Brock of Raploch

Bremner’s Childhood in The Raploch: 

“I was brought up in a place called Raploch, a tough district in my native Stirling. Maybe that has something to do with the belligerent attitude I have adopted on the Soccer field, over the years.” (Billy Bremner, 1971)

William John Bremner, known as Billy, was born in Stirling on 9 December 1942. He was adopted by James ‘Pop’ and Bridget ‘Bessie’ Bremner on 18 February 1943 who lived at 35a Weir Street in the Raploch area of the town, in the shadow of Stirling Castle. The council housing Bremner lived in, similar to the plans below, was part of clearance of medieval slums located immediately below Stirling Castle in the inter-war years. Such housing influenced the physical and social environment Bremner grew up in, which structured the areas he lived, was educated and played in during his formative years in the 1940’s and 1950’s. 

In the past, The Raploch long had an unflattering reputation for violence, crime and drunkenness. However, for those who lived there it represented a deep sense of neighbourhood, solidarity and social distinctiveness. This separateness of location ‘Back ‘o Hill’ and strong sense of communal identity set it apart from other areas of Stirling. Bremner himself recalled The Raploch being a “hard” place to grow up, which he suggested influenced the character of his play on the pitch.  

We interviewed three contemporaries of Bremner, some slightly older and one younger who grew up in and around The Raploch in the 1940s and 1950s who also played football with or against Bremner, either in teams or ‘bounce’ games. First, Kenny Robertson who grew up on the outskirts of The Raploch and was a couple of years younger than Bremner but also played for Gowanhill United.  John Digney was five years older than Bremner and lived in both Raploch and Cornton and played with Billy in a Sunday team selected by local coach John Wynn. Finally, Willie McQuillian was a couple of years older than Bremner and was born in Menzies Drive and then lived in Weir Street just up the street from Bremner in The Raploch. Willie was at school with Bremner but also played bounce games with him for many many years.  

In terms of what The Raploch was like, Kenny explained the reputation the area had in the post-war years: 

Well, Raploch had a reputation as being a tough place, and it was tough, there was a lot of tough people down there, and there was a lot of people frightened to come into Raploch at that time because they had a reputation […] And I remember where I stayed, there was a guy smashed through our window and a fight outside the house and he was a Raploch guy and they were fighting with the soldiers and all that, but that was quite a common thing, very common.

Kenny Robertson

Living conditions in this part of Stirling were also impoverished for many. John who lived in the area recalls the tough living conditions he and many families lived in at the time: 

During the war we got an old house up in Bains Street towards Stirling and it was condemned but I think mother and father were just glad to get a house of their own. So my father worked in the house and things, so I think he thought, well if the war clears up, he’ll get a new house. Of course, the war went on for five years, so we were up there all that time. And we had to go out the door, along the side, down the close, out the back, down the stairs to the toilet. That was where the toilet was, we didn’t have baths or any of that. 

John Digney

Willie who lived in a similar house to Bremner remembers what it was like in 1940’s Raploch: 

Well the area of Raploch at that time was like most places, like Glasgow. Like the tenements in Glasgow. People lived up closes in the house at the back. They were, we all lived in closes, 4 to a close before families had a close. Didn’t have much ‘cause it was the war years and just after the war years. There was rationing, so you didn’t have much, no money for chocolate etc, that just didn’t happen. 

Willie McQuillian

Primary School

Billy attended St. Mary’s RC Primary School, originally located on the corner of Drip Road and Raploch Road, literally a few minutes walk from Bremner’s home on Weir Street. Opened on the eve of the Second World War in 1939, the school had a distinctive art deco style frontage, that would have seemed the height of modernity to a young Bremner.

Original architect plans for the school (above) are kept in Stirling Archives. The building was demolished following the move of the school to the Raploch Community Campus in 2008. The site was developed for new private and social housing in 2022, and its main street has been named Billy Bremner Way. 

We interviewed a number of people who attended St Mary’s, or Raploch Primary School which was adjacent to Billy’s school, who remembered Billy and growing up as young children in the area. Ian Pow and Bremner were pals from the age of six and they played together in St Marys’ Primary School and with St Margaret’s Boys Club. Willie also attended St Mary’s albeit two years ahead of Bremner. When asked who was Billy Bremner he replied: 

First memory of Billy Bremner. I think I’d have to say when he was probably about 6 and I would have probably been about 8 or 9. Seeing him coming into the school. I knew him, I knew him but I didn’t relate to football. Because I used to go up to Weir Street to go to school and you would see him out playing when he was just a youngster but then when you would see him at school it was just another schoolboy. But as he went on you seen something different about him. He just wanted to play football all the time it was football, football, that’s all he done. He just knew that was where he was going to go.

