Local folk passing the unloved and empty Poundworld shopfront on Kilmarnock Rd may not know of its colourful past and the contribution it made to the Scottish music scene in the 1970s and 1980s.

Some key and influential names in Scottish, UK and global rock and pop plied their musical skills and mingled in their early days in the compact surrounds of this now vacant retail unit, which has gone through a number of changes…

The Kilmarnock Rd site began life as a F.W. Woolworth & Co Ltd store in 1936.

In the 1960s, Woolworths (as it became known as) relocated to bigger premises on the opposite side of the road, in the newly built Shawlands Arcade.

The old Woolworths building became a pub called Doune Castle, and sadly they plastered over the unlisted Art Deco stone facade, making it more fashionable but a somewhat less timeless building.

The Doune Castle was part of the Rio Stakis group of hotels and restaurants. Upstairs was a bar and restaurant and downstairs was a beer cellar. It was here that many upcoming musicians got an early experience of playing live.

Simple Minds, Horse McDonald, Ian Donaldson of H20, Tom Rafferty of the Primevals, Brian McNeill of China Crisis and James Grant of Love and Money all played the gloomy beer cellar along with many others.

Tom Rafferty recalls the early days of the Doune Castle and its role in the Glasgow music scene:

“My earliest public gigs were at the Doune Castle. I now realise that the room was a challenging space for bands to perform in, with stone walls, a fairly low ceiling and the stage set up so bands played across the narrowest part of the cellar. But the venue was a chance for pretty much anyone to ask for a gig and get what was usually a Tuesday night slot for a small fee.”

The venue was where many musicians started out sometimes working with others that would become successful in their own right. Tom Rafferty’s first gig was in 1979 in a band called Kashmir whose personnel also included James Grant, who went on to have chart success with Friends Again, Love and Money and is now a popular solo artist.

Simple Minds played the Doune Castle in their early days. The Herald Diary on the 11th Feb 2004 carried this memory from the band-

“The original line-up of Scots group Simple Minds was reunited this week for the first time in 20 years at the 60th birthday party of their manager, Bruce Findlay.

Guests naturally reminisced about the good old days like the time in 1978 when the Minds gigged at the Doune Castle pub in Shawlands, Glasgow, for a fee of (pounds) 25 plus a tray of filled rolls.

Sadly, the band’s performance was repeatedly interrupted by the pub’s management, asking them to turn the volume down as they were playing loudly enough to cause peas to leap off diners’ plates in the steakhouse upstairs.”

Young musicians would cut their teeth in this venue and move on to other bands, and many have crossed paths later in their career.

Brian McNeill, who went on to play keyboards with China Crisis, the Silencers, the Proclaimers, and now is Belle and Sebastian’s music producer, started out playing at the Doune around the same time as Horse McDonald was playing gigs in an earlier band. Their paths crossed again later when Brian played keyboards for Horse on their successful 1990 album ‘The Same Sky’.

Members of what would become Primal Scream also had some of their earliest live experiences in this Southside venue. Tom Rafferty recalls selling a bass amplifier to Robert Young of the band, and of meeting Robert years later at the height of their Screamadelica fame.

“I went over to say hello at a gig in Glasgow, not expecting him to remember me. He did and said ‘that Marshall amp is why I’m still doing this’.”

The Doune Castle’s legacy is more about the community that it helped to create. It gave many young musicians a chance to play live and to watch and meet other aspiring musicians, share experiences and learn their craft.

So, next time you walk past the empty shopfront on Kilmarnock Road, remember how many famous musicians that shaped Scottish music played this tiny venue before they were famous and how lucky Glasgow was to have this local music venue.

Did you ever frequent Doune Castle… what bands did you see, or did you play there? Do you have any photos from back then? Let us know in the comments.

By Dougie McLellan

Published: 1st December 2022

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Image credits:

Kilmarnock Road, Shawlands (colour and black & white photos), circa 1969-70 – copyright of Colin Duncan.

Woolworth, Kilmarnock Rd, 1939 – copyright of Glasgow City Archives, Virtual Mitchell website.

Present day closed-down Poundworld & Kilmarnock Rd photos, 27 November 2022 – Deirdre Molloy, SGHET.

The post Doune Castle – Shawlands’ forgotten music venue appeared first on SGHET.

This is a place founded on being ‘on the outside’—sited just beyond the original city limits, the Gorbals built its formidable reputation on the ability to accommodate migrants from around the world, give them a start, and then watch them leave to make way for the next arrivals. A tight community that paradoxically eulogises those that were ‘determined enough to get out’ but who are the people who belong to and stay in such a place? They are those who remain to look after the stories and the myths, and welcome new arrivals, a little bitter about being left behind perhaps—understandably mistrustful of anyone who wants to join them and partake in the myth-making.
– Matt Baker, Lead Artist for The Artworks Programme

At the crossroads between Cumberland Street and Jane Place, a few minutes’ walk from the Co-op Crown Street in the Gorbals, on a high pedestal stands Kenny Hunter’s Untitled. Girl With Rucksack.

The bronze statue portrays a young girl who looks around her as if pondering which direction she should go, or waiting for someone to come and show her around her new place.

The girl is caught in a momentary stop; she has put down her sack between her legs, and relieved her back from the weight of the rucksack, which now rests on her right shoulder. This suspended immobility concentrates a plurality of moves, as if in her short life, the girl would have kept moving, from this place to that place, from one community to another.

As it was created as a piece of public art that accompanied the redevelopment of the Crown Street area in the 2000s, Kenny Hunter’s Untitled. Girl With Rucksack is a powerful metaphor for the thousands of individuals who came to settle in the Gorbals since the industrial revolution, and who were then displaced during successive waves of urban redevelopment plans.

The population of the greater Gorbals area was 5,200 in 1811 but by the 1930s had reached 90,000, equivalent to that of a small city in its own right.

The old tenements were cleared in the late 1950s as part of the Hutchesontown/Part Gorbals Comprehensive Development Area, which was formally approved by the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1957. These tenements had largely been built between 1860 and 1900, themselves replacing previous tenements built between the 1820s and 1840s.

To replace the slums and change the ‘No Mean City’ atmosphere of the area, prestigious architects were asked to imagine the city of the future, a brutalist utopia of modernised and standardised living that nodded to Le Corbusier’s Cité radieuse.

Untitled. Girl with Rucksack is located at the site where the development’s centrepiece, Basil Spence’s Hutchesontown ‘C’ – also known as 16-32 Queen Elizabeth Square – once stood.

Comprised of two twenty-storey dark grey, monolithic tower blocks, its construction took place between 1963 and 1965 and it was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in person. But the utopia of a modern lifestyle was quickly replaced by damp and structural problems. It was demolished in 1993.

Architects CZWG won the competition for the replanning of the area. They proposed a postmodern project of low-rise urban blocks and oases of private communal gardens. A clause in the contract of all private investors in the Gorbals stipulated that they must spend one per cent of their total building budget on art. That’s how the Artworks programme came to life, founded in 1999 by artists Matt Baker and Dan Dubowitz.

The programme commissioned over twenty local and international artists to respond to the new development plan with temporary and permanent pieces of public art. The artists were involved throughout the process of construction of the new buildings, on one side working with the architects to imagine an artwork strategy that directly responded to the built environment, on the other working with the local communities to perpetuate their memories and those of the neighbourhood.

During the creation of Untitled. Girl with Rucksack, Kenny Hunter worked closely pupils from the Blackfriars Primary School, with whom he did a series of workshops. The sculpture was launched in 2004, with eight of these pupils invited to unveil the statue.

Were you present at this launch? Were you, or do you know, one of these pupils? Were you in touch with one of the other artists?  We want to hear from you, get in touch and tell us your stories!

By Francesca Zappia

Published: 19th October 2022

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Further information:

For more information about the Artworks programme and other artists’ commissions see Rhona Warwick, Arcade: Artists and Place-making, Black Dog Publishing: 2006, and the website of the project which was also awarded ‘best website’ by the Scottish Design Awards in 2005: http://www.theartworksprogramme.org/

You can also listen to oral memories of Basil Spence’s Hutchesontown ‘C’ [Interviews conducted 2015-2016 as part of the ‘Housing, Everyday Life and Wellbeing over the long term: Glasgow 1950-75’ project, University of Glasgow]: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/historyresearch/researchprojects/housingandwellbeing/onlineoralhistoryresource/#paul%E2%80%93queenelizabethsquare%2Chutchesontown(1966-1981)

More information about CZWG Crown Street Regeneration Masterplan can be found here: https://czwg.com/projects/masterplanning/crown-street-regeneration/

Images copyright of Kenny Hunter, Newsquest, and Canmore / Historic Environment Scotland.

About Kenny Hunter:

Born in Edinburgh in 1962, Kenny Hunter studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art between 1983 and 1987. Since then, he has exhibited extensively in Britain and abroad including solo exhibitions at Arnolfini in Bristol, Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and CCA and Tramway both in Glasgow. Hunter has also created a number of high-profile, public commissioned works including Citizen Firefighter, 2001, outside Glasgow’s Central Station, and Youth with Split Apple, 2005, Kings College, Aberdeen. In London he has created three major public works – iGoat, 2010, in Spitalfields, Blackbird (the persistence of vision) for Leicester Square, 2016, and most recently The Southwark Memorial to war and reconciliation, 2018.

