Personal and Family Life

This part of the collection represents the day to day life of individuals and families who have lived in the Inverclyde area from the eighteenth century onwards and covers a wide range of topics such as housing, domestic life, food, heating, sanitation, childhood, marriage, poverty, unemployment and old age.

Although the collection contains the type of material typically found in many local history collections, the particular and peculiar connections that these items have within an Inverclyde context gives them a crucial importance in understanding the daily lives of people in the area.

For it is in the collective nature and context of the items rather than their individuality that these objects are important. They help to illustrate and explain how the people of Inverclyde have responded to the various external forces that have shaped and influenced the lives of Inverclyde's people over the last three hundred years such as industrialisation, immigration and emigration.

The text and images on this page are the copyright of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery. For enquiries about this collection please contact us at wattinstitution@inverclyde.gov.uk.