Milngavie.

Six miles north of Glasgow city centre is the village of Milngavie - the official start of the West Highland Way. Milngavie sits on the banks of the River Allander and grew around a grain mill, which can be directly traced back to the fifteenth century, but was probably much more ancient. Milngavie took its name from the owner of this mill ( Milngavie pronounced 'Mill-Guy', is from the ancient British language once spoken in Lowland Scotland and over all of England and Wales. It translates as Mill n' Gavie i.e. 'Mill of David' ). The mill and the mill wheel were restored in the 1960s and can be viewed by visitors.

In 1793 the village was recorded as having only about 200 inhabitants, but this number increased rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, when cotton-spinning, bleach fields, dye works and a distillery became the local industries. The beautiful Mugdock reservoir to the north of Milngavie was opened in 1859 as a storage point for water being piped from Loch Katrine to Glasgow.

A granite obelisk in the centre of Milngavie marks the beginning of the West Highland Way route, which leaves the village following an old freight line built in the 1890s to Ellangowan paper mill.

Accommodation info for Milngavie is on the | Over-night | page.

If this interests you, a related page is at | WHW Towns |


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