place

Donald's Quay

Bays of ScotlandFirth of ClydeLandforms of West DunbartonshirePorts and harbours of ScotlandUse British English from November 2016
River beacon on the railway wall geograph.org.uk 961147
River beacon on the railway wall geograph.org.uk 961147

Donald's Quay was once the location of the northern terminus of the Erskine Ferry then run by Lord Blantyre of Erskine House that provided foot passengers with a crossing of the River Clyde, giving direct access between Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire. At some point in the early 19th century the northern terminus of the Erskine Ferry moved to a site closer to Old Kilpatrick and opposite the Ferry House at Erskine, before closure in 1971 when the Erskine Bridge was completed. Donald's Quay once had an approximately 170-foot-long (52-metre) stone pier that was used by coal boats that transferred their loads into canal barges on the Forth & Clyde Canal at Ferrydyke Wharf and thereby avoided paying fees at the Bowling Basin. The quay was demolished during the construction of the Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire Railway in 1896.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Donald's Quay (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Donald's Quay
Forth and Clyde Canal Towpath,

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Donald's QuayContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 55.925304 ° E -4.4683054 °
placeShow on map

Address

Forth and Clyde Canal Towpath

Forth and Clyde Canal Towpath
G60 5JR , Mountblow
Scotland, United Kingdom
mapOpen on Google Maps

River beacon on the railway wall geograph.org.uk 961147
River beacon on the railway wall geograph.org.uk 961147
Share experience

Nearby Places

Forth and Clyde Canal
Forth and Clyde Canal

The Forth and Clyde Canal is a canal opened in 1790, crossing central Scotland; it provided a route for the seagoing vessels of the day between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde at the narrowest part of the Scottish Lowlands. This allowed navigation from Edinburgh on the east coast to the port of Glasgow on the west coast. The canal is 35 miles (56 km) long and it runs from the River Carron at Grangemouth to the River Clyde at Bowling, and had an important basin at Port Dundas in Glasgow. Successful in its day, it suffered as the seagoing vessels were built larger and could no longer pass through. The railway age further impaired the success of the canal, and in the 1930s decline had ended in dormancy. The final decision to close the canal in the early 1960s was made due to maintenance costs of bridges crossing the canal exceeding the revenues it brought in. However, subsidies to the rail network were also a cause for its decline and the closure ended the movement of the east-coast Forth River fishing fleets across the country to fish the Irish Sea. The lack of political and financial foresight also removed a historical recreational waterway and potential future revenue generator to the town of Grangemouth. Unlike the majority of major canals the route through Grangemouth was drained and backfilled before 1967 to create a new carriageway for port traffic. The M8 motorway in the eastern approaches to Glasgow took over some of the alignment of the canal, but more recent ideas have regenerated the utility of the canal for leisure use.