Geograph - photograph every grid square

For context, see NS4075 : Silverton Avenue, where this inscribed tablet can be seen on the front of the nearest building on the left. The date 1923 applies only to the houses on that side (the west) of the avenue. Those on the other side were built earlier, in 1914.

Dumbarton Building Society had its origins at a special meeting of the Dumbarton Equitable Co-operative Society on the 30th of January 1873. There, Mr John Barr indicated that a number of workers at Messrs Swan's yard wished to form a building society. An interim committee was formed. At their first general meeting, on 26th February, the official committee was appointed.

The organisation was at that time called the Dumbarton Land and Buildings Investment Company. The change of name came in February 1878, when the Society came under the Building Societies' Act.

On the occasion of their Jubilee Year, a commemorative stone of polished granite, the one shown in the present picture, was built into the corner house on the west side of Silverton Avenue, nearest Glasgow Road. While it is a date stone, after a fashion, it is essentially a commemorative stone for the Society's Jubilee Year. On Saturday 1st December 1923, a ceremony was held at the building, when the stone was unveiled by Mr William A Hutchison, the president. Luncheon was then served in the Co-operative Hall, 46 High Street, Dumbarton, to which members of the Society of thirty years' membership, past members of the Committee, and officials, were invited.

The above details are from the "Jubilee Souvenir of Dumbarton Building Society Ltd 1873—1923: Fifty Years' History" (James Lyon, 1923).

Another building in Dumbarton has a stone with an inscription mentioning the Society: the stone is shown in NS4075 : Dumbarton Building Society plaque, and it is built into a tenement block that was originally called Grange Place: NS4075 : Grange Place, Glasgow Road, Dumbarton. Below that inscription there used to be the additional text "Erected 1906", but it has fallen off or, more likely, been removed, at some point in the intervening century and more. In addition, the name Grange Place may have appeared above the surviving inscription.