Welcome to my website. I am Robert G. Cathcart, a dedicated local historian with a foot in two very different, yet surprisingly similar, worlds. My passion for history began in Scotland, where I grew up in Skelmorlie from 1965 until 1998. It was there that I began collecting old postcards of the area, a hobby that has blossomed over the last 17 years into a massive archive and a Facebook group containing almost every known old photograph of Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay.
In 1998, life took me south to Hartshill in Warwickshire. As I settled into my new life in England, I noticed uncanny similarities between my old home and my new one. I realised that the Scottish trio of villages—Wemyss Bay, Skelmorlie, and the hamlet of Meigle—was mirrored almost perfectly by the English trio where I now live: Hartshill, Chapel End, and the hamlet of Oldbury. These similarities go far beyond simple geography; I was struck by how the circular layout of Innes Park Road and its Primary School in Skelmorlie is almost identical to the circle of The Woodlands and its school here in Hartshill. Both areas share a kindred community spirit, anchored by a comparable mix of castles, churches, pubs, and shops. Both also sit up on a ridge with a half-decent view to different counties.
I soon realised I was not the only visitor to tread a path between these two places. I find myself in the company of historical figures like Florence Nightingale, who visited friends in both locations. Looking further back, the connection deepens: who knows how many Romans, marching up Watling Street past Hartshill, eventually found themselves in my part of Scotland? Or which owners of Hartshill Castle once stood across the battlefield at Stirling Bridge or Bannockburn? It is these echoing parallels that have driven me to document the history of the places where I have lived. I do this by writing books and making them available to the communities on Amazon, not for financial gain, but to raise awareness, love, and respect for the hard-working people who thrived in these areas before us.
Consequently, this website serves as a bridge between my two lives. It allows my friends from where I came from in Skelmorlie a glimpse of the place I moved away to, and it allows my friends south of the border in Warwickshire a glimpse into the place I grew up and called home for 33 years. If you follow my associated Facebook groups, you might notice that I seem to disappear and reappear with sporadic bursts of posts. This is because I work as a Team Leader in one of the country’s largest warehouses on a “four days on, four days off” shift pattern. I tend to dedicate my days off to one area at a time—one week I might be mentally back in Scotland, and the next I am focused on Hartshill. When I am not archiving photos or writing history books about these two wonderful communities, I like to get my hands dirty helping keep my local area clean as an active member of the Hartshill Volunteer Litter Picking Team. Whether you are here for the nostalgia of the North Ayrshire Coast or the history of Warwickshire, I hope you enjoy browsing this collection as much as I have enjoyed curating it.
Oh, and by the way…
You may find the variety of names a little confusing! In Scotland, I am known as Mick, whereas in England I am known as Rob. Online, however, I have to include that middle initial ‘G’ to distinguish myself from the prominent Dr. Robert Cathcart, who has swamped the internet with a billion pages and written just as many academic papers on his studies of Vitamin C. That is definitely not me!