Classes will be held 1-3pm on: Sun 9th June, Sat 15th June, Sat 22nd June, Sun 30th June.

Suited to residents (aged 17+) of Gorbals, Tradeston, Pollokshields East & Govanhill – but also open to people living elsewhere in Glasgow on Sat 22nd & Sun 30th June.

BOOK HERE (10 places per class, 1 class per person):

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/urban-sketching-art-deco-southside-alive-tickets-907081935487

Get creative with Glasgow Art Deco in & near your neighbourhood – no prior experience required.

Materials will be provided. Classes facilitated by Govan-based artist Fiona Fleming.

Safety note: Demolition works are underway in this area so sturdy footwear is advisable. There’ll be plenty of literal grit alongside the mix of faded and restored Art Deco glamour…

Travel: Attendees can easily walk from surrounding neighbourhoods, but for those travelling by bus alight at Bridge St by the subway. Paid parking is also available in Bridge St subway car park.

This event series is part of SGHET’s new project ‘Art Deco Southside Alive!’ which has been made possible with the kind support of Historic Environment Scotland and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

For news of future activities, events and outputs in this project: sign up for our email Newsletter and follow us on Eventbrite, Facebook, X/Twitter and Instagram.

The post Urban Sketching: Art Deco Southside Alive! appeared first on SGHET.

Join us on Friday 15th or Saturday 16th September as part of Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival 2023!

The sights, sounds and scents of scenic Cathcart are perfectly in tune with this year’s Festival theme: ‘The Sensory City’… and as always, water, whether the White Cart that powered the bygone mills and fuelled the growth of this once remote village, or the rain, which may precipitate on our walk, is an elemental factor in the Glasgow experience.

Booking required – book here on Eventbrite when bookings open at 10am on Friday 1st September.

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Join us on Saturday 1st July at 1.30pm for the first of our #SouthGlasgowHeritageTrails walks of the summer, and our first guided walk in this picturesque Southside locality.

The rich history, bygone industrial heritage, and dramatic natural landscape of the former village of Cathcart make it the unique place it is today…

Come along to learn about castles and churches, royalty and rebellion, bygone industrial mills and workers cottages, artists and architects, drumlins, roads and railways – all of which played their part in the timeline of a humble village that became a stylish Victorian suburb of Scotland’s only metropolis.

Local resident & heritage enthusiast Dougie McLellan will lead the tour, and provide images of paintings, lost mills, and bygone streetscapes which the tour will traverse that cast Cathcart in a new light, joining the dots between its current ambience and remarkable genesis – with the ever-flowing waters of the White Cart river snaking around the area and through the centuries being a key character in its own right.

#CathcartHeritageTrail on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

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NB: Our events book-up quickly – follow us on Eventbrite to be notified instantly when bookings open for this and other events.

Find the full Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival programme here: https://glasgowdoorsopendays.org.uk/

The post Cathcart Heritage Trail walks including Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival 2023 appeared first on SGHET.

Join us at 6.50pm on Thursday 25th May at The Deep End on Nithsdale St for the third of our 2023 #SouthGlasgowHeritageNights events – a talk from Paul Noble about a journey that began by accident beneath the floorboards and is heading in some tantalising directions…

Places are limited – BOOK HERE

Speaker Paul Noble sets the scene for the unexpected and unfolding jouney his house histories odyssey is taking him on…

“In 1996 when my fiancé and I collected the keys to our soon to be marital home, a 1930’s semi detached bungalow that lies in a sleepy tree-lined avenue in Giffnock, we could never have guessed that below its floorboards lay a treasure trove that links the house to people and places from times gone past.

For the next 26 years, while above the floorboards our family grew, from christenings to 21st parties and everything in between, below us in the crawl space dust settled over these long disgarded relics.

Over the years I had occassion to visit this raised underworld, to run cables, fix leaks and generally crawl around in the dirt. However all I ever saw was rubbish & rubble and the odd giant spider.