With unexpected uses of scale, material and subject matter the sculpture of Kenny Hunter runs counter to the expectations of traditional monuments. His artworks avoid singular readings preferring to embrace ambiguity as a positive position that will encourage the viewer toward ethical engagement.
Hunter is a lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art and was the Programme Director of Sculpture from 2014 to 2017, then Director of Outreach from 2018 to 2021.

The post Decoding the Gorbals’ Girl With Rucksack statue appeared first on SGHET.

This is not dissimilar SGHET’s own mission ‘to recognise the importance of heritage, history, and environment issues in South Glasgow and to implement a strategy towards greater knowledge for all.’ [2]

But while historic and heritage trusts are founded on the belief that historic places matter, the work to preserve and protect South Glasgow’s built environment is not solely the purview of heritage organisations.

Kinning Park Complex

For example, on 3 May 1996, residents of South Glasgow began a 55-day sit-in to save the Kinning Park Complex, built in 1911 as an addition to the Lambhill Street School.  In 1976, it was converted to a neighbourhood centre that offered a significant benefit to local residents.

However, when the Council scheduled it for closure in 1996, the community rallied and was eventually given stewardship of the building.  Though it has seen challenges with funding and maintenance since then, due to community involvement and heritage funding, a newly refurbished centre is scheduled to reopen this year. [3]

Govanhill Baths

Likewise, the Govanhill Baths, built in 1914, were threatened with closure in 2001.  On 21 March 2001, several residents occupied the building , some even chaining themselves to the cubicles.  On 7 August 2001, the Battle of Calder Street ensued when the Council and police tried to forcibly remove the Save Our Pool protestors. (N.B. The original protest website has been preserved online and can be viewed here.)

The successful occupation lasted a total of 140 days, the longest ever of a British public building, and in 2004, the Govanhill Baths Community Trust was formed to refurbish the building and return it to public use. [4]

The campaign to reopen the baths has gone on for over 20 years with adaptive restoration now finally commenced, and in the meantime, Govanhill Baths, a grass-roots activist organisation, used the space – and uses other places locally –  to provide ‘wide-ranging health, wellbeing, arts, environmental and heritage projects’ in an effort to regenerate the neighbourhood and meet the needs of the community. [5]

Govanhill Baths’ current website includes an archive of the building’s importance to Govanhill over the past 100+ years, which includes oral histories of residents describing their experiences at the Baths. [6]

It is clear that historic places matter, not only as heritage from the past but as part of our present and future well-being.  They are places where people come together and where a sense of community thrives, especially when they are championed by neighbourhood-based groups.

While we may come from vastly different backgrounds, the built heritage of South Glasgow is something we all share.  Part of the purpose of the South Glasgow Heritage and Environment Trust is to foster this sense of community among the people who live south of the Clyde, whether we have lived here for generations or are new arrivals.

Our built heritage has an impact on us, whether we are fully aware of it or not.  But why is this?  Why do historic places matter? And why should city planners and urban developers care?

These very questions were posed in a study led by Dr Rebecca Madgin of the University of Glasgow.  In their recent report Why Do Historic Places Matter? Emotional Attachments to Urban Heritage, Dr Madgin and her team sought to answer two questions:

1. How and why do people develop emotional attachments to historic urban places?
2. How do these attachments influence decision making within the urban environment?

Using evidence from Scotland and England primarily focused on the time period from 1975 to 2019, the findings of the report were supported by analyses of documents, as well as oral histories and ‘workshops which captured the thoughts and feelings of people involved with and/or impacted by urban change, including built environment professionals and local residents.’ [7]

Emotional connections are magnified in times of change

Dr Madgin’s project recognised the fact that emotional attachments are often not worn on our sleeves and rise to the surface most often during times of change.  This is clearly demonstrated by the efforts to save community buildings in Kinning Park and Govanhill and the continued work of groups like SGHET and the National Trust for Scotland. [8]

The report noted that previous research had tended to focus on economic or sustainability outcomes, but it argued for the need of ‘more engagement with the emotional dimensions of heritage by demonstrating just some of the ways in which emotion…shapes the reasons why and extent to which historic urban places can continue to matter.’ [9]

It is of note that this is exactly how the Kinning Park Complex addressed its own refurbishment, by hiring New Practice, an architectural group that aims ‘to connect people with the decision making processes that underpin the urban experience.’ [10]

Unfortunately, though, urban developers have often not given much regard to the emotional impact of change on communities, whether it be positive, negative, or neutral.  This was one of the major issues during the housing development boom in mid-century Glasgow, when residents were moved from homes in communities where they had lived, sometimes for generations, and alienated in high-rise flats that were likened to ‘an architectural representation of a filing cabinet’ by Jimmy Reid in 1972. [11]

Instead, Dr Madgin’s team, among others working in heritage, notes that more value can be given to people-centred approaches, rather than solely relying on top-down, expert-based decision-making processes.  Doing so would offer ‘a rebalance between what is valued and who ascribes value [in order to increase] focus on pluralising heritage values in ways that can include different voices and places.’ [12]  In other words, the communities where historic places exist would have some say in determining the landscape of their built heritage.

Old Victoria Infirmary incident in February 2022

It is clear, however, that developers and the Council are still hit-and-miss in the ways they engage communities in meaningful ways before selling, repurposing, closing down, or demolishing the South Glasgow built heritage.

Most recently, there was public outcry when Sanctuary tore down the iconic 133-year-old cupolas of the Old Victoria Infirmary after failing to adequately engage with community groups who proactively sought to give input and were largely ignored.

In 2018, a community-led group called the Victoria Forum made several public attempts to address Sanctuary’s masterplan with regard to development of the formerly public-owned building, noting specifically the insufficient attention paid to a ‘lack of social or economic analysis’ and ‘public realm and place-making outside the site boundary.’ [13]

While the group made recommendations that were generally more focused on best use and outcomes, they also acknowledged the impact redevelopment of the Old Victoria Infirmary would have on social bonds and identity.

Sanctuary, rather than meeting with the Victoria Forum or attending any of the many community sessions they hosted, responded that their ‘wide-ranging consultation process saw more than 600 people attend a series of open sessions to express their views on the design and redevelopment of the site’ and that the ‘vast majority of local residents [were] happy with the outcome and cannot wait to see our plans come to life.’ [14]

However, 600 people is arguably not an adequate representation of the community, and there is no indication as to what was discussed at these sessions or what the local residents were specifically ‘happy with’. [15]  One can convincingly argue, though, that based on the sustained response from the Victoria Forum and the shock exhibited by locals when the cupolas were destroyed, neither Sanctuary nor the Council adequately addressed public needs and emotional attachments to the old building.

On Twitter, Past Glasgow wrote, ‘I was standing near the gate and nearly every person who walked past was looking at and talking about the destruction.  The sense that something has been lost was palpable.’1⁶  Luckily, the B-listed administrative block, the Gatehouse building, and the Nightingale Pavilions will escape the same fate.

Langside Hall

In contrast, a larger segment of the community has already been engaged to provide input regarding changes in use at Langside Hall, which is owned by the Council and managed by Glasgow Life.  In 1902, the building was painstakingly moved from Queen Street to its current location in Queen’s Park to fulfil the Council’s commitment to provide the Southside with a public building.

There was little investment in the upkeep of the building from about the 1970s on, and once the upper floor had deteriorated to unsafe conditions and the boiler failed in 2017, the building was closed.  Langside Halls Trust has taken on the responsibility of conducting a feasibility study, securing funding, and ensuring community engagement to reopen the building as ‘a fully accessible, larger (40%) and more flexible venue, with more social space and one that is environmentally sustainable for a building that is Grade A listed.’ [17]

As the Trust began to gather feedback from the community, they found that of the respondents to a questionnaire regarding use, over 80% would like to see films and live music, 79% would like a theatre, 74% wanted space for art exhibitions, and over 60% were interested in comedy shows and classes for exercise, arts, and crafts. [18]

While full funding has yet to be fully secured, both Architectural Heritage Fund Scotland and Glasgow City Heritage Trust are currently on board, and there is hope that some funding might be forthcoming from the Council’s People Make Glasgow Communities initiative. [19]

So while the preservation of historic sites is difficult to guarantee, it seems clear that such places are important to the heritage and well-being of local communities.  The desire of so many local residents to maintain the use and their everyday experience of places such as the Kinning Park Complex, Govanhill Baths, and Langside Hall, as well as the dismay at the loss of the everyday sight of the Old Victoria Infirmary cupolas on the Southside’s landscape demonstrate that historic places do matter.

The people of the Southside do have emotional attachments to their built heritage, and developers and government entities should, as Dr Madgin urges, take a greater interest in this reality as they plan for inevitable change.

By Erin Burrows

Published 16th March 2022

References

[1] National Trust for Scotland, ‘What We Do’, National Trust for Scotland (National Trust for Scotland, 2022), https://www.nts.org.uk/ <https://www.nts.org.uk/what-we-do> [accessed 14 February 2022].

[2] ‘About Us’, SGHET <https://sghet.com/about-us/> [accessed 14 February 2022].

[3] ‘About’, Kinning Park Complex <https://www.kinningparkcomplex.org/about> [accessed 14 February 2022].

[4] ‘Occupy: 20th Anniversary Celebrations’, Govanhill Baths, 2021 <https://www.govanhillbaths.com/archive/occupy-2/> [accessed 14 February 2022].

