In 1944, the Alexanders (Bluebird) double-decker bus - Glasgow (via Kilsyth) - took the right hand fork at Longcroft Monument down to the Haggs and thence on to Banknock, and there, nearly a hundred years after these maps were drawn, the area shaded blue contained two solid rows of miners' cottages, rather mundanely named the Front Row and the Back Row, the area shaded red held Banknock Primary School, and the area shaded green gave space to the Schoolhouse, our family home for the next five years. The pub was on the road-edge of the pond marked in purple and the PO, and Grocers almost directly opposite. The railway running east/west north of the road, did not exist in 1850, but was already defunct by 1944.

Some highlights from my wee boy's eye-view of life in Banknock 1944-49
will follow on these pages in due course.