Then last year on one such sub-floor venture I decided to video my journey into the labyrinth. This was to be for the benefit of my family, so that for once they too could experience the joy of the crawl space!

Stumbling on liminal space in everyday life…

The light from my phone illuminated into the darkest corners of the basement and through my filmographer’s eyes objects previously pushed aside now jostled for my attention… I gathered them up with wonder and amazment.”

“Resurrected from the depths and bathed in daylight for the first time in many, many years, I resolved to establish the provenance of each item, piece together their history and that of their original owners.

So join me as I discuss the first leg of my investigations into these finds and learn what I now know about my house, its previous inhabitants and where I think the ongoing search for answers may take me in the future…”

TIMINGS:

6.50pm – Doors Open / Registration
7pm – Illustrated talk from Paul Noble followed by Q&A
8.15pm – Ends

More #SouthGlasgowHeritageNights coming soon

The post #HeritageNights talk: Southside House Histories – Time travel under Giffnock floorboards appeared first on SGHET.

Join us at 6.50pm on Thursday 27th April at The Deep End on Nithsdale St for the second of our 2023 #SouthGlasgowHeritageNights events – an illustrated talk from the After The Garden Festival team, followed by Q&A.

Places are limited – BOOK HERE

The 1988 Garden Festival changed how the world saw Glasgow, and how it saw itself. It lives on only in people’s memories as the buildings, objects and artworks from this temporary event are gone forever – or are they?

Join Urban Prehistorian Kenny Brophy, Project Maestro Lex Lamb, and Holder of the Official Garden Festival Umbrella Gordon Barr to learn how they have used crowdsourcing to build an ever growing digital record of the hundreds of pavilions, sculptures and attractions that made up the Festival.

“Items and memories are scattered across the globe with stories to tell: from the large (the Coca-cola Roller Coaster, now in Suffolk), to the small (a Garden Festival tea-towel, now in Papua New Guinea); we’ve identified surviving artefacts, ephemera and even some of the original plants and gardens that delighted visitors over that unforgettable summer, more than thirty years ago.

We’ll outline what we’ve learned so far about how the 1988 Festival was put together, taken apart and spread around the world, with the help of hundreds of individual submissions and leads, with plenty hidden in plain sight closer to home – and we’re learning more every day!

But we still haven’t found the giant tap, sorry.”

To donate directly to support the ATGF project please visit: https://tinyurl.com/AtGF1988

[Header image kindly reporoduced with permission. Photograph © Donald Whannell]

Book your tickets here on Eventbrite

TIMINGS:

6.50pm – Doors Open / Registration
7pm – Illustrated talk from the ATGF team followed by Q&A
8.15pm – Ends

More #SouthGlasgowHeritageNights coming soon

The post #HeritageNights talk: Taps aff? What happened after the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival appeared first on SGHET.

Queen’s Park & Mary Queen of Scots Heritage Trail ~ Sunday 21st August (2-4pm) & Sunday 11th September (2-4pm)

Queen’s Park opened as a public park in September 1862… so September 2022 marks its 160th Birthday!

Originally called the South Side Park, it was Glasgow’s third public park, a place designed to allow people to escape the ‘carbonacious vapors’ that hung over the industrial city and breathe some clean air.

Yet the area that is now a much-loved recreational space has a much longer history, going back centuries. Join Bruce Downie and Harry Sittlington of South Glasgow Heritage and Environment Trust to explore the recent and not-so-recent history of the park named after Mary, Queen of Scots.

BOOK HERE:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/queens-park-mary-queen-of-scots-heritage-trail-160th-anniversary-special-tickets-409528549917

Art Deco Laurieston – Dead or Alive?’ Sunday 18th September (2-3.30pm)

As part of Glasgow Doors Open Days festival 2022 join us to explore the Southside’s unsung Art Deco quarter.

