60th anniversary of UK's first conservation village

That this House is pleased to join the village of Eaglesham, East Renfrewshire, in its year-long celebration of the 60th anniversary of its designation, on August 12, 1960, as the first conservation village in the UK; notes that Eaglesham has its roots in 1769 when local laird, Alexander Montgomerie, began to develop an elegant planned village with housing built round the orry, an area of common land at the heart of the community; further notes that Eaglesham’s first main industry was farming, followed by cotton spinning and weaving, and that it suffered a decline after a mill fire in 1876, falling into such disrepair that, by the 1930s, the historic village was threatened with wholesale demolition; records its appreciation of the legacy of Nina Davidson and Kathleen Whyte, whose letter-writing campaign in the 1940s set the wheels of conservation in motion, acting as a blueprint for conservation across Britain, with more than 600 conservation areas now designated in Scotland alone; and welcomes the fact that Eaglesham still boasts many fine 18th century buildings, including beautiful houses and churches, Polnoon Lodge, a former hunting lodge, as well as the former 19th century coaching house, the Eglinton Arms Hotel, with fifty-one buildings of architectural and historical interest included in the preservation order, many of them grade B and C listed, and the village as a whole A-listed and of outstanding beauty.