Grant Pinkerton: 'Records and research using the CWGC archive': Thursday 3rd February 2023

Almost everyone living in the United Kingdom is related to someone, however distant, who served and died in either of the two World Wars. That service man or woman is commemorated in perpetuity somewhere in the world by a headstone or memorial erected and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), originally founded as the Imperial War Graves Commission in 1917 and renamed in 1960. 

Mr Grant Pinkerton's talk, entitled ‘Records and Research using the CWGC Archive’, will cover the origins and work of the Commission from foundation to the present day. He will introduce the archives held both in terms of casualties as well as the Commission's own papers which provide an insight into its early years and a number of the decisions made. Using the Casualty Archive, he will look at some of the individuals commemorated with connections to the Kirkintilloch area.

Grant is one of volunteer speakers and tour guides for the Commonwealth Graves Commission as part of the MacRoberts Trust Speakers Programme. His particular area of interest is the First World War but focusing more on the lives of those remembered from the greater Glasgow area.

Some of the documents that can be downloaded from CWGC for a WWI casualty, anticlockwise from top left: the medal card, his/her effects and their disposal, and the commemorative scroll. (© CWGC)

Some of the documents held by the Commonwealth
War Graves Commission. (© CWGC)

Some of the documents that can be downloaded from CWGC for a WWI casualty, anticlockwise from top left: the medal card, his/her effects and their disposal, and the commemorative scroll. (© CWGC)

The meeting will be held in the Park Centre, 45 Kerr Street, Kirkintilloch, G66 1LF at 7.30 pm. The annual membership subscription is £10 and visitors are welcome at all of the Society's evening events.

Carol Primrose: 'The history of Mavis Valley – a mining village near Bishopbriggs': Thursday 12th January 2023

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in what is now East Dunbartonshire saw a drastic change from a rural way of life to intensive industrial development, notably in mines and quarries. To service them, several new villages had to be built to house the workers yet within a century most of them had disappeared. One of them, Mavis Valley, has left enough of a footprint to suggest what life was like for the miner and his family. Surveyed and mapped in 2012, it is a rare survivor of industrial archaeology in West Central Scotland. In this talk, Carol Primrose will present the growth and decline of the Mavis Valley and describe what still remains to be seen at this location.

Mavis Valley (public domain)

Mrs Primrose is a former librarian who, started in Glasgow's Mitchell Library after studying French and German at Glasgow Univeristy, and retired from the latter's library after twenty-two years during which she focused on staff training and study skills and information retrieval for students. Her career also included spells at Strathclyde University and two years in charge of the St Andrew’s House branch of the Scottish Office library in Edinburgh. 

A subject specialism in archaeology led to a Certificate in Field Archaeology and membership of a number of archaeological societies including being President of the Glasgow Archaeological Society, Vice President of Archaeology Scotland, Chair of The Association of Certificated Field Archaeologists and Fellow of the Society of Antiquities of Scotland. She has taken part in several surveys and co-directed two in Arran, and, following retirement in 1998, she developed an interest in local history and directed a survey of Mavis Valley. She is currently Secretary of East Dunbartonshire History and Heritage Forum and a Trustee of Gavin’s Mill in Milngavie.

The meeting will be held in the Park Centre, 45 Kerr Street, Kirkintilloch, G66 1LF at 7.30 pm. The annual membership subscription is £10 and visitors are welcome at all of the Society's evening events.