I recognise that building – I was born there in 1952
Picture brought back memories for John
A Paisley man was stunned and delighted to see the building where he was born in a photograph published in the Paisley Daily Express.
Our popular weekly Then and Now page featured a picture taken in 1960 of 10 New Sneddon Street.
And it was in a flat in this building that John Hamilton, 66, first saw the light of day. He said: “I was born there in 1952. “My sister was born the year before. “But my mother Jean, she arrived there when she was six weeks old.
“Then she had three siblings after her: John, Margaret, and Betty.
“They were all born in the Sneddon as well. It was a family of 13, seven sons and four daughters, and their mother and father. That was before we came on the scene.”
The flat had just three bedrooms, a hallway and a kitchen.
Looking at the photograph published in the Express, Mr Hamilton pointed to a window.
“That was the room where I was born,” he said. “Of the early years, I don’t remember too much.
“My grandmother lived there and she died in ‘63, but we still went there a lot when we moved out. When I was two years old, we moved up to Glenburn, my mother and father and my sister and me.
“But we still went down every day to my grandmother’s and my grandfather’s.”
Mr Hamilton well remembers the New Sneddon Street of his boyhood, especially the shop that was on the ground floor of the building where he lived. “There was Jean Scott’s shop,” he said. “It sold everything. “Later in life I met Jean Scott’s brother – I ended up working with Gerry – and he was telling me that Jean used to breed budgies in the shop. “You couldn’t do that now.” Mr Hamilton’s uncle John McIntosh, 89, also has strong memories of New Sneddon Street, where he was also born, and in particular the restaurant that formed part of the ground floor of the building at No 10.
“I used to work in the restaurant when I was a kid,” he said. “It belonged to Bob Catterson. And next door in Christie Lane there was a hostel for men, and I think they paid about nine pence a night for a bed.
“So they used to go in to the restaurant and have a sausage roll, tatties and mince etc. I used to go up in the morning and collect his rolls at the baker’s and bring them back and he would give me a roll and sausage and paid me half a crown a week. “I’d be about 11 or 12.” John Hamilton added the photograph had certainly brought back memories.
“When we saw the photograph in the Express, we knew it right away,” he said.