WAY Renfrewshire’s lost land
WE REVISIT DEREK PARKER’S RAMBLES THROUGH RENFREWSHIRE
From the Biblical epic of Noah’s Flood to Greek philosopher Plato’s mythical sea-submerged continent of Atlantis, man has mused melancholically on drowned domains swept away by titanic tides.
Amazingly, Renfrewshire has its own lost land.
It lies below the shimmering surface of wooded island-studded Rowbank reservoir constructed during Victorian times to provide Paisley people with fresh drinking water.
During the early 19th century, fertile fields, now deluged by water, were horseploughed for oats, potatoes, turnips, kale and hay.
Upland pastures enclosed by stone walls and hawthorn hedges were grazed by brawny sheep and cattle.
These now-inundated realms were farmed from grey-walled agricultural steadings at Overtrees and Nethertrees whose rubble-razed ruins remain recognisable beside the remote Gleniffer Braes road between Paisley and Howwood.
Flooded farmhouses like Birkridge, Longpark and Boghouse now repose
Derek Parker knew many of Paisley’s secrets – the grimy and the good.
He wandered every corner in search of the clues that would unlock Renfrewshire’s rich history.
These tales were shared with readers in his hugely popular Parker’s Way column.
We’ve opened our vault to handpick our favourites for you.
derelict beneath the reservoir water level.
The deep dam was opened on April 13, 1870 by Paisley Provost Murray, who is commemorated by a street in the town’s North End.
The newer Barcraigs reservoir beside Rowbank was inaugurated in 1916. Both are separated by a narrow causeway.
I saw the long-abandoned habitations with their snaking drystone dykes during the great drought of 1968, when the reservoir virtually dried up.
The dilapidated farmhouses were exposed, for the first time in nearly a century, to the world above the water which they left behind when they were eternally engulfed during the dam’s construction.
Back then I remembered the humble men, women and children who were born, lived, worked and died there before their pastoral paradise was swamped with millions of gallons of water.
It is said the ghost of a long-dead dairymaid still haunts spectral straw-strewn sheds and milks phantom cows as she did in life.
This week, I recalled again these sturdy sons of the soil and doughty daughters of hay harvest gatherings when I cycled past Rowbank reservoir during a glorious sunset.
Night’s velvet veil shrouded the water and gilded lemon-lipped daffodils and conifercrested hillsides with a golden lustre.
The mournful trill of curlews, shrill shrieks of oystercatcher birds and lute-like lilts of blackbirds and thrushes orchestrated an awesome avian chorus.
Their twilight vespers were a Rowbank requiem for long-gone families who once lived in Renfrewshire’s lost land beneath the waters.