Doors Open!

Mile End Mill, home to Paisley Heritage Centre

Have you heard of Doors Open Days?  Around the UK, they are held annually, and include many buildings that are not normally open to the public, or which charge entry fees, allow free admission and have special events to mark the day.

This being Renfrewshire’s Doors Open Days weekend, my friend Anne and I visited some of the venues, including Paisley Heritage Centre.  This is housed in a former thread mill, and we were lucky enough to see some of the wonderfully detailed poor law records relating to Paisley residents who fell on hard times in the Victorian era.  Some of these are indexed online, so I had been able to check for ancestors in advance of our visit, which allowed me to identify one individual whose record we viewed - even though the writing posed a bit of a challenge!

1787 Map of Paisley

We were also shown good-sized reproductions of 19th- and early 20th-century maps of Anne’s neighbourhood, and thanks to her local history knowledge she was able to pinpoint familiar landmarks as well as areas which have completely changed since then.  I found some maps of 18^th-century Paisley which illustrated the homes of individual families, including some of my ancestors.

It's worth noting that this particular Heritage Centre’s resources are available Monday-Saturday, and not just on special occasions like today.  Community services like these are priceless, and indispensable to family history research.

Parish Church of
Houston & Killellan

We later travelled to the nearby country village of Houston to visit the parish church, and received a lovely warm welcome.  We admired the gorgeous stained glass windows and handcrafted embroidery inside, then basked in the peace and tranquillity of the church’s rose garden of remembrance.  It was extremely tempting to sit there all day, beneath the trees, listening to the birdsong.

Check out your area’s Doors Open Day and take advantage of this once-a-year opportunity to see inside buildings that have special relevance to your family, their work and lives.  Some areas, like the city of Glasgow, have expanded from one day to a festival lasting an entire week, with lots of tours, talks, and exhibitions as well as access to glorious architecture – and that’s coming up in a couple of weeks' time, so plan your visit soon.