Heritage group take a look back over 75 years
East Kilbride Heritage Group has brought residents’ memories of the town to life as part of its 75th anniversary celebrations.
A book of recollections and stories of life, entitled Tales From Roundabout the Town, has been compiled as EK celebrates 75 years of being granted new town status in May 1947.
This special publication features short reminiscences of townsfolk who have been interviewed and shared their tales over the years. This new booklet is aimed at being fun, insightful, and accessible to all.
Hazel Brown, from the heritage group, said: “We’ve worked really hard collecting these memories over the years and it’s great for them to be seen and read by a wider audience.
“We plan to give copies of this book to all the schools and care homes in the area, to be used as a reminisce and teaching resource and to educate people about how life was like in the new town and how life has changed since.”
Full copies of the interviews are available in East Kilbride Central Library and the booklets will be available to all at forthcoming events, with hopes of small donations to fund more copies to be printed.
Scott Broadfoot, local history librarian at East Kilbride Central Library, said: “This is a brilliant resource and I’m always so impressed with the work and effort the East Kilbride Heritage Group put in to helping us run events and promote local history.
“We were really pleased to work with them to launch the booklet at our East Kilbride Birthday Party event we hosted in the library last week.
“Hazel has put so much work into putting this new booklet together and we really hope people enjoy reading through it. I’m really fortunate to have them to work with and consult. “
He added: “It further complements our forthcoming project with Duncanrig Secondary to revamp and old teaching aid, which contains lots of stories and memories of life in the village before the new town arrived.
“We have recently unearthed around 40 cassette tapes which this booklet is based on and are in the process of digitising these, to preserve and to allow people to access these again.
“Some of these tapes which were created about 40 years ago interview famous names from the Village such as Hugh Begg and the Grieg family from East Kilbride, whose memories take us back before 1900. I’m really excited to see how this project develops.”