The tiny Scottish village that had world at its feet
Glenbuck was birthplace of legendary football boss and others
IT’S a long lost mining village that has almost completely disappeared from any map.
But from a population of never more than 1,200, the Ayrshire birthplace of Liverpool football legend Bill Shankly, produced an inordinately high number of sporting stars.
Now Glenbuck is attracting hordes of devoted fans, keen to visit the spot where it started for the legendary Scot.
Shankly left the Glenbuck mining pits and went on to star for the once mighty Preston North End football club.
However, his induction into true legendary status came at Liverpool, where he transformed the ailing club into the most successful in England during a remarkable spell as manager between 1959 and 1974.
He led them to triumph as First Division champions in 1964, 1966 and 1973. They also won the FA Cup in 1965 and 1974 and the UEFA Cup in 1973.
More than 50 professional footballers came from the small village during its pinnacle – including seven Scotland internationals and four FA Cup winners.
To put the figure into perspective, an amateur team in London would need to produce 250,000 professional players from the city’s eight million population over a 40year period to be as successful.
The first to turn professional from the village was Sandy Tait, who along with fellow Glenbuck son Sandy Brown, won the English FA Cup with Tottenham Hotspur against Sheffield United in the 1901 final at Burnden Park, watched by a crowd of almost 115,000.
In return for the players’ efforts, Spurs – who became the only nonleague team to win the tournament – allowed the cup to cross the Border to be displayed in a Glenbuck shop window.
Although Shankly was the most well-known, his four brothers enjoyed professional playing careers as well.
Burnley’s title-winning midfielder George Halley also hailed from Glenbuck and won the FA Cup with the side in 1914.
The once thriving mining hub has been depopulated for nearly half a century after it was unable to withstand the collapse of heavy industry.
However, for nearly 30 years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the local junior football team, the Cherrypickers, was a nursery ground for future professional stars who went on to grace pitches across Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and the US.
A memorial erected in the heart of the former village, titled ‘The legend, the genius, the man’ lists some of Shankly’s achievements in charge of Liverpool and continues to draw thousands who want to visit the great man’s birthplace.
Draped in red scarves, flags and the club’s tops, the plaque was unveiled in 2014 on what would have been Shankly’s 101st birthday.
Fans often post online photo-
‘Fifty professionals came from the village’
graphs, including selfies, of their visits to it, showing them with their own football colours and banners alongside captions suggesting some trips have been rather emotional.
The remoteness of Glenbuck – 40 miles south of Glasgow – meant it had no electricity or indoor toilets.
The nature of the mining also contributed in helping shape its footballers. Last year, a documentary titled Shankly: Nature’s Fire revealed his humble managerial origins, 36 years on from his death at the age of 68 in 1981.
Before joining the dizzying heights of Liverpool he cut his teeth at Workington FC, where he often had to do all the jobs as well as managing the team, such as answer mail and carry out maintenance.
In the documentary, devoted supporters group of the iconic Scottish manager, Spirit of Shankly, took a pilgrimage to Glenbuck, 50 years after he won the FA Cup with Liverpool.
Liverpool musician and member of the Spirit of Shankly group Peter Hooton described Glenbuck as having an ‘eerie silence’.
Speaking last year in the documentary, he said: ‘When you get to Glenbuck, there’s an eerie silence but you think this is his [Shankly’s] village and this is what chiselled
‘Chiselled him into the man he was’
him into the man he was. He was infallible to us.
‘Looking back on it now obviously he was a human being but we elevated him to something else.’
Football was at the centre of the community in Glenbuck with the Cherrypickers’ home ground of Burnside Park one of the few sites to have survived despite the depopulation which emptied the village of many people.
In 2016 plans were announced to try to restore the field, establish a museum and reinstate the village’s once all-conquering junior team.