I was nine months old when I was dragged kicking and screaming to another home in Woodside.
The family agreed to take the house offered by the council and without any consultation they made me go. Despite bawling, throwing my dummy out the crib and giving my mother lots more nappies to wash than normal I was still wheeked away to Sandilands Drive where we stayed for a lot of years.
Over the last few years, I looked into the Woodside past and found it very interesting. There was a lot more history than I expected.
Woodside Cotton Mill
It was a village which served a number of mills in the area and had a couple of small hamlets beside it, Printfield and Upper Cotton. These three were amalgamated into the City of Aberdeen under the one name of Woodside along with Torry and Old Aberdeen in 1891.
The Woodside Cotton Mill arrived around 1780 and by the first quarter of the 19th century was employing in the region of 3000 people from all areas of the city.
Grandholm Mill
There were other mills in the area or roundabout such as Grandholm Mill which had been in existence since 1797. As a youngster I can remember that a great number of women in Sandilands and Ferriers area worked there.
During the American Civil War it was said that the confederate army’s uniform was made from cloth produced in the Grandholm Works and of course you have the famous Crombie cloth which was used for Crombie Coats that were usually made for the rich and famous in our society.
Woodside had the Aberdeen to Inverurie canal running through it which took from 1795 to 1807 to complete at a cost of just under £45,000. It only lasted until 1854 before it closed, having been taken over by the Great North of Scotland Railway. They used the canal to lay the railway tracks and the only one left of the canal bridges can be found near Station Road just behind the shmu building still being used for cars to cross.
There is also a main road passing though Woodside known as Great Nothern Road which was a combination of three roads: Barron Street, Hadden Street and Wellington Street all were made to disappear for a road that goes from just before the Northern Hotel to Noth Anderson Drive (which didn’t exist at that time) it was known as a turnpike road originally and then Great Northern Road. It took over from Clifton Road as the road to Inverurie and it is said that where the two meet created a split the wind at the place where the Northern Hotel was to be built in around 1890.
Author: Dave White