SIXTY YEARS AGO Tuesday, December 31, 1963

Village bridge anxiety

sic-teacher, Mrs Gillian Eade, played ‘Watched’ followed by ‘Come See This Little Stranger’, sung by all the pupils and ‘Stille Nacht’ in German.

The brass quintet, Sandy McNair, trombone; Paul Smith and Ian Warmerdam, trumpets; and Namasté McLardy and John Walker, French horns, played ‘Blow the Trumpet and Bang the Drum’, conducted by Mr Steven Eade.

Two former pupils who now play in the High School Wind Orchestra have reported very favourably on their performance. The children’s final item was singing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’.

Close on the heels of representations from villagers in Ardrishaig over a housing scheme scheduled to provide accommodation for 38 families, comes the news that the recently-formed Ardrishaig Ratepayers’ Association may lodge further representations with Argyll County Council over a 100-year-old bridge.

For they claim that the narrow, wooden-decked bridge which carries the bulk of the traffic from the village over the Crinan Canal, leading past the manse of the parish church, is too old and light for present day traffic requirements.

Concerned with the prospect of ever-increasing population within the next two years on the upper reaches of the town, the Ratepayers Association is seriously concerned at what is described as an inadequate road system serving the area.

And they claim that the completion of Glenfyne Park housing scheme will boost the population to the west of the canal, already over 400, by a further 125.

Consequently, led by their chairman, Rev. J. J. Stanley Whyte, they believe that the bridge, for which a two-ton weight restriction order is enforced by the British Transport Waterways, cannot hope to withstand the ravages likely to be wrought by increasing motor traffic.

Mr Whyte, whose manse occupies a site overlooking the old bridge, said at the weekend that he was concerned not only with the bridge, but with the outdated road system on the upper reaches of the village. He said that motorists had to be extremely cautious negotiating the back roads for they had little warning should young children dart out of roadside gates.