[5] ‘Govanhill Baths’, Govanhill Baths <https://www.govanhillbaths.com/> [accessed 14 February 2022].

[6] ‘Before Closure’, Govanhill Baths, 2020 <https://www.govanhillbaths.com/archive/before-closure/> [accessed 14 February 2022].

[7] Rebecca Madgin, Why Do Historic Places Matter? Emotional Attachments to Urban Heritage <https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/urbanstudies/projects/whydohistoricplacesmatter/> [accessed 16 March 2022], (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2021), p. 1.

[8] Madgin, p. 8.

[9] Madgin, p. 8.

[10] ‘New Practice’, New Practice <https://new-practice.co.uk> [accessed 14 February 2022].

[11] James Reid, Alienation (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1972), p. 10.

[12] Madgin, p. 1.

[13] Victoria Forum, ‘Victoria Forum Responds to Developer Masterplan’, Victoria Forum, 2018 <https://newoldvickydotorg.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/victoria-forum-responds-to-developer-masterplan/> [accessed 4 March 2022].

[14] ‘Council Criticised for Failure to Support Community during Victoria Infirmary Development’, Glasgow Times <https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/16832820.council-criticised-failure-support-community-victoria-infirmary-development/> [accessed 4 March 2022].

[15] ‘Council Criticised’.

[16] Past Glasgow (@PastGlasgow, 21 February 2022), ‘I was standing near the gate and nearly every person who walked past was looking at and talking about the destruction.  The sense that something has been lost was palpable.’ (tweet) <https://twitter.com/PastGlasgow/status/1495844779363549190> [accessed 4 March 2022].

[17] Langside Area Partnership, ‘Update, Langside Halls Trust’ (Glasgow City Council, 2021) <https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/Councillorsandcommittees/viewDoc.asp?c=P62AFQDNZL2U0GT1DN> [accessed 4 March 2022].

[18] Drew Sandelands and Gary Armstrong, ‘Langside Halls Revamp Proposal Released as Glaswegians Asked to Give Their Views’, GlasgowLive, 2021 <https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/langside-halls-revamp-proposal-released-19821827> [accessed 4 March 2022].

[19] Langside Area Partnership, p. 1.

Further reading:

Borysławski, Rafał, and Alicja Bemben, eds., Emotions as Engines of History (Oxon: Routledge, 2022)

Contested Histories in Public Spaces: Principles, Processes, Best Practices (London: International Bar Association, 2021)

Maerker, Anna, Simon Sleight, and Adam Sutcliffe, eds., History, Memory and Public Life: The Past in the Present (London: Routledge, 2018)

Marchant, Alicia, ed., Historicising Heritage and Emotions: The Affective Histories of Blood, Stone and Land (Oxon: Routledge, 2019)

Martin, Claire, and Charles Landry, ‘Charles Landry: Applying Emotional Intelligence’, Landscape Architecture Australia, 151, 2016, 40–43

Scottish Government, Our Place in Time: The Historic Environment Strategy for Scotland (Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2014)

Sullivan, Gavin Brent, ‘Collective Pride, Happiness, and Celebratory Emotions’, in Collective Emotions, ed. by Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 266–80

The post New Report: Why Do Historic Places Matter? appeared first on SGHET.

With #LoveYourLibraries month drawing to a close, World Book Day fast approaching on 3rd March and Covid restrictions easing, there’s no better time to visit a local library and find a good book.

The Southside of Glasgow boasts several historic libraries which have provided its communities with fiction, information and welcoming reading space down the decades. This article takes a look at the built heritage of some of these libraries, most of which are still functioning to this day.

(former) Hutchesontown Library

The first building on this list, though not functioning as a library anymore, is of such a striking design that it’s worth a much closer look. The Hutchesontown District Library located on McNeil Street in the Gorbals opened in 1906 and was the last of the libraires designed by James Robert Rhind.

Rhind, an Inverness-born architect, was chosen to design seven of the twelve libraries using the £150,000 gifted to Glasgow by Andrew Carnegie in 1901. The Edwardian Renaissance style, with its exaggerated arches and domed corner rooftops, heavily influenced Rhind’s designs and is beautifully displayed in this grand building.

The library’s stock began at 9,600 books and grew due to several donations from private donors. Above the main entrance, St. Mungo is depicted, accompanied by 6 figures holding the Glasgow Coat of Arms emblems: the bird, the bell, the fish and the tree.

These emblems such as the tree and fish can also be seen further up the building, just below the domed rooftops.

The largest of these rooftops, guarded by four winged lions, is topped with a bronze angel holding an opened book. This sculpture was designed by Glasgow-born William Brown, who worked with Rhind on a number of his libraries.

Though unfortunately we are no longer able to use this building as a library, as it closed in 1964, we may still walk past and admire its impressive design.

Govanhill Library

Govanhill library, located on the corner of Calder St and Langside Rd and opened in 1906, is another of the Carnegie libraries designed by Rhind. This majestic but compact building boasts a large sandstone dome as well as several columns and statues.

Once again Rhind’s particular renaissance style is on display, resulting in an impressive building which is still used as a library and open to the public 5 days a week. This library was initially split into four main parts, these being a general reading room, ladies reading room and separate reading rooms for boys and girls. The library had space for 10,000 books and stocked many newspapers, periodicals, magazines and reference books.

At the top of the dome, we can see another example of William Brown’s sculpture-making, this bronze angel stands on one foot and extends one arm. In 1995 this sculpture was stolen by 4 men posing as workmen, fortunately it was recovered by police and still stands in its rightful place.

The statues on the roof of the building depict a mother reading to her children and so reiterate the buildings intended purpose, as a place of learning.

The entrance of the building is an arched doorway, complete with a decorative keystone and lunette stating the libraries name. Above this, you can see two cherubs welcoming you inside. Why not take them up on this offer and give this historic library a visit?

Pollokshields Library

This library dates back to 1907 when it was opened by Sir John Stirling Maxwell. Located on Leslie Street, the plans for Pollokshields Library were prepared by Thomas Gilmor and Alexander McDonald. Notably, the library stocks books and magazines in Urdu to accommodate for locals of Indian, Pakistan and Sri Lankan origin.

On the outside of the building there are three plaques inscribed with ‘The Arts’, ‘History’ and ‘Literature’, these give an insight into the main categories of books the library originally stocked.

Above these plaques we can admire the large, arched windows and the accompanying decorative features. These include stone laurels and the heads of a lion and a dragon.

Similar to the Hutchesontown Library, St. Mungo can be seen depicted above the doorway, but this time he is seen integrated more typically into the Glasgow Coat of Arms design.

This library is open 5 days a week and so whether you’re wanting to browse for a novel, brush up on your Urdu or simply admire the architecture, it is worth a visit!

We’ll explore more historic Southside Libraries in a future post.

By Harry Sittlington

Photos by Deirdre Molloy

Published 21st February 2022

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Find these and other Glasgow Libraries current opening hours here.

Become a member of Glasgow Libraries – join here.

For #WorldBookDay and every day, remember to also support your local bookshops in the Southside:

Mount Florida Books, 1069 Cathcart Rd, Glasgow G42 9AF (Website / Twitter / Instagram)

Outwith Books, 14 Albert Road, Govanhill, Glasgow G42 8DN (Facebook  / Twitter / Instagram)

Young’s Interesting Books, 18 Skirving St, Shawlands, Glasgow G41 3AB (Facebook)

The post Southside Libraries : Pollokshields, Hutchesontown & Govanhill’s historic public buildings appeared first on SGHET.

We’ve missed out on plenty during our lockdowns and in particular no one’s had a night out at the movies in what seems like aeons. Currently Scotland’s legal reopening date for cinemas is May 17th although it’ll be later than that for many. I’ll bet more than a few of you can’t wait…

You’re not alone. After decades of drastic decline, cinema attendance in the UK has staged a gradual comeback before being kyboshed by the pandemic – but you wouldn’t know it looking at the dilapidated grandeur of Govan’s semi-derelict Lyceum Cinema.

Despite multi-channel TV, streaming film services and the all-pervading distractions of the internet, the allure of the big screen has proved stubbornly enduring. It serves up an experience they simply can’t come close to. This makes the Category-B listed Lyceum’s current parlous condition all the more poignant.

Sitting in the dark munching popcorn surrounded by strangers and gazing up at the big screen as the lights go down and opening credits roll is still one of the most enjoyable and rewarding things you can do across generations. For a host of reasons it’s still a great night (or afternoon) out.

UK cinema admissions peaked in 1946 at incredible 1.6 billion and by 1984 had fallen to just 54 million. Since that 1984 low point, UK cinema admissions have climbed to 176m in 2019, although in the last decade numbers have largely been flatlining.

Multiplexes have helped repopularise the cinemagoing pastime since the eighties, but people can’t always do that locally as pile-em high multiplexes are often distant.

Now that we’re being encouraged to walk, cycle and take public transport more to stem air pollution, reduce carbon emissions and make streets more people-centred, many will rightly be asking why you should have to own a car or trek into town to access the silver screen and its wares, whether blockbuster or arthouse?

In a big city of villages like Glasgow, staying local has all sorts of advantages – cost and convenience benefits to locals and a myriad of benefits to the local economy: jobs, a boost to nearby businesses, visitors from elsewhere. Most of all, having great gathering places like a cinema lifts up community identity, cohesion and pride.