Willie McQuillian

The boys clubs in the area were linked to the local churches, which had the effect of segregating the formal playing of football out of school along religious lines. As Kenny explains: 

Well, I joined the BB and a lot of us joined the BB because they had a football team. And we went all different places to play football, but that made us different because we were all protestants. The Catholic boys didn’t join the BB because it was attached to a church, just the same as Billy Bremner played with St. Margaret’s team down here, and they were Catholic, so I would never have played St Margarets because they were Catholic. And not that my family were really that way inclined. It was just something that you lived with, you accepted that. 

Kenny Robertson

According to Willie the church was also influential in when football was played:

The minister of the church and the priests down there were very good. They ran a lot of things you know because they knew the people down there didn’t have much, so they’ve done their best. They did. It was them to blame for no Sunday football. I know Kenny’s got a different take on that, but it was the church, and Church of Scotland were totally against anything on a Sunday. Hence no dancing, no pubs, no football no any kind of sport on a Sunday. 

Willie McQuillian

Street Football

Raploch was a poor and historically deprived area of Stirling, in the northern shadow of Stirling Castle beyond Gowan Hill.  Built following the clearance of medieval slum housing, The Raploch housing ‘scheme’ dates back to the 1920’s, which grew with subsequent public housing developments in the 1930s, 1950s, 1970s and more recently with modernisation in the 2000s. Regardless of any economic and social deprivation in the area, football was a potent and meaningful distraction which occupied young and old in The Raploch. 

Our interviewees all recall growing up and playing in the streets of The Raploch. Football featured strongly in every spare hour of the day. Willie recalls where Bremner used to play as a child:

He used to play at the bottom of his own street Weir Street and we played there against two big doors. The really early park was the swing park at the bottom of Huntley Crescent and at the start of the morning whoever was there first, probably three to start with maybe four, so we did have a side. We had a game of kick in with the one goalkeeper. And it would mount and mount until there was too many for a swing park so we used to move to the ash park. And then our game started over the main park so some of us would go over there, and the rest stayed there and that was our day on a Sunday. 

Willie McQuillian

He continued: 

Football was all day, every day. Between school, school ruined it, if we didn’t go to school, we could have played all day on it, played at night. Well, you played at school. You played it at play time, dinner time afternoon playtime and then when you got home you played it again. And that’s what it was all about. You never had any money to do other things, a lot of people were going to the pictures. There were four picture halls in the town, so, you got a fair choice. But if you didn’t have the money to go there obviously you didn’t go and if you come from a big family like mine. My mom had 10, so there was even less money to go around so you just accepted that that was the way of the world at that time. It was. I look back with fondness. 

Willie McQuillian

However the harsh winter weather made playing football difficult, not least because not everyone had a pair of football boots. As John explains: 

As I said, the guy I told you, he played with wellingtons on. Just what you had on your feet. In the summertime you’re alright, you could play with your sand shoes or ‘gutties’ or whatever it was. Baseball boots. But in winter time, that’s a different story. You just had to play wellingtons on or heavy boots. They were hard to get boots, I mean literally there, the boots came up over your ankles […] The old boots you used to have to soak them in water before you could play.

John Digney

Willie also explained what football boots were like back in the 1940s and 1950s:

They were boots not shoes, they were boots. Laced up to the ankle and the studs were little leather studs with nails through them, and you needed ‘a last’ [a longevity]. My dad did a bit of cobbing, so we were alright for ‘a last’ if you had a pair of boots. But you just hammered the studs in, flattened the nails into the sole. They weren’t ideal, the toes were concrete. You got kicked with the toe of the old boots you felt it. 

Willie McQuillian

As he notes, not many people had boots and you often had to borrow boots to play games: 

If you’re playing a game on a Sunday and you knew someone that wasn’t playing but had boots, you could go and borrow them, you could borrow their boots and that happened quite often. Quite often that happened.

Willie McQuillian

Otherwise you had to make do with what you had. Kenny recalled that Raploch was a place where all the young boys from the area congregated to play football on a Sunday, from morning to night, sometimes going against his parents wishes: 

When I was young, wisnae that long after the war, I used to have to steal my sand shoes, what they called sand shoes that’s trainers, out on a Sunday because my mum and dad wouldn’t let me play football on the Sunday. I went out with my sandals on, so they still don’t know.  But I stole my sand shoes every Sunday and I ended up playing football at the ‘back of the hill’. 

