Glen Village


Glen Village is a settlement in the Falkirk council area of Scotland,situated at the southern end of Callendar Park, south of Falkirk town centre. It adjoins the housing estate of Hallglen, with the two localities counted together in most statistics.

Description

Around south from Falkirk town centre and about from Falkirk High railway station, Glen Village is a small settlement containing around 180 cottage flat homes built in the 1930s for workers at nearby mines, which replaced an older community of outdated miners rows from the latter part of the 19th century. The mines themselves closed by the 1960s. It was originally isolated, but nowadays adjoins the larger housing estate of Hallglen, which was constructed in the early 1970s on an incline between the Callendar Park wooded estate and the railway, and is where most local amenities are located. The village did have its own community hall, post office and bowling club, but all have closed. Both the Glen and Hallglen names appear on the Timothy Pont's Blaeu map of the area surveyed in the 1590s.
To the west, the building of the Lionthorn private housing development in the early 21st century, which in turn adjoins the older Lochgreen neighbourhood, has created a near-continuous suburban chain between Glen Village and the southern part of Falkirk proper around Falkirk High Station, also with a population of around 3,000. Similarly, the open fields to the east of Hallglen almost connect with a cluster of newbuilds on the periphery of Redding, although historically the communities were apart.
Adjacent to the village is the Union Canal where there is a -long tunnel, completed in 1821 and known locally as the "Dark Tunnel". The Glasgow–Edinburgh via Falkirk line railway is also contained in a tunnel of similar length and age - built 1842, long - as it passes Glen Village, emerging at Hallglen. Both were constructed as William Forbes Sr and Jr, the powerful successive owners of nearby Callendar House, did not want the canal or the railway to spoil their views of the landscape. At the 2001 UK census, Glen Village and Hallglen was recorded as having a combined population of 3,488 residents.

Sport

Many local amateur football clubs have come from the area, including the Hallglen Hoofters and the former Chequers team who played their home matches at Glen Park.