Dalmellington

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You know, there are occasions when I'm doing this, visiting a town for the first time to note all the good things, when I find myself scrambling around desperately trying to find anything whatsoever to put in my notebook. And so I found myself in Dalmellington, a bleak sort of place that seemed to be falling apart at the seams. Sometimes it's like this in small Scottish towns, especially in winter. I trekked here, I tramped there, up hill, down dale, all the while hoping to uncover some redeeming feature that might make my visit worthwhile. But I truly struggled. And so, you might wonder, why even bother to mention the place? Well, let's just say that I reckon Dalmellington needs our support. The town, and the adjacent village of Waterside, were once places of heavy industry, where coal and iron-ore were mined from the ground. The Dalmellington Iron Works dominated the area between the 1840s and the 1920s. Rows of houses were built to accommodate the hundreds of workers required for the business. Then it closed down. The company turned to coal-mining for a while, but then it too fizzled and died. We now seem to get the bulk of our iron and coal from abroad, and the descendants of the workers still live in the town, mostly abandoned and unemployed. How can we turn our back on an area that once helped us through two World Wars by providing iron then coal, not to mention men, for the war effort? The answer is quite simple: we can't. And so I might say to whichever Ayrshire council is responsible for Dalmellington and the surrounding district, 'Don't you think it's about time we gave something back?'