Editing Milngavie (section)

== History ==
Milngavie's name is of Gaelic origin, and may mean either "windmill" ({{lang|gd|muileann-gaoithe}}) or "windy hill" ({{lang|gd|meall na gaoithe}}).<ref>{{cite book|title=A Dictionary of British Place-Names|last=Mills|first=David|date=2011|page=328|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-960908-6}}</ref> The town grew from a country village in the parish of [[New Kilpatrick]] to a minor industrial centre in the nineteenth century, with paper mills and bleach works on the Allander River to the north-west of the town centre.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gwsfhs.org.uk/features/walks/Milngavie_Industrial_Past.pdf |title=Milngavie's Industrial Past |publisher=GWSFHS |date=2016 |access-date=23 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161109155550/http://gwsfhs.org.uk/features/walks/Milngavie_Industrial_Past.pdf |archive-date=9 November 2016 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Some remnants of this industry remain today on the Cloberfield Industrial Estate. The land surrounding the village comprised several estates with tenant farms, amongst them Barloch, Clober, Craigton, Craigdhu, Dougalston, [[Douglas of Mains|Douglas Mains]] and [[Douglas of Mains|South Mains]].

Stone-built villas and semi-detached houses were constructed for wealthy citizens to the east of the town centre and around Tannoch Loch when commuting to Glasgow was made possible by the opening of the railway which reached the town in 1863.
After [[World War II]] a local authority housing scheme was built to the west of the town centre, housing many people relocated from [[Clydebank]] which had been [[Clydebank Blitz|badly bombed]]. The town grew with the addition of private speculative housing developments of bungalows and semi-detached homes at South Mains to the south of the town centre and around Clober, to the west, in the 1950s and 1960s.

The town was historically served by routes 13 and 14 of the extensive [[Glasgow Corporation Tramways|Glasgow tramway system]]. Tramway services in Milngavie were withdrawn in 1956 and the entire system was dismantled by September 1962.

The Fairways estate was built, starting in 1977 and continued into the 1980s.

The town centre was redeveloped to improve traffic flow and pedestrian safety. The central commercial streets were pedestrianised starting in 1974 and many buildings were replaced. A superstore was opened on the fringes of the town centre in the 1990s.

In 2008, residents launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign to bring the Olympic games to Milngavie in 2020.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7343174.stm |title=Milngavie bids to host Olympics |work=BBC News |date=11 April 2008 |access-date=30 July 2009}}</ref>

Today the town is primarily a dormitory town for the nearby city of [[Glasgow]].