THE property of Lord Blantyre, is situated in the parish of Old Kilpatrick, and county of Dumbarton, and is about ten miles from Glasgow. The house is beautifully placed on a slight eminence near the river Clyde, and embosomed among trees, gives the idea of all that is peaceful, sheltered, and retired.
The lands of Glenarbuck were acquired at the end of last century by Gilbert Hamilton. (1) The house was built by his directions; the policies and garden were laid out and planned under his superintendence.
Gilbert Hamilton was Provost of Glasgow in 1792, and had been Dean of Guild previously. He was a most energetic and useful Chief Magistrate. In 1793, a year long remembered for the distress that was caused by the numerous failures of merchants, manufacturers, and banks, he distinguished himself by the judicious measures he originated to allay the general panic, and assist the working people, who were then on the verge of starvation from being thrown out of work. He was one of the founders of the Chamber of Commerce, and its Secretary from 1783 till 1808 - and, before the Bank of Scotland had a branch in Glasgow, he was their first Collector. (2)
Glenarbuck was afterwards the residence of the accomplished but visionary Lord Webb Seymour, the friend of Jeffrey, and Horner, and MacIntosh. (3)
It afterwards passed into the hands of Mr. Robertson, who, upon his marriage with Miss Glasgow, the heiress of Mountgreenan, in Ayrshire, assumed the name of Glasgow. His son, the late Sheriff Robertson Glasgow, father of Robert Bruce Robertson Glasgow, now of Mountgreenan, sold Glenarbuck to the late Duke of Sutherland, who conveyed it to his son-in-law, Lord Blantyre.
Among the more recent occupiers of the house were W. G. Mitchell of Carwood, and his brother James Mitchell, LL.D., ex-Dean of Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow, who lived there for many years. Their venerable father, the late Rev. Dr. John Mitchell, Professor of Biblical Criticism in the United Secession Church, and minister of the church in Wellington Street, passed the latest months of his valuable life, when his health was declining, at Glenarbuck, where he died on the 25th January 1844. (4)
Glenarbuck is at present the residence of Robert Black, of the well known firm of Black & Wingate, merchants, Glasgow.
(1) Gilbert Hamilton was son of Archibald Hamilton, merchant in Glasgow, and grandson of the Rev. Archd. Hamilton, minister of Cambuslang in 1688, who was a younger son of Hamilton of Westburn.
(2) John Gordon of Aitkenhead is Provost Gilbert Hamilton's grandson by his daughter, Janet Hamilton, wife of the late John Gordon of Aitkenhead.
(3) Here is what Cockburn says of him - "Seymour, who, after twenty years of study did nothing, and Macintosh, who lived to 1867, and did something, but not nearly so much as he ought to have done, had both the habit of wasting themselves in the same pleasing dissipation of schemes, noble to be formed, but too immense to be seriously attempted." (Journal II. ii.) Lord Webb Seymour's nephew is the present Duke of Somerset, an eminently practical and unvisionary person.
(4) Dr. Mitchell was the son of the Rev. Andrew Mitchell, anti-burgher minister of Beith. He was the first comer to Glasgow of five brothers, himself, Thomas and Moncrieff Mitchell, manufacturers, Andrew Mitchell, writer, and Patrick Mitchell of Milton, calico printer. Patrick, the youngest of these sons of the manse, was a bachelor. The other four left families, who in their turn have multiplied till the descendants of the old anti-burgher minister could now make a small clan.
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