CARMAN COTTAGE ABOVE POACHY GLEN
ACCESS : From the path up past the Alexandria Cemetery, continue walk along the established track to the communications mast. From there turnleft where the track becomes rough and overgrown. With some persistence you can reach Mount Malow and the Carman Hillfort from here. The cottage remains are on the left. From Carman Muir, the path becomes overgrown and very wet, but can be followed with good footwear.
This is not to be confused with a later cottage of that name off Cardross Road nor of others with similar names. This one is today only discernable from a small rectangular outline of the cottage walls, the boundary fence, some site features and some large trees beyond the head of Poachy Glen.
It does however represent a bygone era when such small rural cottages dotted the landscape; a time before such occupants were enticed into the expanding villages with better services, in this case within easy distance in the Vale below. A shepherd and croft-worker who lived there at around the end of the nineteenth century.
Lairich Rig describes how there was a garden for vegetables and fruit, a chicken run and pens for animals. In the winter, these animals were brought under shelter, in a lean-to attached to the cottage. The farm animals were relied on not just for their milk, which was also used to make butter and cheese, but also for meat. Water was drawn daily.
Lairich Rig : https://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Carman-Hill/6
