The Boglestone by Elizabeth Barnes ( McGhee)
As a child growing up in Burnside Avenue, my friends and I often visited the orchard which was next to the Boglestone House. This orchard had long been neglected but the trees were great to climb and wild flowers were there for the picking. After swinging from branch to branch and probably having been stung by 'jaggy' nettles, we would adjourn to the Bogle Stone where we would sit a chat.
This enables us to wave to passing traffic, see if we knew anyone on the passing busses and try and spot a Royal Mail van when we would shout 'First luck for the Royal Mail' We believed that the first person to shout this would have good luck.
It was easy to tell the time in those days even if you didn't have a watch. The school bus from St Columba's High School in Greenock reached the Boglestone area at 4.25pm. We would loiter around the stone til the shipyard buses arrived around 5pm - then it was time to go home for tea.
Despite having spent hours sitting on the stone at it's original site, none of us seemed to be cursed. We are all still alive and kicking. One of my pals was Christine McGarrigle who also lived in Burnside Avenue. I lost contact with Christine for years but through a contact on PG4U I re-established contact with her ( and her sister Jean) and managed to catch up with her on her first visit to Port Glasgow this year(2007) She has been living in New South Wales for the last 30 years. Christine has led a very prosperous life so the Stone didn't curse her either!
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This page last modified on Tuesday, December 11, 2007