The Name "Cordale"

The name Cordale is Gaelic for field of heron and can be traced back to the 13th century when Robert the Bruce roamed the lands at Renton.  Cordale, the heron point of a long loop in the winding River Leven, is still a favoured habitat for the large bird today.

From the earliest recorded maps, settlements can be found on land around the Leven Valley at Cordale, or Cordial as it was known, and at Dalquhurn, and even today it is a place where people live and work.  Once the hunting ground of the king of the Scots, Cordale also played a major part in the cloth-bleaching industry early in the 18th century.  A calico printing works was established on the land around this time, which was effectively the beginning of Renton as a flourishing community.  Cordale House was also built as a home for the works owners, the Stirling family, who took over Dalquhurn to the south of the village in 1791.  The mansion house stood until the 1930s when the first Cordale housing scheme, which was home to hundreds of villagers over the years, was built.

By the 1990s the scheme was rundown and dated and a group of determined villagers were determined to turnaround the fortunes of their once thriving village.  A housing association was born as a result and, when looking for a name, members wanted something which would capture the past while looking to the future.

Archie Thomson, Chairperson of Cordale Housing Association, said: “It was important to us to have a local connection not just for the housing we wanted to build, but to remember what was here before, the people who stayed there, how they lived and the work they did.  There is reference to the lands at Cordale dating back to the times of King Robert the Bruce. He would take his hawks to hunt heron at Cordale.  After the Stirlings, the MP Alexander Wylie, lived in Cordale House and it was his wife who brought the first free education to the area.  He believed in a property-owning democracy which is very much a feature of the village today”. 

Cordale has a heritage from kings to wealthy businessmen to its current use as a mixed development of social rented housing and private ownership.  Cordale as an area and as an Association have supported people in the area and hopefully in the future will continue to support a thriving community throughout Renton, Alexandria and Dumbarton.