Given how much we’ve come to rediscover and rely on the value of local services and culture in this pandemic, it’s more than a little ironic to note that at the very moment restrictions lift – and as people flock back to neighbourhood bars, restaurants and shops in ever greater numbers – there’s so few local cinemas in Glasgow.

So let’s take a closer look at the Lyceum which has long lain empty after a typical spell as a bingo hall…

Historic Environment Scotland note: “After being sold to County Bingo in 1974, subsequent conversion entailed adapting the stalls for bingo with a 480-seat cinema retained in the balcony. The cinema closed in 1981 and the bingo hall closed in 2006.” That makes it unused for 15 years now…

While currently defunct as a working venue, the Lyceum is still one of Scottish inter-war cinema architecture’s great survivors. Others have been gutted or reduced to rubble. To compound both its importance and the gravity (and potential) of its situation, the signature style of cinema of which the Lyceum is a futuristic branch member – Art Deco – has just one functioning operation left in the city, the Glasgow Film Theatre (1939), another example of the later European-influenced phase of this ‘moderne’ movement.

Glasgow and Art Deco’s double-decade Centenary

As the Centenary of the 1920s settles into its second year – and the double-decade Centenary of Art Deco (or ‘Jazz Modern’ as it was known at the time) and related ‘moderne’ styles that transformed our buildings, interiors, fashion and consumer goods starts to take centre stage – where better to go in Glasgow to get a feel for this dramatic era this than the pictures and one of the city’s greatest movie theatre landmarks.

In cinema’s peak period building-wise – the 1930s – there were around 130 picture houses in Glasgow according to T. Louden (1983). Govan itself reached its peak in the 1950s with 9 working cinemas, more than the entire city of Aberdeen. Not for nothing was Scotland’s only metropolis known as Cinema City.

The Lyceum’s backstory and early days

Even further back, on the same spot, there was a Lyceum music hall. Built in 1898, it was adapted to a cinema in 1923 before it burnt down in 1937. That former variety theatre can be spotted in the mural adorning the Lyceum’s upper wall on the McKechnie St side.

In terms of its architectural style the Govan Lyceum of 1938 defies neat classification, having elements of Art Deco, Streamline Moderne and the International Modern Style, the latter being the most dominant outside and Streamline commanding the interior.

Like most successful cinema programmes then, there’s a bit of ‘something for everyone’ about it design-wise. All the more reason it should prosper as a community enterprise as well as a heritage landmark. All at once momentous, varied, welcoming and streetwise, it’s got that magic… boldly European in style and ambition but also 100% Govan.

Designed by CJ McNair and Robert Elder, it opened in December 1938 and was built to seat 2,600, one of the new suburban super-cinema generation, although Govan is hardly suburban. According to Scottish Cinemas and Theatres:

“The main entrance, on the corner of Govan Road and McKechnie Street, is below a three-storey high curtain-wall frontage of five tall glass windows, which were originally backlit. The rest of the public exterior was tiled at ground level, with bricks above, and a strong horizontal emphasis.

The circular entrance foyer had a central island paybox, from which patterns radiated in terrazzo on the floor, and a mural ran around beneath a central light fitting. The auditorium was originally decorated in blue, pink and lilac.”

The Dictionary of Scottish Architects notes of the architects’ working partnership:

“McNair was primarily a cinema architect mainly through his partnership with George Urie Scott in the Cinema Construction Co: between the wars he worked with Robert Elder who was first chief assistant and then partner from 1936. It used to be said that McNair got the work and Elder designed it: Elder was an able designer but was remembered by an assistant, Robert Forsyth, as ‘a very shy man who didn’t want to take the credit’. Some of their later work was considerably influenced by T S Tait.”

Tait’s most famous landmark on the Southside was the tower at the Empire Exhibition of 1938 in Bellahouston Park, dismantled along with most of the site when the Exhibition ended and WWII commenced.

Below is the Tower of Empire looming behind the Steel Industry Scotland Building at the Exhibition, an apt conjunction given we’re talking about a similarly-designed cinema located in Glasgow’s historic shipbuilding district and they both were completed in the same year. Take a look at it – what parallels with the Lyceum can you see? Was Tait an influence?

Charles James McNair (1881-1955) had jumped into the modernist space early on in the 1920s, and by the time of designing the Lyceum he’d fashioned numerous Glasgow buildings in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne style, mainly in unison with Elder.

Coincidentally – for Southside aficionados – McNair’s first credited work was as Chief Assistant to John Nisbet on the recently-restored 1906 Glasgow Style tenement block Camphill Gate in Shawlands opposite Langside Halls, so he’d already cut his teeth on adapting Art Nouveau to the indigenous tenement style of Glasgow.

Having earned his spurs on one of the greats in its antecedent style, McNair was well placed to get stuck into the new wave of Art Deco and full-blown moderne buildings sweeping the globe.

One of his first was in Laurieston, as mentioned in our previous post on James Miller’s Art Deco Leyland Motors building.

This 1928 building was for Alexander Sloan & Co drapers store and drapery warehouse, but had another concrete top storey added in 1937 by Whyte, Galloway & Nicol. The Art Deco Egyptian-style detailing at the 1928 top is still very impressive if you fancy trekking down there to peer closely at it, and the building as a whole has that mini-skyscraper feel.

McNair & Elder – the odd couple Glasgow powerhouse of cinema building

Historic Environment Scotland expand further on the duo: “The architects, Charles John McNair and Robert Elder, had entered into partnership with Glasgow entrepreneur and cinema exhibitor George Urie Scott early in the 1930s. Together they formed the Cinema Construction Company, soon becoming one of the most prolific cinema design companies in Scotland, producing designs for independent cinemas as well as the ABC chain…

“Stylistic changes within the McNair and Elder partnership lead to the conclusion, based also on anecdotal evidence from Robert Forsyth a junior draughtsman with the practice at the time, that Elder was responsible for most of the designs, especially the interiors.”

As mentioned earlier, the Cathcart-born Elder (1899-1963) was the artist hidden from sight, “a very shy man who didn’t want to take the credit”. We certainly have plenty to equally thank both Elder and McNair for now, a legacy sadly mostly lost.

In total McNair and Elder’s resulting range was enormous, sometimes simplified due to the harsh commercial pressures of the period and its hard-nosed clients, but occasionally producing outstanding cinemas. Here’s two more of their ghosts from the Southside…

The above photos don’t do these buildings justice, as they were also designed to be transformed by neon light into magnetic nocturnal beacons. Like most of the period, they have both since been demolished.

The Lyceum is definitely distinct among their works, but not completely alone, in having a daylight presence as strong as that of the night-time hours. Another survivor from the McNair & Elder pantheon on a par with the Lyceum is The Ascot in Anniesland on Great Western Rd. Now converted to flats only the facade remains but what a belter…

Here’s quiet man Elder, the wizard behind the curtain, at it again, speaking volumes in his drawing of the building design…

Govan’s lost Art Deco emporiums

What makes the Lyceum stand out most, even today, is how different is looks to both its Victorian and Edwardian neighbours in the historic quarter of Govan Burgh it’s situated in and from all the other modern buildings nearby.

Poised and puffed out on the corner of Govan Rd and McKechnie Street it looks utterly space age… like a stranger landed from another planet but somehow fitted in without losing their weirdness and ended up staying and becoming one of the gang.

Remarkably, the Lyceum is the sole ‘moderne style’ structure still around locally. But it wasn’t always on its lonesome. Not only did it have the Plaza and Vogue cinemas (the latter designed by James McKissack opened in 1938) for some competitive company, there was also the fashion for adding Art Deco shopfronts onto older street-level shop buildings, explored in the Leyland Motors article.

Maybe it’s just me but when I look at this I think every cinema should have its counterpart shop or cafe, and in the Art Deco era many of them did. As the cinema became part of the area’s DNA, it made sense that its brand extended locally. That said, it’s probably a blessing most of them don’t now, when you look at the deadening design of them. Where has the beguiling pizzazz of cinemas and ability to design for life gone to?

The Black Cat café was much further along Govan Road heading east, at Linthouse. The frontage is gone and it’s now clumsily converted, as is its neighbour on the right, into the ground floor residence of the tenement building it occupied. The lack of shops, services and streetlife in general in this stretch of Govan Rd nowadays is really noticeable.

The Art Deco styling of The Linthouse Café nearby extended beyond the typography and glossy tiling to the jazzy etched detailing on the windows. This frontage is now concreted over, barring some reduced window space, and is the Diamond Dogs Salon. I wonder if any of its Art Deco glory remains hidden beneath..?

I noticed this little Art Deco critter below near ground level on the marble front of the shop right next door to the Lyceum, which was once a Bank of Scotland. There were previously two, but the one on the other side seems to have been removed or concreted over. Since then I’ve spotted a few more around the Southside; there’s an identical series of them on a building at 463-471 Victoria Road.

Glasgow subway’s lost ‘moderne’ period

More ghosts from the Art Deco era in Govan come in the form of subway stations. As the 20s and 30s saw the birth of the makeover as we know it today, so most of our old subway stations got a complete modernist update. Govan has three stations in its orbit that got this treatment.

While most people call it the Subway, and that’s also its official name, it’s interesting that the new signage of this era adoped the ‘Underground’ moniker. Was it mimicking both the look and name of London Underground’s famous revamp in the same period? Very probably, but Glasgow was also big and confident enough to hoover up styles from elsewhere without too much consternation.

