Local History

Below are links to a variety of documents and photographs, both old and new, that are relevant to local history;

• The ‘Local History Summary‘ is a brief look at the history of the village.
• ‘The Final Whistle‘ is a story about the last passenger train to Lochlip Station on June 25th 1955
• The Rev John Russell - Minister of the West Church from 1877 - 1934
• The ‘Calder Glen Woolen Mill’ documents what is currently known about the business activity conducted at a site at the North end of Calder Street.
• The ‘Descendants of an Unknown Crawford’ is a file from the authors genealogical database which provides some biographical data on some family members. Recent generations have been omitted for reasons of privacy but family relations may contact the author for details.
• ‘A Story from Memory – Part 1’ is part of an unpublished autobiography by James Thomas Orr Hepburn, grandson of William Crawford. It recounts his life in Scotland from 1875 to 1910.
• ‘The Last William Orr of Kaim’ records what we know about the last Orr owner of the Kaim. He died in 1915, a victim of a German torpedo, and is memorialized by a monument in the Lochwinnoch cemetery.
• The Hunter family... can you help?

The Historical Images section of this website contain a number of Lochwinnoch picture postcards donated by the author. They come from an extensive collection that was assembled by the author’s grandmother, Margaret McLean (Smith) Hepburn (1880-1965) between 1904 and 1910. Margaret was born and raised in Scotland but she did not know her husband to be, James Hepburn, until they met in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

In the fall 1905 an amateur photographer, James Heythorne, visited Lochwinnoch and photographed a number of the scenes around the village. James Hepburn, grandson of William Crawford and a friend of James Heythorne, assembled copies of a number of the photographs in a small album. Copies of several of these images may also be found in the Historical Images section.