Castlehead

Castlehead is a district of Paisley in Scotland. It is a heavily wooded area of Victorian villas where many of Paisley’s most influential industrialists and professionals made their homes as a nineteenth-century industrial boom town became overcrowded.

In the Middle Ages Castlehead made up part of the private hunting grounds belonging to Walter fitz Alan in the Forest of Paisley. The land remained in ownership of the Abbey until the Maxwells (descended from the Maxwells of Caerlaverock) acquired the lands in the 17th century, and built upon them a manor house. This building was eventually to be replaced by 'The Old House' built in 1770 by James Maxwell. A map dated 1839 shows the remnants of a Roman encampment and there is some evidence that Castlehead, together with the hills at Oakshaw and Woodside, had made up the Roman out-station of Vanduara.

Situated to the southwest of Paisley's teeming West End, the difficult terrain and the separation provided by the Paisley and Ardrossan Canal and later the Glasgow and South Western Railway kept Castlehead apart and undeveloped in the early 19th century. Its only buildings were a church and manse at the foot of the hill and the Old House.

Canal Street Church/West Relief Church, now Castlehead Church was built by Paisley weavers between 1781-82, and later refurbished in 1868. Among those buried in its churchyard were the poet Robert Tannahill and the maternal great-grandparents of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The President visited the site during a brief trip to Scotland in 1991.

In the 1850s, there was an unlikely coal mining enterprise on the lower slopes of the hill, roughly where Low Road stands today. James Young visited the site in 1856 to inspect the coal, however he decided that it was not of sufficient quality. The coal pit was short lived and bankrupt the family involved, in order to pay off the debt, the lands of Castlehead were sold by auction.

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