IN the parish of Govan and shire of Lanark, midway between the Govan and Paisley Roads, three miles from the Cross of Glasgow.
The parish of Govan was the scene, in the sixteenth century, of a Land Settlement that would have satisfied Mr. Mill, and might have gone some way to propitiate a moderate Fenian, for it gave "fixity of tenure" without even "periodical re-valuation."
Great part of the land all round Glasgow had of old belonged to the Romish Archbishops. After the flight of James Beatoun, the last of these, the See had been, by the help of a rapid succession of prelates of the Tulchan order, well milked for various favourites of the powers that were. Finally, about 1590, a commission was granted "to feu the haill lands of the Lordship and Regalitie of Glasgow without demunition of the Old Rentall, to the effect that the Tenents, being thereby become heretable possessors of their several possessions, might be incouradged by virtue and politie to improve that countrie." This was the origin of the "Govan Lairds," a race who long owned great part of the parish. (1) But most of their little lairdships are gone now, some swallowed whole by neighbouring estates, some broken up, and new properties, Moore Park among them, quarried from their ruins. It has been built up from fragments, (2) some of which had been previously got together from the representatives of the old rentallers, and had passed through various hands (3) to Richard Alexander Oswald, merchant in Glasgow, who added the rest of them.
He was the son of Alexander Oswald of Shield Hall, younger brother of James Oswald, M.P., and the father of the late Alexander Haldane Oswald, M.P., of Auchincruive, and of George Oswald, now of Auchincruive. (4) He died at Moore Park, in 1821, in the prime of life, and amid general regret, for no man in Glasgow was better liked.
Moore Park was sold by his trustees to John Thomas Alston, merchant in Glasgow, who was Lord Provost at the time of George IV.'s visit to Scotland (1822), and well represented Glasgow at the great doings in Edinburgh.
In 1826, Provost Alston having transferred his business to Liverpool, Moore Park was sold to James Campbell, a partner in the great house of John Campbell, Senior, & Co. Mr. Campbell, after living some years at Moore Park, removed to Glasgow, (5) and many years ago left these parts altogether. But he still lives, the last survivor of the numerous family of John Campbell, Senior, and the last and no unfit representative of the West India dynasty that long reigned in Glasgow.
He sold Moore Park in 1841 to Alexander Kerr of Robertland, (6) who had realized a large fortune in the tobacco trade, of which Glasgow has somehow lost its old grip. His son and successor, John James Kerr, sold it in 1852 to our respected townsman, John Mitchell, merchant and shipowner, who has owned and occupied it since.
The house was built in the beginning of this century by the Hagarts, from designs by David Hamilton, and it remains now much as it came from his hands. But its place will not likely long know it. Already half the lands have been cut off by the Govan Railway, and the whole district is breaking up under the ceaseless attack of the great town.
[1878.]
Moore Park now belongs entirely to the Glasgow and South-Western Railway Company, who, having a few years ago bought part of the property, have now bought the rest of it, including the mansion-house. They would have done better to have bought the whole when they were at it. For their first purchase of twenty-one acres they paid £8,000, and now for the remainder, of sixteen acres, they have had to pay £30,000. The price paid for the whole by Mr. Alston in 1822 was £6,500.
Mr. Mitchell still lives on in the old place, and long may he live, one of the oldest and worthiest of our citizens. Now in his ninety-second year, he has been doing good work here for at least as long as any one. He is the father of the Glasgow Presbytery, in which he has been an elder for fifty years. He is the father of the Town Council, of which, with a brief interval when he was Provost of Gorbals, he has been a member ever since the Municipal Reform Bill of 1833. He is, since Sir James Campbell's death, the sole survivor of the Special Commissioners for Glasgow named under Peel's first Income Tax Bill. And he is the last left of the founders of the Clydesdale Bank.
(1) A list exists of 69 of these old rentallers who, in 1595, united in getting from King James a Charter of Confirmation of their feus. There are Hills and Gibsons, Stevens, Rowans, and other well-known Govan names. The descendants of some of the 69 still remain in possession, but in the march of improvement most of them have marched out of sight.
(2) These patches had names, Muirs, Mothermyre, Bog Park, Muir Park, (unde "Moore Park"?), and are parts of Marylands, Easter Dykehead, and Teucherhill. Some of these names, like many others that may still be found in the district, or dug, like fossils, from the titles, tell the same tale told by the peat that may still be traced under wheat fields. The rich lands of Govan have grown rich by long industry. "Govan Muir, beside Glasgow," was the muster for the friends of the Confederate Lords before the battle of Langside - a wild open heath, which once covered a great part of the parish, and, indeed, stretched almost from Glasgow to Bishopton. There a fragment of it still remains in Dargavel Moss.
(3) Alexander Stevenson, and his nephew, Benjamin Barton, successively Commissary Clerks, Basil Ronald, glover and breeches maker, and Charles Hagart, Robert Hagart, and James M'Caul, merchants, all men well known in their day. Charles Hagart's son, Thomas Campbell Hagart of Bantaskine, married a famous Glasgow beauty, Miss Stewart of the Field (whose mother was a M'Caul), and had by her Charles and James M'Caul Hagart, distinguished cavalry officers, and Eliza Stewart, the wife, first of the late Alexander Speirs of Elderslie, and now of Edward Ellice, M.P.
(4) Auchincruive is now (1878) the property of Richard Alexander Oswald, elder son of George Oswald, who died in 1871. Mr. James Campbell is also gone. There is now hardly one left of our old West Indians, probably not one Glasgow man left that ever owned a slave.
(5) To a new mansion on BIythswood Hill, then counted almost wickedly grand, and still one of the best houses in Glasgow. It is No. 218 St. Vincent Street, and was afterwards for many years the residence of the late George Stirling, Esq.
(6) Mr. Kerr owned, and his son now owns, Robertland, the ancient estate of the Cunninghams of Robertland, who are represented here by Cunningham Smith, Esq.
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