There was plenty of indigenous style architecture and local adaptations of global trends in Glasgow already. Adopting a style wholesale from elsewhere didn’t mean the city’s identity was threatened, and the fashion for Art Deco transcended borders globally.

Govan Cross station entrance above, like many others, was inserted on the ground floor an old tenement. An unlikely pairing that somehow works.

These perky modernist portals were not well maintained however, compared to London’s – a reflection of the managed decline of Glasgow in general since the 1940s – and eventually had to be replaced with the underwhelming station designs we live with now (although the train redesigns were quite iconic). Built in the late 1970s, the new ‘Clockwork Orange’ reopened to the public on 16th April 1980.

While each of the modernist stations were unique, some were more similar than others. Cessnock (above) is a curio. Entered almost imperceptibly at tenement basement level, from a distance the sign is practically the only inkling there’s a station located here at all.

Copland Rd station (now renamed Ibrox) was another oddity, with its diagonal shape covering the previous design behind it, but this also provided continuity to an already recognisable local icon. The main difference shape-wise was the change to stepped rather than sloped diagonal inclines, in tune with modernist structures elsewhere.

Do you have any old photos of the Lyceum, the shops or the subway stations (including their interiors) of this period? Get in touch if so; we’d love to include them in our archive.

Many of these modernist station entrances also feature near the start of this brilliant mini-documentary made about the Glasgow Subway in 1974 that came back to prominence recently when a clip from it went viral on social media during lockdown.

We have the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive at Kelvinhall to thank that its digitised and still available to watch freely in full today. Thanks also to Stuart Neville for permission to use his subway photographs.

Snapshots in time: a rare glimpse inside the Lyceum

Concluding our tour of Art Deco-era Govan and returning to the Lyceum itself, what’s less obvious from outside is the remarkable remnants of the old cinema that abide within, despite its increasing dilapidation.

The interior design is dizzying and noticably more Streamline in design, in contrast with the International Style exterior.

In her World Art Deco Day talk on 28th April 2021 for the Twentieth Century Society, Elain Harwood likened this particular style to “ice cream architecture” – when you feast your eyes all those curves, the rolling scoops and whilrling swirls, it certainly has that resonance.

You can see further atmospheric interior shots in this blog post and Flickr set from Ben Cooper in 2010. It was largely intact then, and the main auditorium still hugely impressive. Who knows how much it’s declined inside in the intervening years..?

Sharing Lyceum memories for the future…

In 2019 we ran the ‘Southside Memories’ project to collect memories for our archive, in conjunction with researching and writing our ‘South Glasgow Heritage Trails’ guidebook.

Postcards were distributed at venues in areas around the Southside, each with a map of their specific neighbourhood on one side and space to write memories on the other, along with post boxes for people to put their completed postcards into.

Below is one of the Govan postcard memories contributed. Perhaps you, or a family relative or friend, have your own recollections or comments on Govan or the Lyceum – tell us in the comments here below, or on Facebook or Twitter, or email them to info@sghet.com

The Lyceum is held in great affection by the community and has personal importance for many, as well as being an architectural landmark. This suggests it could be used for a number of community purposes, not just film screenings.

There is a planning application (not the first in its period of disuse however) currently under consideration for ‘Use of vacant building as cinema, concert hall and restaurant and external alterations’, although the period for submitting comments has now closed. More details here.

For now the only certainty is that it remains a building at risk with enormous symbolism, history and potential.  Through better understanding its story, and what it means to Govanites and Glaswegians past and present, we can help shape a positive future for it.

By Deirdre Molloy

Published: 5th May 2021

Sources:

McKean, Charles; The Scottish Thirties, Scottish Academic Press (1987)

Kenna, Rudolph; Glasgow Art Deco, Richard Drew Publishing (1985)

Louden, T., The Cinemas of Cinema City, self-published (1983)

UK cinema annual admissions – 1935 onwards; UK Cinema Association (online)

Virtual Mitchell: Glasgow City Archives online – images kindly reproduced with credit

Glasgow, 908 Govan Road, Lyceum Cinema; Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland

Lyceum, 908 Govan Rd, Govan; Scottish Cinemas and Theatres

Glasgow Film Theatre; Wikipedia entry

McNair & Elder architectural practice; Dictionary of Scottish Architects

The fading grandeur of a former cinema giant; Lost Glasgow (online)

Item NMC/0680 – Ascot Cinema, Glasgow – perspective; The Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections

Neville, Stuart; Govan Cross and Cessnock subway stations – photographs (online) reproduced with permission

Cooper, Ben; Lyceum Cinema 16th November 2010 (online)

Harwood, Elain; World Art Deco Day Twentieth Century Society talk, 28th April 2021 (online)

Glasgow Subway (1974); National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive at Kelvinhall

Special thanks to the team at Govan Old for hosting our Southside Memories project Govan postbox, in some great company alongside the Govan Stones

All photographs, unless otherwise credited, are by Deirdre Molloy

Follow the #SouthsideModerne hashtag on Twitter

Read the other articles in our #SouthsideModerne series:

James Miller’s Art Deco Leyland Motors

Art Deco fragments of Shawfield Stadium

The post Renewing Lyceum Govan’s faded ambition appeared first on SGHET.

Gliding southwards on the raised railway lines from Central Station you’ll spot an intriguing modernist tower peeping up amid the post-war jumble and gap sites on the right just after you pass the 02 Academy (formerly the New Bedford Cinema) on the left.

A semi-derelict building largely cut off from humanity by the M74 flyover and hostile feeder roads that throttle its environs, you’re looking at the corner elevation of the Category-B listed Leyland Motor Company Ltd on Salkeld Street, completed in 1933 to the designs of architect James Miller.

Borne of the 1930s, this building’s origins however are rooted in the long timespan of the 1890s to 1920s, in the Beaux Arts, Chicago, and PWA Moderne styles and the American branch of the international Art Deco movement.

James Miller was seduced by American twists on international architectural trends in that period – although he never visited himself. Instead, it was a case of succumbing to an irresistible bug wholesale, caught from his colleague Donald Alexander Matheson following Matheson’s fact-finding tour Stateside in 1902. The result was a series of show-stopping buildings in Glasgow city centre.

This involved Miller fashioning a series of landmark buildings heavily influenced by a range of American styles (especially the Chicago School movement) for Glasgow on a scale far grander than the roadside Americana we find off Eglinton St – but bar one close competitor Leyland Motors is still my favourite of his US-influenced works.

The cinematic car showroom

The mood exuded at Salkeld St builds on these foundations but, showing Miller’s close attention to the times, has moved on trend-wise and is far more cinematic. It’s as if an unused fragment of a movie set oozing Jazz Age glamour has mysteriously materialised in industrial Glasgow, an enigmatic character that threatens to outstage its starring cast (the cars inside), posing and preening from every angle as it waits for its climatic scene… its close-up.

This was no idle fancy but designed to move minds precisely to fulfil a commercial purpose – a siren structure that channelled the zeitgeist, captivating the 1930s Glaswegian’s dream-fuelled gaze when they went to buy that prized after motor vehicle.

Every time I see Leyland Motor Company’s corner tower, the fluted pilasters, ribbed faience and balconies that decorate it, and the optical illusion fashioned of a double doorway with its multi-layered recessing (sadly the tower windows have been cemented over), I think of Irish-American Cedric Gibbons’ late 1920s Hollywood film sets which themselves influenced later 1930s cinema architecture and interior design worldwide.

Geometric and curvilinear, minimalist but dramatic, Leyland Motors corner energy is both magnetic and propulsive, drawing you in while giving the appearance of itself going somewhere. The playful aerodynamic design invites multiple readings; it’s a ship ploughing forward, a plane taking flight… but it’s also a building as a rocket, primed to go stratospheric, and maybe even a teleporting machine to the silver screen. Beam me up Scotty…

In the business, the skyline flourish topping the tower is called a “fin” or “storm prow” [McKean, The Scottish Thirties]. You can find them on Art Deco and Streamline Moderne buildings worldwide and they’re highly adaptable. Two examples show their plasticity: austerely restrained at the Dominion Cinema, Edinburgh (1938) and cartoonishly exaggerated at the Loma Theatre, San Diego (1945, now a bookstore) where it forms the theatre marquee.

The Loma also typifies many ‘moderne style’ buildings that were transformed nocturnally by neon lighting which also often formed the signage, and its lights still operate. Cinemas, bars, restaurants and shops everywhere including dark, dreich Glasgow embraced this new night-time ambience and self-advertising opportunity.

Fittingly, while it didn’t originally have external neon (as far as I know), through the use of transient neon lights Leyland Motors briefly rematerialised in miniature over its own doorway, when it doubled as an American-themed bar and restaurant backdrop in the 1990 BBC Scotland TV drama series Your Cheatin’ Heart penned by Paisley artist and playwright John Byrne.

The Roaring Twenties and Art Deco’s double-decade centenary

As the Centenary of the 1920s gets underway – the decade modernism swept through much of the world, and the style we now call Art Deco came into being – I wanted to start taking a closer look at Southside “moderne” buildings beginning with my favourite. Although many are already lost, these beacons to a period of super-charged change are still more numerous, and more varied, than you’d think…

Art Deco, what it is and what it isn’t, still provokes debate – the term was only coined by design critic Bevis Hillier in 1968, is blurred around the edges and acts as something of an umbrella concept. It derives from the Paris Exposition Internationale de Arts Decoratifs of 1925 which ran for 6 months attracting 15 million visitors.

