page_title: Greenock
section_title: Greenockians
hierarchical_section_title: Greenock / Greenockians
caption_attribution_description: Statue of James Watt at Greenock Town Hall in Greenock Scotland
context_page_description: Greenock is a town and administrative centre in the Inverclyde council area in Scotland and a former burgh within the historic county of Renfrewshire, located in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It forms part of a contiguous urban area with Gourock to the west and Port Glasgow to the east.
  The 2011 UK Census showed that Greenock had a population of 44,248, a decrease from the 46,861 recorded in the 2001 UK Census. It lies on the south bank of the Clyde at the "Tail of the Bank" where the River Clyde expands into the Firth of Clyde.
context_section_description: The engineer James Watt is the most renowned Greenockian. He is remembered in several placenames in the town, in the library instituted in his memory, and by the original Watt Memorial School (later College) building on the site of his birthplace in William Street, which incorporates a commemorative statue. The Finnart Campus of the local college was until 2014 known as the James Watt College. Wetherspoons opened the James Watt pub after the building was converted its previous use as the General Post Office.
  The Lady Octavia park and sports centre are named after Lady Octavia Grosvenor, wife of the local MP Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart, who died in 1921.
  Other Greenockians include the composers Hamish MacCunn and William Wallace, violinist Henri Temianka, musicians John McGeoch and Thomas Leer, mathematician William Spence, poets Denis Devlin, W. S. Graham and Jean Adam, merchant Matthew Algie, actors Richard Wilson, Martin Compston and Stella Gonet, artists William Scott, Alison Watt and Frederick Donald Blake, playwrights Bill Bryden, Neil Paterson and Peter McDougall, comedian Charles 'Chic' Murray, opera singer Hugh Enes Blackmore, broadcaster Jimmy Mack, American football player Lawrence Tynes, PGA Pro golfer Colin Robinson, Antarctic explorer Henry Robertson 'Birdie' Bowers and portrait painter Leonard Boden.
  Two Greenockians, Alexander Bruce and Theophilus S. Marshall, were involved in the drafting of the laws for Australian Rules Football.
caption: A statue at the original James Watt College building marks the site of his birthplace.
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