Welcome Home At Last!

Among the many places we looked, we were drawn to each of these three for different reasons. 

House #1 was practical and offered more space, but felt a bit to far to commute. 

House #3 was stunning surroundings, but felt a bit too isolated. 

In the end, the row house in Kilmarnock with it's Victorian charm and neighboring park just spoke to us! It felt like home immediately, not unlike the way we felt when we found our house in Washington.

Welcome to Kilmarnock, Scotland...next home of the Matthews clan!

First, a few interesting facts about our new town:

1)     Located about a 30 minute drive south of Glasgow City Centre, one of the largest towns in Ayrshire with a population of about 45,000.

2)     A major industrial center of Scotland throughout the 19th and 20th century, which like industrial cities of the US, has struggled economically as industry shifted to cheaper global labor markets

3)     Two major industries were locomotive manufacturing (one of the worlds first tram railways was from Kilmarnock to Troon on the coast, built for transporting coal to the port there for export) and textiles. 

4)     As textiles go, Kilmarnock was well known for it's carpet manufacturing, including supplying the carpets used throughout HMS Titanic

5)     Probably most famous in modern culture as the birthplace of Johnnie Walker, one of the most popular Scotch whiskeys worldwide. 

6)     Poet and national cultural icon Robert Burns published his first volume of poetry here.

7)     Kilmarnock Academy, where our kids would likely attend high school if we stayed that long, is one of a very few schools in the world that can claim as alumni 2 Nobel Prize Laureates: Biologist John Boyd Orr, as well as Physiologist and discoverer of penicillin Alexander Fleming.

8)     There's a Scottish Premiere League football club here, the 2nd oldest in Scotland.

9)     Much debate and controversy surrounds the birthplace and ancestry of national hero William Wallace (Braveheart!), but contrary to accepted history that he was from Renfrewshire just north of us, some evidence exists that he could have actually hailed from the area around Kilmarnock! Not going to get into that national debate.

And now for a tour of our new home...

We're on a quiet little street with a path into the park. The kids are a 5 minute walk from their school and we're about the same from the city centre, library, museum, etc. The city is big enough to have major stores like Asda and Tesco for groceries and other basics (if you didn't know, Glasgow has the only Costco in Scotland...which is like a little slice of America, complete with £1.00 hot-dog meals, samples, Skippy peanut butter, Ghiradelli brownie mix, and the only good salsa in Scotland!)

The house itself is a Victorian era row house, constructed of red sandstone common throughout Scottish buildings of that era. 

The house retains many original features from its 100+ year history, including the stained glass front door, mosaic tile entry, banisters, and ornate crown moldings and tray ceiling detail. The downstairs includes the entry foyer and a half bathroom, as well as a door to the rear garden.

At the top of the stairs is Jude's new solo bedroom, followed by the main hallway.  There's a newly updated kitchen and nice dining room to one side, and the cozy living room with bay window and fireplace to the other.

There's a newly updated kitchen and nice dining room to one side, and the cozy living room with bay window and fireplace to the other.

At the end is the master and the girls bedroom, as well as a very small extra room which functions as a study.

All in all, we love it. We weren't holding out for a place with so much character and charm, but feel blessed to have found such a nice home and nice neighborhood within our budget, even if we had to venture a bit further from Glasgow to get it. It's not huge (like most European homes), but feels spacious and is bigger than most of the places we could afford (credit the post-industrial Kilmarnock economy for that I suppose). Most of all, we feel at home here already--Although frankly, after living out of suitcases for 4 months, anything would probably feel like home. 

We're already working on creative plans to make guest space available, and can't wait to have grandparents, and any other family and friends who can swing it come stay with us. We've only been here a few weeks, but agree with everyone we encountered who raved about the beauty of this place and the warmth of its people.