Art’s influence was to the fore in this emergent pan-design shift that had its first dedicated showcase in the French capital:

“movements such as German Expressionism, French Cubism, Italian Futurism, Russian Suprematism, and English Vorticism were making their presence felt. The artists associated with these “isms” shared an interest in deconstructing and abstracting the appearance of the world… and their endeavours had a profound influence on design and architecture.” [Hans van Lemmen, 2012]

What we now call Art Deco was, in van Lemmen’s view: “an eclectic style that drew on many stylistic influences, such as European avant-garde (particularly the work of abstract painters such as Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian), classical architecture, the ancient civilisation of Egypt and South America and exotic cultures from the Far East.”

Was Mackintosh an influence on Art Deco?

I can’t help wondering though if the pared-back abstractionism of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s architecture (reworking much older Scots Baronial and Japanese influences) shouldn’t be included in that list? It tends to get bracketed solely with Glasgow Style Art Nouveau. Elements of CRM and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh’s interior design works certainly have Art Deco resonance.

Below are two of his lamps from The Glasgow School of Art, rescued and restored from the debris of the library, displayed at an ICON Scotland event I attended at GSA in November 2019 – looking just like little Art Deco skyscrapers.

Industrial chic and everyday escapism

Art Deco shared with Art Nouveau the quality of being a “total design” movement, present in many spheres of the made world. Where it differed was that mass production driven by manufacturing efficiencies led to cheaper costs and rapid innovation in materials, causing Art Deco style and its younger sibling Streamline Moderne to become democractised and accessible to almost everyone to some extent.

It became the must-have style in many walks of life, from cinemas, factories, banks and civic buildings through to furnishings, ceramics, jewellery, clothing and poster design. Indivisible from consumerism and a faster, more frenetic and increasingly robotic pace of life, clocks, radios, trains – and even laundry vans made by Holland Coachcraft in Govan – embraced the signature moderne look.

In turn, an industrial edge defined Art Deco as it shrugged off the soft, nature-inspired sensuality of Art Nouveau. It was a more pared-back aesthetic, but never without its decorative details, hence the Deco moniker. Machines, mammon and a faster speed of life were in but art – in the form of geometric patterns, zig zag motifs, coloured tiles and various exotic (for example Egyptian-themed) ornaments – was still there co-habiting with it. The presence of the “decoratif” element showed this machine still had a beating heart inside it.

Charlie Chaplin’s character was literally trapped in the wheels of industry in his 1936 movie Modern Times, but in the same period Art Deco counterbalanced and offered transcendence from the recent horrors of WWI, the grinding poverty of the Great Depression and the anxiety of looming conflict in the 1930s.

Escapism, dynamism, glamour, exoticism and a slinky, noirish mood were the watchwords. We were doomed but we’d have a good time en route and hell mend anyone trying to stop us. Buying a car in the jazzy surrounds of Leyland Motors, if you had the cash, was certainly one way for the growing Southside middle class to sedate those gloomy feelings and get a serotonin hit.

The birth of Art Deco and Glasgow’s moderne appetite

Art Deco architecture drew its visual energy from analogies with the artefacts and currents of the human-made world: electricity, cars, ships, neon light, aeroplanes… even science fiction space rockets and robots themselves. Compare the Salkeld St premises to this from the iconic poster range for Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis… Leyland Motors is Glasgow’s equivalent icon.

Indeed, Glasgow has considerably more moderne era buildings – Chicago Style, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne – than Edinburgh not because of its larger size but due to its industrial focus and, allied to that, greater readiness to embrace the new. Equally, despite its distance from New York and Berlin, many in the architectural “demi-monde” of 1930s Scotland championed ‘style moderne’ as it was then known, particularly through the RIAS Quarterly journal which was edited by a notably younger set of professionals in the inter-war period than beforehand.

The ferment this created in Scottish architectural circles saw many public clashes between advocates and sceptics of the moderne style, in conferences and the letters pages of publications. Typically, James Miller didn’t involve himself in these debates. As a distinguished RIBA member, politically conservative and older by several decades than the new cohort he stayed aloof, but as frequent judge in the competitions that ran for building design selection, he clearly observed them closely. Ironically, he’d already got a head start on them all with his fast-evolving take on American trends. He just quietly and industriously got on with it.

James Miller’s five-decade legacy in Glasgow

It’s striking that Miller completed the ultra-modern Leyland Motors when he was 73, one of his last sequence of buildings in a career that had seen him change the face of Glasgow and leave an indelible mark across Scotland and elsewhere. Born in Auchtergaven, Perthshire in 1860, his architecture career spanned five decades and numerous changes in period style, influences and approach, each twist of which he mastered leaving his own highly varied and original stamp.

Miller’s agility means he defies pigeonholing and the lazy label. Commercially savvy, his output and readiness to please his clients was prodigious. The art emerged in his ability to simultaneously serve commercial imperatives while also creating landmark buildings that have won hearts across decades, and indeed centuries, and are celebrated today.

Unlike his contemporary Charles Rennie Mackintosh, you couldn’t point to a certain structure and say “typical Miller” but the Glasgow (and Scotland) we know is unthinkable without him. Among many of his railway related commissions, Miller’s Wemyss Bay railway station (1903), Turnberry Hotel and Railway Station (1903) and the massive extension to Glasgow Central railway station (1901–1905) are renowned. His Botanic Railway Station on Great Western Rd (demolished after a fire in 1970) revelled in exotic Russian orthodox-styled domed towers and according to Fergus Sutherland a broader ‘Orientalism’.

When compared out of context, it’s hard to believe the same person designed St Enoch Subway Station (1896) and Leyland Motors 37 years later, but if you trace through his American-influenced works between those years you can detect the thread connecting them.

Many iconic buildings of his give Glasgow city centre its energetic New York / Chicago feel, as mentioned above. My favourite is the Commercial Bank Of Scotland on Bothwell St (1934), which also boasts an amazing set of 6 (front and side) relief sculptures by Gilbert Bayes.

So why are all these buildings feted and cherished while Leyland Motors is left to languish? Is it because its Art Deco, or because of its hostile setting in the Southside interzone, away from the tourist haunts and on the wrong side of Eglinton St, all blighted by motorway “convenience” and the related depopulation and demolition derby?

Dereliction doesn’t have to be its destiny. After debuting as a temple of consumerism, and then transitioning to become the world’s most unlikely stable for police horses (now stationed in Pollok Park), it follows that it could adapt in endless ways.

Apparently there’s nothing left inside to restore (though I’d like to get a look to check) – and the exterior needs largely cosmetic but increasingly urgent attention. An audacious survivor of Glasgow’s moderne era it’s bursting with potential in need of a purpose.

The Art Deco makeover and its relevance today

Prior to the 1920s buildings had always been adapted but in more occasional and less frenetic ways. In the inter-war period, mass-produced materials and new techniques fuelled an unstoppable trend that changed our streets radically. Suddenly any little shop of Victorian or Edwardian origin could afford a makeover. Moderne style exteriors and interiors, especially at ground level, started to appear everywhere including Glasgow’s Southside.

The very same trend meant, ironically, it contained the seeds of its own destruction. What had been lasting became disposable. Shopfronts were now transient playthings, and as the fashion for Art Deco and Streamline Moderne passed they were often scrapped for the next in-vogue look. Take this café frontage on Pollokshaws Road, a Victorian tenement with a moderne street level frontage that even boasted the style’s name. Long gone, it’s now Café Buongiorno.

Dereliction & demolition vs. retrofitting & reuse

Leyland Motors has (so far) only escaped this fate by being a holistic Art Deco building rather than a discrete ground-floor premises, but its visible decline shows it’s at risk and raises issues of sustainability in the context of the climate emergency. Why do we let viable buildings rot? Why do we enable the carbon waste that comes of demolishing rather than retrofitting?

The consequences of enabling dereliction and relentlessly prioritising new build  – and indeed new motorways as seen in the above poster, regarding the recent M74 extension which passes close to Leyland Motors – were starkly addressed in a Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland article ‘The importance of adaptive reuse’ from 15th February 2021.

“As things currently stand, according to the United Nations environment programme, buildings and their construction account for 38% of global energy use and 39% percent of energy-related carbon emissions annually… 28% of these carbon emissions come from the operational emissions of a building, such as heating and ventilation. The remaining 11% are ‘’upfront’’ carbon emissions, that is, associated with materials and construction processes throughout the whole building lifecycle (Abergel et al. 2017).

“Adaptive reuse reduces the amount of raw material required to produce a new structure. This construction process adapts the materials already available at hand, using more minimal interventions in order to retain the historic fabric. As well as this, the absence of the demolition of a structure further saves energy. Demolition is an energy intensive construction approach which is required for a new build. Adaptive reuse must also encapsulate a revaluing of the building stock we currently have.”

As a functional building first and foremost, with no remaining interior worth preserving to speak of Leyland Motors is also – interior-wise – something of a blank canvas. The opportunity to adapt inside while keeping the present exterior and scale of the building intact is enormous. Just as Miller was chameleon-like in his adoption of architectural styles, the inner life of this building can also change for the better.

Heritage, history and regeneration

Last but not least, Miller’s building speaks to the story of the area in the last chapter of its heyday – once a bustling hive of activity across the commercial-cum-industrial hub of Tradeston, the Garment District of Laurieston and the manufacturing and residential locale of Hutchesontown and the Gorbals.

