Guided Tour of Glasgow Cathedral, Tuesday 10th November, 11am

Arrangements have now been made for KDSA to have a guided tour of Glasgow Cathedral at 11am on Tuesday 10th November 2026. The guide will be one of the volunteers and the tour will be without charge. The coordinator of the tours has indicated that if there is anything in particular that the group would like to see then could this be flagged as soon as possible.

To register for the tour, please send an email to kdsantiquaries@gmail.com stating the names of everyone in your party. Make your own way to the venue, which can be accessed directly by bus from Kirkintilloch and Lenzie. Meet outside the front door at 10:45am.

Further details will be issued nearer the time. Do not miss this opportunity to see the magnificent cathedral and learn about its long history.

Glasgow Cathedral from the Necropolis

(Photo courtesy Murray Reid)

Thursday 1st October, The Park Centre, 7:30pm. Doug Macdonald and Ivan Ruddock: “From Kerr Street to Bellevue Road via Lenzie - the McDonald Family and their Built Legacy”

Our first meeting of the 2026-27 session will be on Thursday 1st October at 7:30pm in The Park Centre, 45 Kerr Street, Kirkintilloch G66 1LF. Doug MacDonald and Ivan Ruddock will give a presentation on "From Kerr Street to Bellevue Road via Lenzie - the McDonald Family and their built legacy".

John McLew McDonald (1820-1900) and his son John McDonald Jnr (1858-1944) ran a successful house building business in Kirkintilloch and Lenzie through the second half of the 1800s and into the early 1900s. Research has uncovered many houses built by the McDonalds, a few of which were lived in by the family, others which were built for rent or sale. The business built a variety of residential property types, from elegant tenements to grand villas, suitable for the middle and professional classes in the area at that time. They were prolific builders, filling in many streets in the centre of the town including Kerr Street, Victoria Street, and Oxford Street, and consolidating new residential roads like Fern Avenue. Park Avenue, Northbank Road, Bellfield Road and Bellevue Road. Examples of some of their work are shown below.

Benroy, Bellevue Road

Wellwood Terrace

Doug Macdonald is the great-grandson of John McDonald Jnr and was born and raised in Arbroath. After studying engineering at university in Edinburgh, he has had a career in software in the south of England, Germany, and the USA to where he moved 25 years ago. Ivan Ruddock is a past-President of the Society and lives in a house built by the McDonalds in the late 1800s. Together they will present the history of the McDonald family and highlight many of the properties they built from the late 1800s until the 1930s, a period during which Kirkintilloch and Lenzie expanded as centres for industry and commuting respectively. Mention will also be made of some of the better known owners over the years.

The annual membership subscription is £10 and visitors are welcome at all of the Society’s evening events without charge as a ‘taster’.

Dean House

(Photos courtesy of Ivan Ruddock)