East Renfrewshire: History
East Renfrewshire was created in 1996 under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, which replaced Scotland's previous local government structure of upper-tier regions and lower-tier districts with unitary council areas providing all local government services. East Renfrewshire covered the whole of the abolished Eastwood district and part of Renfrew district, being the Barrhead electoral division, which roughly corresponded to the pre-1975 burgh of Barrhead and parish of Neilston, both lying in the valley of the Levern Water. The new council also took over the functions of the abolished Strathclyde Regional Council within the area.
The area's name references its location within the historic county of Renfrewshire, which had been abolished for local government purposes in 1975 when Eastwood district and Strathclyde region had been created. East Renfrewshire forms part of the Renfrewshire lieutenancy.
The area that is now East Renfrewshire has been inhabited since prehistoric times. At Dunwan Hill near Eaglesham and at Duncarnock near Newton Mearns there were Iron Age hill forts, both thought to have been occupied between around 1200 BC and 400 AD. Ruins of a village, around 2000 years old at the time, were discovered in the early 1800s in the area now occupied by Overlee Playing Fields in Clarkston, but were destroyed as no significance was given to them at the time. There was also evidence of an early castle at the Beechgrove Park in nearby Netherlee.
During the Industrial Revolution the Levern Valley became a centre for the textiles industry, with several mills being established in Neilston and Barrhead.
Giffnock initially grew to house the workers at Giffnock Quarries, which opened in 1835. The honey-coloured stone from Giffnock was used at Glasgow University and Glasgow Central station among many other buildings. Following the development of the railways in the mid-nineteenth century, the parts of the area close to Glasgow became increasingly suburban in character.
In 1941 during the Second World War, Rudolf Hess, one of Adolf Hitler's top deputies within the Nazi Party, parachuted into Floors Farm, near the village of Waterfoot, on a secret mission to meet the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon for peace negotiations. The botched landing led to his capture and arrest. He was held in Scotland until the Nuremburg Trials, where he was convicted and imprisoned in Germany until his death by suicide in 1987.
In 1971 a gas explosion at a parade of shops in the centre of Clarkston killed 22 people and injured more than 100.
In a 2007 Reader's Digest poll, East Renfrewshire was voted the second best place in Britain to raise a family, ranking just behind East Dunbartonshire to the north of Glasgow.
In January 2008, East Renfrewshire became the first Scottish local authority to create a Facebook page to publicise its services.