There’s an Art Deco cluster locally too if you look closer: New Bedford Cinema (1932), Cumbrae House (1937-8), the Art Deco extension to Kinning Park Co-operative Society Drapery Warehouse (1935), and Alexander Sloan & Co drapers store and warehouse (1928). Leyland Motors’ neighbouring Category-B listed Park’s Motor Works – though dating from 1913 – also deserves honorary inclusion. Built using the innovative Kahn system by Truscon Ltd, Detroit, it’s one of only three such Kahn system buildings in the UK. Taken together this amounts to some serious moderne clout.

Multiple purposes beckon for reviving Leyland Motors and reanimating the area. Nearby, creative coalition Lateral North are pursuing temporary usages of abandoned and hostile public spaces as part of their After The Pandemic initiatives.

They recently staged an orchestra playing under the M74 and have a major project underway to transform a 3000sqm disused site by the Clyde in Tradeston into a creative and community-curated hub to coincide with the COP26 United Nations climate change conference at the SEC this November. Their mission is to “to RETHINK, REIMAGINE and REDESIGN our spaces and places to be greener, more vibrant and more resilient at COP26 and beyond”… but what about rethinking the re-use of derelict buildings?

The audacity of Leyland Motors’ corner elevation and how it animates the building as a whole both asks and answers key questions: can art be industrious, can commerce co-exist with culture, can utility have ornament and flair? By squaring these circles Leyland Motors radiates the undimmed appeal of Art Deco and its enduring relevance.

What if Miller’s building could become a hive of creative, community and commercial activity? The Covid-19 pandemic and environmental crisis frame our present time as one to urgently re-imagine our cities and their landscape. How do we define and support prosperity in this context? Finding a future for this building and bringing life back to the motorway-scarred hinterlands of the inner Southside seems an obvious pathway in local terms – but how do we get there?

Connected futures: Leyland Motors & Glasgow’s sustainability

There’s more than little irony in the fact that Leyland Motors has been orphaned from the streets we habitually roam by the primacy put on the very thing it was designed to sell – the car.

The railway has been much kinder to Miller’s architectural legacy, albeit with losses like Botanic and Kelvinbridge Stations, because mass transit is (to a degree) less destructive and definitely more efficient, affordable and sustainable than the ubiquitous automobile – which often carries just one person.

As it turns out, Miller’s first commission upon moving to Glasgow in 1888 was in the Southside – for the new Bridge Street Station of 1889. Part of it is still there, though the building now services flats, offices and shops. There’s no sign indicating what it was, just as in Salkeld Street. Built 44 years earlier, the building abides unobtrusively in a rather low key but re-used form.

Looking beyond Glasgow, much larger Art Deco buildings have been rejuvenated with innovative technologies (like this in Fort Worth, Texas), with respect for the original design (in London), and in Glasgow city centre they’ve never gone out of style (apart from the occasional fire)…  so why not here? The story of Leyland Motors Southside moderne landmark is waiting for its next chapter to begin.

By Deirdre Molloy

Published: 4th March 2021

Sources:

McKean, Charles; The Scottish Thirties, Scottish Academic Press (1987)

Kenna, Rudolph; Glasgow Art Deco, Richard Drew Publishing (1985)

Kenna, Rudolph; Scotland in the Thirties, Richard Drew Publishing (1987)

van Lemmen, Hans; Art Deco Tiles, Shire Publications (2012)

Lennie, Lindsay; Scottish Traditional Shopfronts, Historic Environment Scotland (2017)

Lennie, Lindsay; CPD: Conserving Interwar Shopfronts – Materials and Methods Glasgow City Heritage Trust event, 5th June 2019

Sutherland, Fergus; James Miller (1860-1947): talk for the AHSS, 23rd January 2020 (later repeated for GCHT)

Virtual Mitchell: Glasgow City Archives online – images kindly reproduced with credit

Glasgow, 140 Salkeld Street, Garage; Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland

Edwards, Anne; Designing Films: The Art Déco Years, Architectural Digest, 1st March 2006, photography by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (online)

Dominion Cinema, Edinburgh; photograph copyright of Scottish Cinemas and Theatres

Act Now: Stop The M74 billboard poster by Frank Boyle for Friends of the Earth Scotland on Eglinton St, 21st June 2006

St Enoch Subway Station, photo CC-BY-SA-2.5 by Túrelio

Holland Coachcraft of Govan laundry van via @PastGlasgow; original photo source unknown

Follow the #SouthsideModerne hashtag on Twitter

Read the next articles in our #SouthsideModerne series:

Renewing Lyceum Govan’s faded ambition

Art Deco fragments of Shawfield Stadium

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The connections between Glasgow and the tobacco trade of the eighteenth century are well-known. Furthermore, the links between some of the trades’ most prominent merchants and the slave trade are also becoming known to a growing audience. This is in part thanks to vital research conducted by scholars over the past decade which seeks to address the ‘uncomfortable truths’ of both Glasgow and Scotland’s past. Perhaps more recently, the growth in interest can be attributed to the BLM movement and heightened tensions over the treatment of black people in both the US and the UK. This has brought up discussions as to where our place names, street names, statues and grand city centre buildings come from and whether or not it is correct to hang onto them, with many calling for streets to be renamed and statues to be removed.

Understandably, much of the research has focused on the city centre. However, we at SGHET have looked at how the Southside of the city fits into this dark part of our history. In doing so, we have largely built our research around the estates and grand houses south of the River Clyde. Many of these still exist (such as Pollok House and Aitkenhead House), although dwarfed by the cityscape, while many more were demolished as urban expansion took hold during the twentieth century.

Nonetheless, many of these houses and their grounds stood on the outskirts of the city, which many merchants bought with their newly acquired wealth from the plantations, affording them a degree of disconnect from the rough and tumble of their trade. Here we will focus on two houses which are no longer with us, Craigton and Shawfield, both of which were owned by prominent tobacco merchants during the ‘golden era’ of the tobacco trade which depended on the transatlantic slave trade.

James Ritchie of Craigton (1722–99)

Situated in the old Craigton estate in the parish of Govan, Craigton House was demolished during the inter-war period to make room for housing. The house and its grounds had belonged to one of the ‘Four Young Men’ of the Virginia tobacco trade, James Ritchie. Ritchie, who bought the estate in 1746, was known to have benefited from the transatlantic slave trade in several ways. Firstly, through the trade of tobacco on America’s eastern seaboard, and secondly, perhaps more indirectly, through his connections to the Thistle Bank which he had helped to establish alongside infamous Tobacco Lord and slave trader John Glassford.

Indeed, if you look at compensation records – created following the 1833 British Abolition of Slavery Act (which took effect in 1834) – the Ritchie name is mentioned on two separate claims for compensation following abolition. Both claims were made by James Ritchie’s son, Henry, who had taken over Craigton house in 1830 along with his partnership in the Thistle Bank. Henry Ritchie is listed as a trustee in a joint claim made on the 4th July 1836, along with James Maxwell Wallace and William Stirling. They were compensated over £4000, around £380,000 in today’s money (using MeasuringWorth.com and bearing in mind that such numbers are impossible to calculate exactly) for the loss of 210 enslaved people, of which Ritchie received around a quarter.

Daniel Campbell of Shawfield (1671/2–1753)

Campbell is perhaps better remembered for his tenure as an MP, during which he was one of the signatories to the Act of Union in 1707, and later voted in favour of the much maligned Malt Tax of 1725 leading to the infamous Malt Tax riots. This saw his city centre property of Shawfield Mansion (on what is now Virginia Street) ransacked and its interiors demolished for his troubles. The mansion is also known to have housed John Glassford, one of the most notable of the Glasgow Tobacco Lords, whose links to the slave trade are well-known.

Campbell himself, however, acquired much of his wealth in trading tobacco for iron ore which provided him the means to purchase the Shawfield Estate, next to Oatlands and Polmadie, in 1707. Prior to the Act of Union, Scots were unable to trade with English colonies in the Americas through the Navigation Acts (1651-96) which sought to maintain English monopoly over the colonies. Despite this, Campbell made a considerable amount from both the trade of tobacco and more directly, in the trading of enslaved people.

The house and estate were passed down to his son Walter who then sold it to the chemical works firm J&J White in 1788. Due to ongoing contamination issues, the site which included the 150-year old Shawfield House was pulled down in the late 1960s. Today the area is home to a large industrial estate which sits on the city boundary between Glasgow and Rutherglen.

This blog is part of a wider article which details our research on the Southside’s links to the slave trade.

By Mark McGregor

Southside Slavery Legacies project

In 2020 South Glasgow Heritage and Environment Trust began working on the #SouthsideSlaveryLegacies project, including a potential heritage trail, walks and events, as well as blogs on our website and published articles.

If you would like to know more or become involved, please sign-up to the Southside Slavery Legacies mailing list, message us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact info@sghet.com.

Further Reading 

1. Moss, Michael, ‘Daniel Campbell of Shawfield’ (Online, 2004).
2. SCOS Archive, ‘James Ritchie of Craigton and Busbie’ (Online, year unknown)
3. Mullen, Stephen, It Wisnae Us: The Truth About Glasgow and Slavery (RIAS, 2009)
4. Devine, T M, The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities c. 1740-1790 (Edinburgh, 1990).
5. –, Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland, 1700-1900 (John Donald, 2006)
6. UCL Department of History, ‘Legacies of British Slave-ownership’ (Online, 2009-2020).
7. Shawfield House on Canmore (Historic Environment Scotland, John R Hume collection, online)

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Bellahouston Park is known for its outdoor artworks, sculptures and House for an Art Lover, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and constructed between 1989 and 1996. Few, however, know of the estate’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade.

