author2
Mary L. Fairgrieve – a “Glasgow Girl” artist
Mary Fairgrieve was born in Glasgow in 1875 to Alexander and Margaret James. She married John Dunn Fairgrieve, a Greenock man, in Middlesbrough in 1897. Tragically her husband died while they were on their honeymoon at Port Ellen, Argyllshire and is buried there. She came with her parents to Greenock shortly after this and the family lived at 11 Sandringham […]
Duncan McNeil
Duncan McNeil (born 7 September 1950, Greenock) is a Scottish Labour Party Member of the Scottish Parliament for Greenock and Inverclyde. From 1965 to 1979 he worked as a boilermaker at Scott Lithgow, initially as an apprentice. After working as a co-ordinator for the Unemployed Workers Centres in Glasgow he became a full-time official in […]
Alexander Graham Bell
In the 1870s a group of Greenock Business men, including a Mr Thomas Borthwick who had a deaf child, went to hear Alexander Graham Bell in Glasgow lecturing about his “Visible Speech Machine”. They approached him afterwards about the possibility of him helping start up a school in Greenock for the deaf children of the area using his […]
Ian McCrorie – A Life Lived to the Full
Ian McCrorie is a well known and very popular figure in the Greenock area for several reasons, the main four being:- His contribution to education as a Chemistry teacher and as Assistant Rector of Greenock Academy. His contribution to Music in the Inverclyde area and beyond. His love of and enthusiasm for steamers and the […]
Sir Stanley Spencer 1891 – 1959
The artist Stanley Spencer was appointed as official war artist during the Second World War to Lithgow’s Kingston Yard at Port Glasgow. He lodged at various places in that area over the war year while he undertook his work and produced a huge painting depicting the various trades involved in ship building a tribute to the men of the […]
Alison Watt
Alison Jane Watt OBE is a Scottish painter, born in Greenock on 11 December 1965. Alison Watt graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1988. While still a student, she won the John Player Portrait Award and as a result was commissioned to point a portrait of the Queen Mother. Her first works to become […]
The Russian Connection
Greenock people have long traveled widely, the connections with ships and shipbuilding, trade and commerce – imports and exports and the manufacturing industries. There have also been businesses that have developed overseas branches and others who have sent personnel abroad to help local people develop their own manufacturing bases. Perhaps the Greenock Russia connection is less […]
Elizabeth Wood Inglis
Bessie Inglis was known latterly as the “Grand Old Lady” of Port Glasgow. She was born on 31 January 1854 at Ivybank, Port Glasgow and died on 25 November 1936 at Woodbank, Port Glasgow and buried in Port Glasgow cemetery. The granddaughter of the Rev Dr Inglis of the United Presbyterian Church (now Princes Street Church) Port […]
Stella Gonet
Stella Gonet was born 8 May 1963 in Greenock, Scotland. Gonet trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and is known for playing Beatrice Eliott, one of the two lead roles, in three series of the television drama The House Of Eliott, and Chief Executive Officer Jayne Grayson in the medical drama […]
W. S. Graham
The poet William Sydney Graham (1918-1986) was born in Greenock at 1 Hope Street on 19 November 1918. The family moved to Brisbane Street and from there Sydney, as he was usually called, attended Finnart School. When he left school he worked for a time in a bank but went on to study engineering and worked at Hasties. […]