As the ‘moderne’ style’s two-decade Centenary begins to take centre stage, find out how these buildings have contributed to the city’s past and present and how – post-pandemic and in a climate emergency as we rethink cities and the reuse of buildings – they could support Glasgow’s future…

Beacons of change from a tumultous period in Glaswegian and global history, can these last Art Deco buildings connecting the Gorbals and Tradeston act as catalysts for positive change in our modern city in flux?

From grit to glamour, and decline to rebirth, join us to unlock their secrets and superpowers.

BOOK HERE:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/art-deco-laurieston-dead-or-alive-doors-open-days-festival-2022-tickets-344788069397
(bookings open 1st September at midday, register on Eventrite to be notified when they open)

The post South Glasgow heritage trail walks August and September 2022 appeared first on SGHET.

Cathcart Cemetery is a picturesque 43 acre late Victorian Garden Cemetery in the Southside of Glasgow with an estimated 15,000 gravestones. Each one tells the story of lives, loves and losses; of stories played out on a global and domestic scale.

It’s the final resting place of early pioneering footballers, clinicians, industrialists and entertainers – but most of the stories uncovered so far are of the prominent men of the time. This talk shifts the focus to cast light on some of the pioneering women buried in the cemetery’s grounds…

Against the backdrop of a brief history of the Cemetery’s unique design and development, discover the stories of these celebrated figures – world-famous singers and musicians, daughters of emigrants, artists who were witnesses to the cruelllest acts of inhumanity and suffragettes who fought and died for the rights of women.

The talk will be followed by a short Q&A.

Speaker: Jacqui Fernie, Co-Chair, Friends of Cathcart Cemetery

SGHET AGM 2022

South Glasgow Heritage & Environment Trust’s annual general meeting – open to all!

Join us for a quickfire round-up of SGHET’s current state-of-play, find out what we’ve been doing in our ‘Review of the Year’, discover what’s on the horizon, and have your say…. Plus, members can vote in our Board elections.

TICKETS

FREE but places are limited – BOOK HERE.

VENUE: The Deepend Govanhill Baths Community Trust, 21 Nithsdale St, Glasgow, G41 2PZ

EVENT TIMINGS:

6.50pm – Doors Open / Registration

7pm – Welcome & Main Presentation: The Women of Cathcart Cemetery

8.05 – 5 minute break

8.10 – SGHET AGM

8.45pm – Ends

Header image credit: photograph of a statue in Cathcart Cemetery by Michael Paley, from our #SouthsideLockdownLens project archive collection.

The post The Women of Cathcart Cemetery talk + SGHET AGM 2022 appeared first on SGHET.

The 2020s mark the start of a two-decade global Centenary of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architecture. From Mumbai and Shanghai to Havana and Glasgow, the ‘moderne’ style has left an indelible mark on more cities than you’d think… but is how is it faring in Glasgow’s inner southside?

Starting from Bridge Street station we’ll see a range of buildings in Laurieston – some lost, some reborn with a new purpose, some fraying in the backstreets, and some hiding in plain sight.

Along the way you’ll hear about life in 20s and 30s Glasgow, discover the enterprising architects and innovative design trends of the buildings, and get a flavour of this unsung Art Deco Quarter south of the Clyde.

As Art Deco’s Centenary begins to take centre stage, find out how these buildings have contributed to the city’s past and present and how – post-pandemic and in a climate emergency as we rethink cities and the reuse of buildings – they could support its future…

FREE but places are limted & registration required – BOOK HERE
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/art-deco-laurieston-dead-or-alive-tickets-165593627999

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EVENT TIMINGS & INFO:

Date: Sunday 19th September 2021

Meeting point: Bridge Street Subway station entrance 1.55pm

Time: Walk starts at 2pm prompt, please arrive on time. Walk ends approximately 3.45pm.

Accessibility: Walk includes several traffic light crossings on busy roads, an incline at one point, and a lot of walking. It may not be fully accessible for wheelchair users or those with walking aids.

Please check the weather forecast for the day of this event. Waterproof clothing / footwear may be required.

