The following was printed in the Glasgow Zoo guidebook published in 1956. The Calderpark estate on which the Zoo was built lies just north of Daldowie, across the road running from Hamilton to Glasgow. The country house at Daldowie has disappeared, but the eighteenth century doocot survived intact and has recently been moved from its original location site south of the Zoo to a new site beside the railway station at Mount Vernon, about a kilometre west of the Zoo.

EARLY HISTORY OF CALDERPARK AND DISTRICT

(From a Paper given by Mr. John Dunlop to the Old Glasgow Club.)

When Robert Bogle, son of George Bogle, a wealthy Glasgow merchant who died in 1707, heard the call of his ancestral earth, he bought the lands of Daldowie from John Muirhead away back in 1724. The place name and Bogle-hole still linger there, indeed, they were in existence centuries before that date, so we might well call that part of Lanarkshire near the Calderpark Zoo, Bogle's Land. In another spiral flight upwards, Robert Bogle, merchant and squire, was no doubt highly delighted when his son George married into Sir John Sinclair of Stevenson's family in 1731, as this marriage connected George Bogle with many good families in Scotland, including the Earl of Crawford, in whose veins ran royal blood right back to Jamie the Saxth.

So pleased was Papa Bogle over this event that he passed on to George the lands of Daldowie and Whitinch [west of the city of Glasgow]. This George Bogle became an eminent person in the city and was Rector of Glasgow University in 1737, 1743, and 1747.

If he had lived to see the stately pile of buildings on the summit of Gilmorehill [Glasgow's ancient University moved to Gilmorehill in the nineteenth century] he would no doubt with a certain degree of pride have drawn attention to the fact that this summit was once crowned by a Bogle country cottage.

The Daldowie country seat was built before 1745, for we read that the laird was ordered by command of Prince Charlie (then in December, 1745, visiting Glasgow on his retreat north) to send on to the Fish Mercat by twelve of the clock for the use of the Highland invaders 1,000 stone of hay, 30 bolls of oats, and 4 carts of straw - under pain of military execution.

Not content with this requisitioning, the Highland army invaded Daldowie, but were called off on a protest being made to General Murray. George Bogle proved himself a man of sound business ability. He was a Virginia merchant and a West India trader. He was an early partner in the Glasgow Tan Works and in the Eastern Sugar House. He also assisted with other influential merchants in establishing the Cudbear Works, managed at that time by George Macintosh, whose son Charles gave his name to our waterproofs.