Duntocher

Duntocher
Dunbartonshire
Main Street, Duntocher
Location
Grid reference:	NS490730
Location:	55°55’26"N, 4°25’1"W
Data
Post town:	Clydebank
Postcode:	G81
Dialling code:	01389
Local Government
Council:	West Dunbartonshire
Parliamentary constituency:	West Dunbartonshire

Duntocher is a village in Dunbartonshire, inland between Clydebank and the Kilpatrick Hills, and becoming attached to the conurbation spreading from the former.

A far older village than Clydebank, Dunochter is becoming dominated by its industrial neighbour, along with the neighbouring village of Hardgate, though remaining a village in its own right. It still has open country to the north and west. The village expanded due to housebuilding by Clydebank town council after the Second World War, and later by Wimpey in the late 1960s and early 1970s on what had been green belt land.

At one time this was the most north-westerly point on the Glasgow Corporation Transport tram system, trams operating from here via Hardgate to Clydebank, and at times, on to Partick depot.

The village and around

Duntocher historically had several cotton and corn mills, driven by the Duntocher Burn which is the traditional boundary between Duntocher and neighbouring Hardgate

The village has a main street (Dumbarton Road) which acts as the main focal point for village activity. The majority of the villages shops and pubs, the café and the local churches and village halls are located along or very close to a small stretch of this road

The Antonine Wall runs through the village, and ancient Roman fortifications are still visible in the local Goldenhill Park.

The village is at the southern edge of the Kilpatrick Hills.

Churches

• Church of Scotland: Duntocher Trinity
• United Presbyterian Church
• Roman Catholic: St Mary's,

History

Until 1649 the villages of Bowling, Dunbartonshire, Duntocher, Hardgate, Milton and Old Kilpatrick were all part of Kilpatrick Parish.

Industry around the village was aided by the nearness of the Duntocher Burn, a fast flowing waterway ideal for industrial purposes. Between 1808 and 1831 four large cotton mills were set up there leading to a significant population increase and subsequent improvements being instituted to road, canal and river transport links. The boom was relatively short lived however and the demise of the cotton industry towards the end of the 1800s left Duntocher the loser.

Today Donochter and its neighbouring villages serve as commuter villages those working in Clydebank, Dumbarton and Glasgow.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Duntocher)

• Clydebank Through A Lens — a documentary about Clydebank from the 1960s to 1980s]
• Post-Blitz Clydebank — a documentary about Clydebank from 1947 to 1952