This event is part of Glasgow Doors Open Day 2021 festival. For the complete programme visit https://glasgowdoorsopendays.org.uk/

Find South Glasgow Heritage & Environment Trust on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The post Art Deco Laurieston – Dead or Alive? appeared first on SGHET.

History teacher and new SGHET board member Thomas Oldham reports from the second half of the 7-day archaeological excavation at the site of First Hampden Park in Crosshill and reveals where they got to with exploring and mapping the world’s first modern football stadium …

Firstly, apologies for the delay in getting out report number 2. After the excitement of the first day, day two of the dig in Queen’s Park Recs. came to a quick halt after asbestos was found. From painful personal experience I can confirm that this is not stuff that we need to look any further into. It is horrible, should have been banned long before it was.

With the first pit’s findings inconclusive, attention then shifted to the geophysics work on the bowling green and Kingsley Gardens. And this is where my quip about ‘why dig?’ in my previous report comes home to roost…

Despite having a map seemingly showing us exactly where the pitch was, the digital mapping suggests it was actually a wee bit north and east. Or maybe other physical landmarks have also shifted a little? Either way, things were starting to show that everything is/was not quite as it seems in the archives. And this is why we dig!

With the new geophysics data in hand, the Kingsley Gardens dig began in earnest. Three plots were staked out and the turf was lifted (meanwhile the gardeners politely peeped to check their flowerbeds were untouched). Over time, all three sites revealed something quite flummoxing – a single plain of broken halves of bricks. Again, this is why we dig!

My instant instinct was that this was evidence of an early ‘astroturf’ – a pitch design to allow water to drain quickly through the turf and also maintain a good level surface.

Kieran and others from Archaeology Scotland had their own hypothesis – these bricks may actually have been the foundations of the stadium perimeter. After a lot of chat, digging and reflection on the wider history of the site they realised that this layer was probably the foundation of tennis courts that had been on the site.

Whatever is found in a dig can always be interpreted in a number of ways to support different hypotheses or versions of history, but therein is the joy of archaeology and history – however scientific and factual all the information laid in front of us is, something is always left to the imagination, or still has a question mark next to it.

We are invited to dream and wonder, and however recent the history under Kingsley Gardens, our imaginations were still wandering freely.

On Sunday 13th June 2021, on the site of the First Hampden Park, we were once again left to speculate, to theorise and to dream. Who knows what future investigations will reveal and confirm!

While football might not be coming home in its most visceral and physical form in 2021, we Scots / Glaswegians / Southsiders / Crosshill folk can remain safe in the knowledge that the game’s roots are snugly tucked up under some roses and neatly trimmed grass in the Southside of Glasgow.

As we at SGHET are a living, breathing and perpetually curious local heritage organisation I’d like to invite anyone with memories, knowledge or photos of Kingsley Gardens and First Hampden Bowling Club to share in the comments or get in touch with us directly.

Speculation and imagination are fun but knowledge and personal memories or stories are also great and we’d love to build on the various glimpses into and windows on the past that this archaeological dig has opened up.

By Tom Oldham

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Images by Tom Oldham (SGHET) and Kieran Manchip (Adopt-a-Monument Project Officer, Archaeology Scotland)

Read Part One: First Hampden Park Archaeological Dig

Find out more about about the First Hampden Park archaeology project at: https://hampdencollection.com/4326-2/

Follow Adopt-a-Monument and Hampdeners on Twitter

Discover more about the footballing history of First Hampden, Second Hampden and more on guided walks at https://glasgowfootballtour.com/walking-tour

Crosshill at 150

This article is also part of a series of local history and heritage coverage we’re publishing to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the founding of Crosshill in 1871 as an independent police burgh before eventually being annexed to the city of Glasgow in 1891. See #Crosshill150 on social media,

The post First Hampden Park dig part 2: discoveries and speculations appeared first on SGHET.

