Icecube wrote:Toomse I have to say that the Battle Burn originating at Barrachnie Park is a new one on me, no burn there at all. The dotted line extending through Mount Vernon to the west of Barrachnie park refers to the old parish boundary between Old Monkland and Barony. I think somebody's records are confused.
I'll pick this one up as I think Toomse took his lead on this from something I said elsewhere.
You're right in what you're saying, in the respect that the dotted line you referred to was the old parish boundary and there is no visible burn at Barrachnie Park.
My understanding is that the parish boundary through Mount Vernon followed the course of the burn. This was definitely the case as the boundary continued through Tollcross and is the reason why the Fullarton area (unlike the parts of Tollcross on the north/west side of the burn) wasn't absorbed into the Glasgow city limits until the local authority reorganisations/boundary changes of the mid-70s.
There was a visible section of burn at Barrachnie Park up until the late 80s/early 90s, though, at which time it was culverted. I know this because my grandparents' house backs onto Barrachnie Park and I used to regularly play down at the burn as a kid. On one of my visits I turned up to find the Council had laid a pipe along the channel and were covering it over with gravel.
The below image shows roughly where the open section of burn was.
Larger version
hereThe burn flowed towards the woodland, crossed a small old wooden footbridge just at the edge of the tree line and then entered a pipe a couple of yards beyond this. There was always some sort of flow in this section (even after a prolonged period of dry weather) so my guess is that there might have been some sort of underground spring nearby. After any reasonable storm, the water level would noticeably rise - sometimes to as deep as a couple of feet. This was obviously influenced heavily by the natural run-off from the park.
A fair amount of the park run-off was channelled through the drainage ditch that ran in a perpendicular direction along a narrow tree line. Unlike the burn, the ditch always seemed (to me at least) to be more of a man-made feature, particularly as it was always bone dry unless it had been raining.
The below image shows the (approx) route of the burn through Mount Vernon to Sandyhills Golf Course. Please note this isn't the same as the original course of the burn due to culverting/diversions that took place as Mount Vernon developed. The culvert has never been fully surveyed so the exact line is unknown.
Larger version
hereI think the culvert continues a short distance into the golf course, which is why the OS maps show the open burn appearing a bit further down than the point at which I've showed it meeting the course grounds.