky online edition of the book is available here. The success of the Kilmarnock Edition of his poems lead the famous son of Ayrshire to abandon his plans to go to Jamaica and continue his writings in Scotland. The Dick Institute (titter, titter) is the town's museum. I found it a bit of a hotch potch, with the library and temporary exhibition space on the ground floor given over to a thing on Jacqueline Wilson. All the olde Kilmarnock stuff I was interested in was a bit of a jumble in one rooms on the first floor, gathering dust, with wobbly display cases and old photographs curling off of their mountings. It was a sad collection of now departed industries from the area, from coal, through to the Saxone shoe factory. They did have a printing press of the type used to produce Burns's work. Here I learnt that the case holding the movable type letters had two drawers to it, the capital letters held in the upper case, the lower case letters held in the....you see where this is going?

 

Another famous son of Ayrshire associated with Kilmarnock is a chap called John Walker. A grocer, he started selling his own whisky in his shop as "Walker's Kilmarnock Whisky". After it became legal in 1860 to sell blended whisky his son and then grandson expanded the enterprise and renamed their whiskies Johnnie Walker, and it is now the world's best selling Scotch whisky. The wee man striding across the label is known everywhere. When ANC activist Zola Zembe (who I've mentioned before) was staying with us in Maryhill in the 1970s he was delighted to see that there was a familiar figure on the advertising hoarding across Maryhill Road from our flat. He called the man "Walking Johnnie" and when he was in South Africa to him this was such an archetypal image of Scotland, that he was delighted to see Walking Johnnie out of our windows in Glasgow. On the wall of the goldsmith's shop on King Street is a plaque telling you that this was John Walker's original shop, where he started selling his whiskies. I think the plaque means that shop and not the ugly Claire's Accessories shop next door.

Site of Johnnie Walker's original shop

Johnnie Walker now has annual sales of 130 million bottles. That must be great for the town, no? Well, no. The distiller Diageo that now owns the brand closed down the Kilmarnock bottling plant in 2012, at that time the biggest employer in town, ending 192 years of association between Kilmarnock and Johnnie Walker's whisky. I went to an old graveyard off Saint Andrew's Street to see if Mr Walker was spinning in his grave - I can confirm that he was, poor chap.


Johnnie Walker's grave, Kilmarnock

Leaving the churchyard I then headed for Rugby Park to watch Kilmarnock vs Partick Thistle. Despite dominating the match for almost the entire 90 minutes Thistle spurned numerous chances and let Kilmarnock score two sloppy goals. Sadly this is becoming the familiar shape of our campaign. Largely playing with a slightly weakened version of last season's First Division winning squad we were always going to struggle. Despite a neat goal from Kris Doolan, it's a poor day when a Killie pie is the highlight of the match.

A Killie pie at Rugby Park

"In memory of John Walker, merchant"

Kilmarnock Water