History teacher and new SGHET board member Thomas Oldham digs into the archaeological excavation at First Hampden Park and what the Archaeology Scotland volunteers are hoping to find at the old site of the world’s first international football stadium …

So, it’s day one here at First Hampden. The tension is palpable and the excitement bubbling, ahead of what is expected to be a special and historic moment for Scottish football. The away team are wearing yellow and have arrived early – though their captain appears to be running a little late – that’s Kieran (Manchip, not Trippier), from Archaeology Scotland…

Kieran is a friendly and enthusiastic guy, and even has time to have a wee blether with me as we walk through the tunnel (of verdant green) towards his team (of volunteers…OK, OK, I’ll stop now)… Annoyingly he has already started answering my deep philosophical questions – he knows what idiots like me think of archaeology and is already infecting me with his enthusiasm. My inhibitions are not at all connected to the fact I’m English.

Surely there is no actual site of the fantastical early drubbing of England by Scotland (5-1) in 1882? Surely the English built the first purpose built international football stadium somewhere in England; and surely the English invented the passing game that we know today…It turns out First Hampden might have something to say about all that.

Quite what evidence they are hoping to find of the 5-1 drubbing I’m not sure, copious amounts of yeast from spilled celebratory pints? Huge chunks of chewed tobacco spat from nervous English mouths? Maybe a trophy?! Maybe there’s bleedin’ treasure down there! Who knows?

I am currently sitting in my loftily placed media box high in the North stand (i.e. my flat on Kingsley Avenue). As I look down, the team are now standing around in a circle (beautifully planted by volunteer gardeners David and Tahitia McCabe) and are discussing tactics and having a wee stretch. The topic of temperature drifts in the wind – it is uncharacteristically warm for a home game!

So, to ‘pitch’ out the week’s dig to you, the work will involve two plots in the beautiful Kingsley Gardens, an ultrasound scanning of the Hampden Bowls bowling green, and a dig in the trees in Queen’s Park recreation ground between the railway and skate park.

The bowling green ultrasound aims to seek out the centre spot and maybe some old pitch lines like penalty areas. The recs dig aims to find evidence of the grandstand. And the rose garden dig hopes to find remains of the clubhouse.

We have maps, know roughly where all this was (before the sleepy Cathcart circle line rudely blasted its way across Southside), know what happened here, and therefore why it is such a significant site. So, why dig here? I ask.

Being an oft-harsh critic, a historian, and a history teacher who spends their life desperately drawing out explanation, explication, and justification from begrudging, opinionated teenagers, I really, really want to know why we (humanity) bother with things like this. Hopefully we will start to find some answers from this enthusiastic and open-minded bunch of (mostly volunteer – much respect!) archaeologists. It can’t just be an opportunistic moment to get coverage for the bowling club, via a tournament programme filler during Scotland’s first international tournament in a generation, can it?

As we walk and talk, Kieran excitedly says he doesn’t even know what size this pitch was, or how big the penalty areas were. No wonder Scotland won 5-1, aware of England’s ‘prowess’, they probably just put the penalty spot 30 yards up the pitch!

A little later on I catch up with the team deep in the woods of the recreation ground. I finally ask Kieran why they are here and what they hope to find. While politely ‘understanding’ my scepticism of digging for things we know about and have a clear map of, his enthusiasm for the dig is palpable and catching.

First and foremost it’s about finding things that relate to the structures he says – it would be really great to find traces of the old clubhouse, that’s the dream! That is, a piece of the foundations from what they think is the same building that now serves as clubhouse to Hampden Bowls (give or take the odd extension).

There is also talk of trying to find a piece of old turnstile – Hampden was the first ground to have had them! Kieran laughs. He’d even be chuffed with a button or two, at which point Detectorists is mentioned and, like that, a ring pull emerges from the top layer (date unkown, probably Irn Bru). Most importantly though it is about deepening that sense of place and the layered history of Southside Glasgow, something that we at SGHET also care a lot about.

