Sitting immediately to the west of Glasgow, what we now call Clydebank was until the 1870s largely agricultural and rural.

But as demand for “Clydebuilt” ships started to rise, so did demand for shipyards and the land to build them on. The Clyde Bank Iron Shipyard in Glasgow, needing to relocate from Govan on the south bank of the Clyde, bought land north of the river. By 1886 the area had become fully industrialised, densely populated and large enough to apply to become a police burgh, though it still needed a name. They took the name of the original shipyard and Clydebank was born!

The greatest of all the town’s yards was John Brown & Company who built some of the finest and most important ships in history, including the Queen Mary (1934), Queen Elizabeth (1938) and the QEII (1967).

The last ship built at the yard was in 1972 and the yard itself was closed in 2001. In 2008 Clydebank College’s state-of-the-art building was opened on the site of the John Brown yard and this is now the Clydebank campus of West College Scotland.

But there was more to Clydebank than shipbuilding. As early as 1885 the town was home to the biggest factory on earth -- Singers which employed 3,500 workers.  By 1913 – the peak of production - the company was producing 1.3 million sewing machines annually and employed 14,000 people. As late as 1960, 15,000 people worked at Singers. But competition from abroad and a failure to embrace new technologies saw Singers close in 1980.

Today, Clydebank is home to the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, Radio Clyde and host of small and medium enterprises.

Like so many other towns of the industrial age it faces special challenges. West College Scotland, through our long association with the town, is committed to helping the people of Clydebank and West Dunbartonshire meet those challenges by providing leadership in the community and offering a modern fit-for-purpose curriculum that will provide them with appropriate vocational skills.