DALQUHURN
Today this is a modern housing development with a few older houses down Dalquhurn Lane, yet it became prominent during the heyday of the textile industries. You can find more about that here TURKEY RED : 12 - DALQUHURN DYE WORKS
The lade remains although almost all altered and inaccessible. Ladeside House remains too and has some millstones within the premises. On the map below you can see where Dalquhurn House and Dalquhurn Cottage were. The former was where the novelist Tobias Smollett was born. in 1721. At that time this was Dalquhurn Farm. That stretched over a wide area and included the hillside above Renton where you can still find Upper Dalquhurn Farm, a cottage known as the Dog House which was the estate kennels and the remants of a cottage on that farm called NETHER DALQUHURN OLD FARM
The small graveyard DALQUHURN BURIAL GROUND can still be made out where the lade coimes off the Leven towards the Dalquhurn Dye Works site. Little information is available about it, but can be presumed to relate to the estate.
These small steps down to the Leven are almost in line with Dalquhurn Lane. There is no reference to them on the old maps, but presume that there was at lease some sort of ferry service here.
In this map from the 1860's you can see both Dalquhurn House and Dalquhurn Cottage. Renton Main Road runs south to north to the left. The Dye Works has not yet occupied Dalquhurn Point, actually a curve in the river. The map shows the "highest point to which the ordinary spring tides flow". This is significant as below that point fresh water for the works could be contaminated with sea water. A line through the centre of the river notes "Royalty Boundary". ©NLS.
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND - maps : Dumbartonshire, Sheet XVIII
Survey date: 1860, Publication date: 1864. https://maps.nls.uk/view/228777145