Meanwhile, the team have taken the top layer off their plot and are in good spirits. So far, the artefact tray has a piece of a till (!) and a lovely old Glasgow brick from Paterson and Sons (which once stood at 522 Pollokshaws Road near the junction with Albert Drive where Scottish Ballet now is).

After a wee chat about how to smash a till open and who might have been robbed, the brick leads the conversation. This brick correlates with others used in late 19^th century Glasgow. Is it a remnant of the grandstand? Or a piece of railway construction material? Or just a random old brick? Whatever it’s from, a locally made 19^th century brick seems a fitting first find to start this session of industrial archaeology.

By Thomas Oldham, SGHET Board Member.

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You can find out more about Scottish brickmaking here and more about Archaeology Scotland’s excavations at First Hampden here.

Read: First Hampden Park dig part 2 ~ discoveries and speculations

Crosshill at 150

This article is also part of a series of local history and heritage coverage we are publishing to coincide with the 150th Anniversary of the founding of Crosshill in 1871 as an independent police burgh before being annexed to the city of Glasgow in 1891. See #Crosshill150 on social media,

The post First Hampden Park archaeological dig appeared first on SGHET.

Despite a long and proud history, the Pollok story that most people are familiar with is one of post war housing, of growing up in a community on the margins, a community that was overlooked and easy to ignore. At G53Together, we’re planning on changing that narrative through a fuller telling of Pollok’s story. In telling that story we want to celebrate our community and shape its future, by understanding its past, both the good and the bad.

Today’s Pollok owes much of its existence to Sir John Stirling Maxwell, the 10th Baronet of Pollok, who sold a 746,368 acre site of fields and farms from his family lands to the City of Glasgow Corporation for the sum of £111,712 and 15 shillings in 1937. Working with some visionary Corporation Officials, they set to work on creating Pollok as a prototype community. Pollok is Glasgow’s first large scale housing scheme. It was fastidiously considered and confidently planned; Stirling Maxwell saw to that. In the year following the sale of the land, he writes in his book Shrines and Homes of Scotland:

“It is at last realised that the creation of a new suburb entails more than the mere erection of rows of houses – the indefinite extension of a large city, without attempt to preserve the beauty of the countryside or provide space for recreation, can end in nothing but discontent and calamity.”

The plan was to create a community, not just houses. Key to the plan was the inclusion of open community green space with local shops, schools and other amenities.

A report from the Corporation’s Housing Department in October 1937 details the desired hopes for the area to include “pleasure walks and garden plots which will give health and delight to many” “romping space for children” to play and explore among the “sylvan beauties” and “extensive woodlands.” The report further details the “central idea” of Pollok as the “foremost garden suburb in the City” with 50% of the total area of land “set apart as open space”.

It was a revolution of civic thought.

In the decades that followed, the Pollok project would suffer cutbacks and blows. The vision was bulldozed in favour of higher density, lesser quality, flat roofed, cramped, damp, cheaper housing. But people continued to arrive and Pollok became a home to tens of thousands of people; several generations of families have passed over the threshold of these homes.

Throughout those times, Pollok suffered from a lack of hope and an absence of belief. And that’s understandable when so much of what made the community was robbed from it. Schools and community centres, local shops and whole neighbourhoods have been wiped from the map. The last farm and parts of an ancient woodland were levelled for a motorway.

But the seed of a new idea has been planted. Covid-19 and isolation has in a strange way brought the community back together. It has given Pollok a new boldness and a growing sense of self resilience. We’ll be enabling a new sense of community spirit and empowerment through G53Together, a community collective of organisations, charities, housing associations and local residents.

While our focus for now is on covid-19 recovery, from next year, G53Together and our community partners will turn our attention to working to protect Pollok’s rich inheritance, to remembering the people and places that have shaped our community, to celebrating our heritage, and enhancing our green and public space.

If you want to be part of the dialogue and help build Pollok’s future, visit www.g53together.scot or like and follow our social media @G53Together (Facebook / Twitter).

By councillor David McDonald.

The post Pollok’s Story: G53Together appeared first on SGHET.