Greenock, High Street

Running from May 2016 to September 2017 and part of the Canmore Mapping Programme, Yard by Yard was an area-focused, desk-based project that tested the Defining Scotland’s Places (DSP) methodology in an area for which the records in the NRHE showed considerable variation from one historic map source to another.

Following discussions with local heritage groups and with the ambition of collecting data useful to the communities’ ambition to develop a coastal heritage trail, the project aimed to map the extent of the shipyards and associated industry between Port Glasgow and Greenock. To achieve this aim, the project used historic mapping, ortho-rectified modern aerial photography and the HES aerial photograph collection to map the extents of, and upgrade the records of, the shipyards and associated features such as quays, docks, areas of land reclamation and associated industry.

This timber yard and saw mill, which is depicted on the OS large scale Town Plan (Greenock 1857, sheet II.6.18), comprised a series of buildings, including a ‘Smithy’, ‘Saw Mill’ and ‘Engine House’ ranged around three sides of a yard that was entered off the High Street to the S and was open to the N where timber ponds were located in the inter-tidal zone. The yard also contained an uncovered ‘Weighing Machine’ close to its SW corner. The 2nd edition of the OS 25-inch map (Renfrewshire 1897, sheet II.6) shows that the site underwent no great change by the end of the 19th century but by 1912, when the survey for the 3rd edition of the map was carried out, it had gone completely, having been removed as a result of the expansion of the adjacent shipbuilding yard (NS27NE 29).

Information from HES, Survey and Recording (AKK) 2 April 2017.