This park was, for a long time, farmland on the Maxwell Estate (which included Pollok Park and estate). It was then in the hands of the Rowan family for generations. In the 1800s the Steven family, of Polmadie estate in south Glasgow, acquired the Bellahouston estate. Moses Steven senior was a partner of Buchanan Steven & Co. (later Dennistoun, Buchanan & Co.), a West Indies firm, alongside James Buchanan, whom The Loyal Reformers’ Gazette (1831) called a ‘West India Slave Merchant.’ Indeed, the Stevens’ involvement in the slave trade is confirmed in the University of Glasgow’s 2018 report on its profits from slavery: “Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow”:

“Moses Steven senior (1749-1831) was originally a linen trader and matriculated with the Merchants House as a ‘Home Trader’ in 1790. With his first cousin, James Buchanan, afterwards of Dowanhill, he went into partnership in two prominent West India merchant firms in Glasgow, Buchanan, Steven & Co., and its successor firm Dennistoun, Buchanan & Co. The latter firm had interests in Grenada, Jamaica and South America, likely based on exporting textiles to the West Indies (i.e. connected to commerce based on chattel slavery).”

Moses Steven junior (1806-1871) inherited the Bellahouston estate in 1824, bought Dumbreck House, and renamed it Bellahouston House. In addition to his inherited estates, he purchased other land. He trained as an advocate and graduated from Glasgow University. On his death, he left moveable property of £36,872.166.

The Bellahouston Bequest

After Steven died in 1871, his sisters Elizabeth, Grace (or Grizel), and Margaret – who each inherited £10,000 – established a trust. They feued part of the estate for houses on Paisley Road West and sold the remainder of the estate in 1892 to Glasgow Corporation for Bellahouston Park. When the sisters died, the Bellahouston Bequest was established. The siblings had an accumulated a fortune of £500,000 in 1875 (worth up to £884 million today according to measuringworth.com), much of which came from their father’s firm. The Bellahouston Bequest was administered for the benefit of ‘charitable, educational and benevolent institutions’ of Glasgow, including the university, and Glasgow Museums, which holds Steven’s portrait.

The Empire Exhibition

The 1938 Empire Exhibition was held in Bellahouston Park, featuring over 100 temporary buildings. The 300-foot Tower of Empire, designed by Thomas Tait, was built on the hill in the park, and the two combined reached 470 feet (140m) high. The exhibition, which attracted over twelve million visitors, was a nostalgic celebration of Britain’s involvement in colonialism and paid little attention to the slave labour on which the empire was built. The first British Empire Exhibition, held in Wembley in 1924, displayed peoples from across the colonies as exhibits, but the second exhibition largely erased the more shameful aspects of empire, including this objectifying display practise. The tower was demolished in July 1939 to avoid it being used by German bomber aircraft for navigation purposes. You can still see the Palace of Art, which was built for the event, but little else remains.

Southside Slavery Legacies project

In 2020 South Glasgow Heritage and Environment Trust began working on the #SouthsideSlaveryLegacies project, including a potential heritage trail, walks and events, as well as blogs on our website and published articles.

If you would like to know more or become involved, please sign-up to the Southside Slavery Legacies mailing list, message us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact info@sghet.com.

By Saskia McCracken

References

• “Bellahouston House.” Smith, John Guthrie and Mitchell, John Oswald, The Old Country Houses of the Glasgow Gentry (1878), digitised by Alan Dawson.
• “Bellahouston Park.” c.1906. Mitchell Library, Glasgow Collection, Postcards Collection. Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning. The Glasgow Story, ref: TGSA01241.
• “The Atlantic Restaurant: Bellahouston Park Empire Exhibition.” 1938. Mitchell Library, Glasgow Collection. Ref: ef606.4 (1938). Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning. The Glasgow Story, ref: TGSA00412.
• Moses Steven of Polmadie and Bellahouston, 1806-1871. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
• Mullen, Stephen, It Wisnae Us: The Truth About Glasgow and Slavery (RIAS, 2009).
• National Trust of Scotland (NTS), ‘Scotland and the Slave Trade’ (2007).
• Runaway Slave. Glasgow Courant (1748-02-01).Mitchell Library. © Glasgow City Archives. Runaway Slaves in Britain. Web link: https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/database/display/?rid=51
• Small, Sam Greater Glasgow: An Illustrated Architectural Guide. Rutland Press,
• Stephen Mullen and Simon Newman. “Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow.” University of Glasgow, 2018.
• UCL Department of History, ‘Legacies of British Slave-ownership’ (Online, 2009-2020).

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The Caledonian Railway Company had won the right to build the line but to raise the money required, a new company had to be formed, which came to be known as the Cathcart District Railway Company. The chairman was George Browne, a shipping magnate and the first Provost of the Burgh of Crosshill, who was keen to ensure that the line came through Crosshill and residents could travel quickly to and from Glasgow city centre.

The Split Nursery

Queen’s Park Train Station was built through a nursery called Hutchensontown Gardens. For a year or two, the nursery still operated on either side of the station. There was no Niddrie Road to the west of the station, just a path leading to Pollokshaws Road, past a blacksmith’s forge.

The bridge over Victoria Road, in fact all the bridges on the line were built by James Goodwin & Co. from Motherwell. Their stamp can still be seen on most of the bridges. In 1886, when the line first opened, it only went as far as Mount Florida, then a few weeks later a station was opened at Cathcart. The circle line back to Central Station wasn’t completed until 1894.

The Longest Platform

Queen’s Park was the longest platform of any station on Cathcart line. Originally, the intention was to have separate stations on Pollokshaws Road and Victoria Road, but the availability of land and the extra cost involved, thwarted that idea, a long platform, stretching most of the distance between the two thoroughfares was the compromise solution. A long platform may also have been considered useful if Central Station was ever temporarily unavailable.

By 1887, there were 32 trains running each way, each day, 6 days a week. The influence of Sabbatarians ensured the line remained closed on Sundays. Each train had 9 four-wheel coaches with gas lighting and steam heating. On Saturdays the line would be especially busy, taking football fans to the nearby Cathkin Park and Hampden Park to see Third Lanark and Queen’s Park, titans of the Scottish game.

Snooker Tam

A novel was written in 1919 called ‘Snooker Tam and the Cathcart Railway’ by a retired officer, Captain Robert William Campbell. Tam was a young man, just out of school, called on to serve on the railways while older men were at war. Tam earned his nickname because the tip of his nose was shaped like the tip of a snooker cue. He served at a fictional station on the line called Kirkbride, which was apparently very close to Pollokshields East, just one station to the north of Queen’s Park and in the course of his duties, is caught up in a drama involving a German spy. Both Pollokshields East and Queen’s Park were closed during the war, so it’s tempting to believe Kirkbride was here, at Queen’s Park.

The 20th Century

The Railways Act of 1921 led to the grouping of many railway companies, so in 1923, both the Caledonian Railway Company and the Cathcart District Railway became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company. Electrification had been discussed as early as 1909 but the line was finally electrified in 1962. For Queen’s Park, this meant the wall on Torrisdale Street had to be heightened to accommodate new equipment. That same year, the line finally opened on Sundays.

In 1990, the platform was truncated and reduced in length by about 30 metres and replaced with a simple path, surrounded by a fence leading to the Niddrie Road entrance. The most likely explanation for the truncation is that this was to reduce the cost of maintaining such a long platform. The trains of the time were much shorter than the platform. Many other stations were being refurbished around this time.

The station building at Queen’s Park is now a protected, B-listed building. In 2011, the former ticket office and waiting rooms were converted into an arts and exhibition space, now run by a Queen’s Park Railway Club. The new ticket office now occupies the eastern part of the building. In 2018 – 19, there were over 750,000 passenger journeys to or from Queen’s Park Station.

By Bruce Downie, author Loved and Lost: Govanhill’s Built Heritage (2019)

If you want to learn more about local heritage why not buy one of our books on the topic?

We’ve published South Glasgow Heritage Trails: A Guide (2019)

Stories from the Southside (2019)

and City of the Dead: A Guide to the Southern Necropolis (2017)

Platform before and after advertising boards © Canmore.

Maps © National Library of Scotland.

All other images © Glasgow City Archives.

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Skirving also designed some other wonderful Southside buildings and monuments including Langside Hill Free Church (Church on the Hill) and Battlefield Monument (see our Langside tour). This Category B listed building came into ownership of Glasgow City Council before a fire destroyed the roof and interior in 2005. The building was then bought and is on track to become four flats and a house with the beautiful exterior being retained.

In August 2019, we were walking by to take some pictures for the upcoming tour book when we bumped into the project manager who was in charge of the redevelopment of the building. He offered us a look inside and we jumped at the chance. At this stage, the exterior of the building had been completed, as well as the house at the back but the interior was a shell. He told us that when the fire started a beam had fallen on one of the firemen and so all water had to be pumped in through the roof as the building was too dangerous to enter. This meant that when the developers took over the building it was still full of water, even all these years later.

The developers have given a lot of thought to the re-development and the attention to detail is obvious when the project manager talks about the process of re-casting the original railings and the build and installation of the windows.

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