Baillieston.net

The Origin of the name Baillieston

By Robert Murray

The origin of the name, Baillieston in this locality has been shrouded in mystery and previous attempts, some worthy, others less so, to address the question have failed to convince. None have been supported by facts and though some have been genuine suggestions others have been attempts at a 'neat fit' based on guesswork.

This article is a result of many long hours of research that has to be detailed in order that the reader can understand the overall picture. My conclusion I firmly believe reveals the true origin of the name as it is relevant to this district butb efore we get to the truth, it is necessary to recant the background to the 'mystery' and conclude with the result.

Firstly it should be noted that the name 'Baillieston' is not a place name unique to this area. There are at least another four 'Bailliestons' around the world, with two of those here in Scotland (others are in Jamaica and outback Victoria in Australia). The other Scottish ones are all farms in Ayrshire, one near Kilbirnie which dates from at least 1771, another near Craigie in the centre of the county and one near girvan in the south. The latter is quite interesting in that also there used to be lands called Daldowie in that general area. I thought at one time that there could be a strong connection with our district due to there being a exact duplication of two important names. A coincidence that couldn't be ignored as chance I thought, and spent much time investigating the possibility that maybe both names 'travelled' to our area in the late middle ages when our local Daldowie first surfaced in ecclesiastical registers. I have to say if there is a link, I was unable to find it. The etymologists tell us that Daldowie is a name from the Britons (basically Welsh) and means 'dark field' although other ones interpret it as an open field, but both are similar anyway so it matters not a jot really. The point is that it is not uncommon in this country to have the same placenames in different areas. Scotland is littered with towns and villages of the same name. The Ayrshire Bailliestons will be covered more in the linguistic interpretation of the name.

The following suggestions have been put forward - and in fairness to the authors they were only that and weren't claimed as fact, however as is usually the case with unresearched suggestions they tend to be repeated over the years by others who see such as a convenient way of disposing of an awkward question.

1. "It came from the Baillies of Provan" - the prebendaries of Barlanark up to the Reformation (1560) and who acquired ownership of the Lairdship of Provan after it. The first record I found this claim was in the Lanarkshire edition of the Cambridge County Geographies series by Ferederick Mort in 1910 - where Mort states in regard to the origin of the name "Perhaps takes it from the Baillie family, prebendaries of Glasgow Cathedral". 'Perhaps' is a short word that seems to have been stretched to the limit by Mort, an out & out guess based on nothing more than a family name. This guess was also suggested by Leitch &Wotherspoon (Rise of a Community) in 1951 and repeated by the Rev.Robert Inglis in his report for the Third Statistical Account of 1960. I investigated this thoroughly in historical and ecclesiastical works by the great and good of Glasgow historians and rejected it for the following reasons.

Baillieston was a considerable distance from the Lands of Provan, the nearest part being present day Queenslie. Even the lands to the north of Baillieston such as Hallhill and Bartibeith were not part of the Provan lands and, neither, surprisingly was the local area of Barlanark.
The Baillieston area was under a different church administration from Provan, where it and the surrounding land were all part of the Regality and rented out to tennants before and after the Reformation, wheras Provan was an endowment controlled by a Prebend.
The last member of the Baillie family to have owned the lands of Provan was in 1593 when it passed to a branch of the Hamiltons through marriage. I consider the time lapse between that date and when our Baillieston became a heritable property - in 1732 when it was sold off from a neighbouring property to be far too great to be plausible.

The Rev.Inglis also claimed another estate called Baillieston was owned by the above family in the parish of Dalserf. I investigated this and found nothing to support his statement. It is true that the Baillies of Lamington who owned lands in that parish were intermingled with the Baillies of Provand but they never named any estate after themselves. There was however another Baillieston between the present Motherwell and Wishaw in the early part of the 19th.century - and I mention it only as a matter of interest as it does not influence our subject in any way due to the time lapse - which is described in sasine records "as being the lands of Flemington on the south east side of the Carluke turnpike road near Craigneuk & St.Catherines, now called Baillieston, parish of Dalziell". There is five different entries in the records referring to it but it seems to have been either a short lived place or the name was soon changed to something else for reasons not yet known.

2. "Named after a Baron Baillie who ran the Drumpellier/Monkland estate for the monks" Again the first written evidence I have come across is in Mort's account of Lanarkshire in 1910 - where he lays an alternative to the above; " or from the Baillie who managed the estate of Monkland for the monks of Newbattle". This was also put forward by Leitch & Wotherspoon with Drumpellier substituted for Monkland, and repeated (word for word) by Stewart Jackson ("My Ain Folk"). I'm afraid this suggestion doesn't hold water as the Baron system - a feudal position whereby a landowner appointed someone to manage his lands and operated the Baron courts, had long disappeared from this area as they had been superseded by Justices of the Peace towards the end of the 17th.century and there was no property called Baillieston (as already stated) in this area at that time (Parsonage Tiends of the Sub-Deanery of Glasgow, 1638 and Hearth Tax records, Parish of Old Monkland,1691). The Baillies who performed this function on behalf of the monks was the Crawford family of Rosolloch (near Airdrie) and who lived on the lands of Gartlee.

More importantly, the monks of Newbattle didn't own any lands in the Baillieston area after AD 1268 when they were redeemed by the Bishop of Glasgow, John de Cheyan whom Pope Alexander IV had appointed in 1259.

Leitch & Wotherspoon also made reference to a couple of local myths - which even they didn't believe as these myths grew after the development of Baillieston village which of course was long after the name appeared in this area.

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