Meikle Reive Iron Age Fort.

                                         Meikle Reive Iron Age Fort 

Within 5 miles of our house are a number of Historical Sites including Barr Hill Roman Fort, mentioned in one of my previous blogs. Another interesting site is Meikle Reive Iron Age Fort near Lennoxtown.

The Fort is situated on the south facing slopes of the Campsies approximayely 1lm to the North East of Bencloich Mains Farm. The fort comprises a system of circular embankments, outside the wall there is a terrace approximayely 14 ft wide. There is also a circular depression about 30 ft in diameter, which is often filled with water.

Further information can be found at  http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/45194/details/meikle+reive/
and  http://www.welcometolennoxtown.co.uk/campsies.htm#The Meikle Reive

Was Gagarin the First Man in Space?

                                        Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin 

It has long been believed that Yuri Gagarin was not the first man to go into space and return to Earfh, but many believe it was Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin the son of the head of the Ilyushin design bureau.

Also Aleksei Ledovsky is aledged to have been the first man in Space but perished during the flight.

Vladimir Ilyushin, son of Soviet airplane designer Sergey Ilyushin, was a Soviet pilot and is purported to have been a cosmonaut, alleged by some to have actually been the first man in space on April 7, 1961—an honor generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961.

The theories surrounding this alleged orbital flight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descending capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, resulting in its landing in the People's Republic of China. The pilot was then held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from such an incident is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight—they reportedly focused their publicizing efforts on the subsequent successful flight of Yuri Gagarin instead. This event was the subject of a recent TV Documentary.

Vladimir Ilyushin died in 2010.

For further information see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts

Scotland's Drowned Village

A few years ago I was asked by a group of Americans staying at a Glasgow Hotel to see if I could take them on a tour of Bothwellhaugh, where their family came from, I was intrigued and did some research, and found that Bothwellhaugh no longer existed, and only the Cemetary still exists.

The village was built between 1880 and 1900 to house workers at the Hamilton Palace Colliery. The mine was decommisioned in the late 1950's and th village demolished, and is now buried beneath a lake in Strathclyde Country Park. I have merories of seeing the village from a car travelling on the carlisle Road in the 1960's, the vilage then looked very dilapidated.

Here is a link  to a video TheLost Village of Bothwellhaugh -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3CWTi63EsM

More information about Bothwellhaugh can be found at  http://www.iwitness.btinternet.co.uk/bothwellhaugh/contents.htm