Kenny Robertson

The balls in use were also hard to come by and heavy to use, as John described: 

Oh, the balls were, well they got bigger and bigger and bigger. I was playing with Raith Rovers and I think they blew the ball up every week and it got bigger and bigger until you could hardly kick it. And if you got hit with it, that was a different story, it nearly knocked you out. In fact a lot of people were knocked out with they balls, so, terrible.  

John Digney

Kenny also had similar memories of the balls from the 1950s: 

The ball was very very heavy. It was what they called a T-panel, a leather T-panel and it was always very very heavy, especially when it got rainy. And quite honestly I couldn’t have got it into the corner right into the goal when it was heavy like that. 

Kenny Robertson

Willie revealed how these balls felt like to kick or head:

If you don’t have football boots on in them days it was sore. If you kicked it, the old ball had a lace across the top, and there was what you called a cork. You took it out and blew up and you had to get that back in. Then you had to lace it and you had to lace it perfect, you couldn’t twist the lace because it made an edge and it would cut you when you headered it, and it did cut a few people I can imagine.

Willie McQuillian

Becoming ‘Brock’

Like many young kids, everyone in The Raploch ‘earned’ a nickname, often for something they did or said. Billy’s nickname was “Brock”, which came about following a kickabout on the local playground. One of Bremner’s best friends as a child, Isabell Lafferty known as Izzy, retold the story of how Bremner got his nickname to Willie: 

I’ll tell you a true story about that. Billy’s nickname came from the bottom of Huntley Crescent, when we gathered in the morning. I wasn’t there at the time, but this is what happened. I’m reliably informed of this by Mrs Memory [Izzy], she said we were playing football and it was only three of them. So they just played a game of kick in, but after two goals go in, you’ve got to go in goals and the other one comes out. So Izzy went in goals and Billy thumped this ball and Izzy put her hand out and it rattled against the swing poles and she went “oh, I think I need to go home.” She said “it’s hard it’s all went all hard.” And a guy called Eddie Farling went up and he went “oh” and he meant to say, “Bremner that’s you to blame,” and he was thinking about “rock” because it was hard as a rock and he says “brock.” And he laughed and it stuck. You called him Brock so that was him, how he got his nickname very, very young. So you were talking, well I would imagine he would have been about 8 or 9 at the time when he got that nickname. I never knew him as Billy, and every time I met him it was always Brock. It’s always Brock.

Willie McQuillian

On Izzy, Willie continued: 

She was a great football player. She tells the story, getting up in the morning and wanting to go out for football and she come from a big family, great big family. So when you got to the front door there were shoes lying, might be sandshoes might be boots, might be wellies. Whoever was last up got nothing, they had to go out in their bare feet. And Izzy used to end up with the wellingtons all the time. So, Izzy used to play football with wellingtons so she could get round to Billy Bremner’s house to get him out to play football. And Izzy was a great player, a really, really good player. Even with wellingtons on, very good.

Willie McQuillian

According to Willie, Izzy was Bremner’s best friend in The Raploch: 

Best friend without a doubt, without a doubt in my opinion best friend. You never saw Billy at that age without Izzy […] they were both the same age as well, both were at the same school. There was Izzy, a boy called Charles Hughes, another guy Willy Mayley. Charles Hughes, Billy and Benny McGuire. And you would get them every Sunday at the bottom of the Crescent playing in that little swing park to start the day. But Izzy was a character […] she went to his wedding and she used to go down there to baby sit for him and go to Elland Road. She’s been at Elland Road a few times. That was Izzy. And she’s a lovely person into the bargain, a lovely person.

Willie McQuillian

You can read our interview with Izzy here.

Anderson’s Coach Builders gates

At the end of Weir Street was the side entrance to W. Anderson & Co. coach building works, a major employer in the area, located on Drip Road now the site of Raploch Community Campus. The works had large factory gates on Glendevon Drive, which were perfect for kicking a ball against and practising skills, night and day. When the young Bremner got fed up of playing at Shell Park or the winter nights were setting in he would play against the factory doors until late. As Willie remembers: 

Billy and I would go to the end of this building that’s here at the moment [Raploch Community Campus], which was a bus garage at a time and used to play against they two big doors, and that past the time until about 11:00 o’clock, when it’s time to go home and then get up for work the next day or school or whatever.

Willie McQuillian

Izzy and Willie revealed other sites where children played football in the streets, including the other side of Drip Road around the streets off Ivanhoe Place and down towards the riverside. Although Billy would not often venture across the ‘other side’ it’s clear that The Raploch had a number of key sites where children played football in both small-sided games and larger gatherings with upto twenty-a-side. There simply was not much else to do apart from play football! 

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