A tragedy waiting to happen
The wild moorlands above Barrhead were cataclysmically-carved millions of years ago.
A cosmic cauldron of erupting earthquakes, vitrifying volcanoes, gargantuan glaciers, livid lava lakes and fierce floods formed the rugged rocks we see today.
Monstrous giants were once said to have hurled huge handfuls of soil at each other, forming conifer-crested Neilston Pad and stone-strewn Duncarnock Hill.
The marshy morasses, fir forests and massive moraine mounds helped foster these legends.
I was dwarfed by centuries of history on a recent ramble in the Neolithic neighbourhood.
Wailing winds howled eerily through trees, pouring rain cascaded torrentially on muddy meadows and night’s sombre shadows cast sable shrouds across the gloomy waters of Glanderston Dam.
I hiked below Duncarnock Hill, where Iron Age Celts lived in a stakepalisaded fort 2,000 years ago.
Once the powerful Mure family, whose ancestors fought at the Battle
Mine of information
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. This article was first published on December 22, 2003 of Largs, more than seven centuries ago, occupied a majestic mansion on the green.
Grassy banks of the dam held the water back and provided energy for the cotton mills, bleachfields and textile printing factories in the 19th century.
Sheltering from the storm in a nearby wood in descending darkness, I imagined I heard grim groans echoing weirdly from the embankment-enclosed pool, almost as if it was about to burst.
It did just this on that terrible night of December 30, 1842.
Thousands of gallons of deathdealing water flooded the Springhill and South Arthurlie areas of Barrhead.
Fatigued factory workers and their families slumbered somniferously in bunk beds, drowsily dreaming of impending Hogmanay and New Year’s Day celebrations.
Fields were flooded, trees uprooted, houses flattened, cottages crushed, cattle and sheep swept to their doom.
Eight men, women and children perished in watery graves as the destructive deluge cascaded in terrifying tidal waves on unsuspecting sleepers, drowning in demonic dreams from which they never awakened.
The tomb of the tragic victims, still visible in the hallowed grounds of South Arthurlie Church, is poignantly inscribed with the epitaph: ‘Truly, as the Lord liveth, there is but a step between me and death.’
The grey gravestone, in the land of the giants and cosmic catastrophe, is a rocky reminder that the ephemeralness of human life is but a drop in the ocean of eternity.