Rare photos of the shipyard that made Clydebank famous around the world have been shared online for residents to look back on.

The photos, by James Harkin, were uploaded recently to the My Clydebank Photos website run by well-known Bankie Owen McGuigan, and add to Owen’s own extensive collection of pictures taken in the town over the years.

The album, titled Death of a Shipyard, shows the sad final months and years of the yard and takes viewers through the gradual demolition of the site, which began in 2001, the year the John Brown Engineering yard was shut by its Norwegian owners Kvaerner, and continued until 2006.

Best known as the birthplace of the thee Cunard Queens – Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth 2 – as well as mighty warships such as the battleship HMS Hood, the yard, which opened in 1851, was latterly used to build oil rig platforms for the North Sea oil industry under the ownership of UiE, which bought the yard in 1980 from the Marathon Manufacturing Company, who had purchased it on the liquidation of the Uppper Clyde Shipbuilders consortium.

Happily the regeneration of the yard began soon after demolition was completed, and today the site is home to houses, a care home, business units, a college and a leisure centre – not to mention the last remaining symbol of the yard’s proud shipbuilding and engineering heritage, the Titan Crane. The landmark is due to reopen to visitors this spring after a closure stretching back almost four years.

Do you have any pictures of the yard – either in its shipbuilding heyday or more recently? If you have any scanned images, please email them with brief details, to editorial@clydebankpost.co.uk and we’ll share them with readers in a future edition of the Post.