Originally located in the county of Stirlingshire the name Torrance may come from the Gaelic for the place of the "little hillocks". There are Roman sites close to Torrance with a fort at Cadder and a fortlet at Glasgow Bridge. The village of Torrance is located in 'The Eleven Ploughs of Balgrochan'. The 'Eleven Ploughlands' are part of the estate of the Grahams of Mugdock, which had been feued in 1630 to local occupiers by the Marquess of Montrose. The feuars, originally holding their land unenclosed, each received an enclosed piece of land in 1735, as was common at the time. The village of Torrance developed some time later. Although weavers were among the earliest residents of the village, limestone, coal and ironstone extraction also began to emerge as a local industry. For several years, the canal wharf at Hungryside was Torrance's main connection with the outside world. However, this began to change in 1879 with the opening of Torrance railway station by the Kelvin Valley Railway Company. Before the coming of the railway the population of the area was around 800.
Community
Local amenities
Torrance offers local amenities to its residents including one hairdresser, one beauty salon, tennis courts, health centre, mechanics, bakery, a post office, chemist, Chinese takeaway and newsagent and the Torrance Church of Scotland at the foot of School Road and St Dominic's RC Church at the top. Torrance has three pubs: the Wheatsheaf Inn, the Torrance Inn and the Rambler with another bar in the bowling club.
Torrance Primary School
The school has around 250 pupils. It has three sport pitches, one of them is rock, another red ash and another which is ash. Primary 7 pupils can transfer onto Boclair Academy in the nearby Bearsden.
Torrance Initiative
Torrance Community Initiative is a registered charity aiming to provide new custom-built community facilities in the village. The land held in "trust" by Torrance Community Initiative for the benefit of the community is a site. Unfortunately the planning permission granted in 1977 for a multi-use clubhouse for the former land owners - a boys' club, was never brought to fruition. The land was designated as Green Belt in the 1990s, although it forms an intrusion between two parts of the village and most people believed it was simply Greenfield, where legal restrictions on development are less severe. When people learned it was Green Belt, this became an emotive issue and the basis of the campaign against development. Outline planning for the new community facilities was rejected by East Dunbartonshire council in May 2008. This included the residential development of 20–40 houses to fund for the community facilities on a site held in trust for the community by the Torrance Community Initiative. Reasons for rejection were that the land is designated greenbelt and the council had not yet done a long overdue review of current facilities as identified in the Local Plan.
