Forgotten Greens of Scotland
Forgotten Greens of Scotland

Jamestown.

Jamestown Golf Club.  Founded 1903.  A 9 hole course about a mile from Balloch station.  << New text box >>

Jamestown Golf Course

From Web Site

In the early 1900's, a Golf Course opened at the north end of Jamestown. It ran in a north-westerly direction from about the Free Church School, and covered the area from there to about where Lomond Road now is, with Dalvait Road as its western boundary, and Carrochan Burn as its eastern one, although it did cross the Burn in places. Few details of the Course have survived, but given the area that it covered, it could not have been an eighteen-hole course. It didn't have much luck with its location, because the land seemed to be needed for other uses, and the Golf Club lost out. Firstly, Carrochan Road cut across the Course, and while that could be worked round the next demand proved fatal for the Course.

As war approached, the land between Carrochan, Dalvait and Lomond Roads was acquired for military use. In fact this consisted of building houses to accommodate key workers in the war effort - something of a throwback to the Admiralty Huts at Levenvale in the First World War. Instead of being called “The Huts Two”, they were called The Hostels. There is little recollection of the Hostels use during the War in the local collective memory. However, their post-war use is well remembered.

Immediately after the war, the Hostels on the Jamestown side of the Carrochan Burn were used to relieve the local housing shortage, and many local families lived there for many years - most until the new houses in the Haldane became available about 1954. After that, the Jamestown Hostels received the council's more difficult tenants, of whom the redoubtable Teenie Black was perhaps the best known. This was something of a controversial policy and was seen as “dumping”, a term which, then as now, was unpopular and widely regarded as offensive for a whole variety of reasons depending on who you were. There was general relief all round when it was decided to build a new small housing estate - the Carrochan Estate - and a new Roman Catholic Primary School, St Kessog's, on the site. All of this was done in the mid to late 1960's.

As well as the Golf Course, there was a Levenbank Works tennis court and bowling green on land behind the Dam, which backed onto the Levenbank Works stables. Both of these were for employees of Levenbank Works, but both continued in use for a while after the closure of the Works. The bowling green became the Jamestown Veterans Bowling Club for a time. The tennis court survived until the 1960's but like every other court in the Vale, it succumbed to either the general decline in the popularity of tennis or the attraction of land for development. Both court and green were eventually built on and private houses now occupy the sites.

 

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