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.

Places have their own private and public life and can feel haunted in multiple ways: some because they’ve changed but remain familiar; others because they spark vivid personal memories difficult to express in words, embodying fragments of times past that we can’t – for better or for worse – return to.

They help define us – where we were then or are now, sometimes both – and convey how our predecessors lived. In our own lifetimes huge changes happen, but what often strikes us most is that jolt that comes when faced with sudden, drastic change in what we’ve only recently left behind us or have a meaningful connection to.

This could soon be the case with the (temporarily closed since 2020) Shawfield Stadium, which sits north east of Polmadie near the banks of the Clyde, as a planning application to demolish it and redevelop the site for residential and other uses has been lodged with South Lanarkshire Council by its owners.

Although just outside Glasgow’s present day borders, its history is entwined with that of the city. For a brief period from 1975-1996 it was even incorporated into Glasgow’s municipal district control within the larger Strathclyde Regional Council framework, after Rutherglen lost its own local council. Then in 1996, as part of Rutherglen, it was reallocated to South Lanarkshire council.

In line with its shared and shifting history, if we start to look even closer, we’ll discover not just connections to urban leisure in times past, but ghosts of multiple sorts still making their presence felt here, including ones that have survived from even further back than 1936 when the re-designed stadium opened…

The inner-city industrial landscape

By the 1930s, although the shipyards started to boom toward the decade’s end as the world re-armed in the run up to World War Two, Glasgow’s industrial might was already in decline. The tract of land on the east side of the Gorbals however – just grazing north eastern Govanhill to the south and stretching east into the fringes of Rutherglen – was still one of the most intensely industrialised areas of the city at the time.

This was Oatlands, Polmadie and Shawfield, home to such collosi as William Dixon’s Govan Iron Works (aka Dixon’s Blazes) and J & J White’s Chemical Works amongst many others.

But the workers and other residents locally needed some release from the industrial grind, and while factory owners, municipal bodies and civic and professional clubs provided much of these facilities in the form of parks, swimming baths, football grounds, tennis courts and bowling greens, in the post-war period innovative private enterprise focused on cinemas, from the first projection of moving pictures in 1895 to the arrival of sound in 1927.

By the time of cinema’s golden age of the 1930s picture houses had been joined in urban hubs by greyhound racing tracks, with the oval track and mechanical hare arrangement imported to Britain from the USA in 1926, as palaces of leisure and mass distraction.

While Shawfield was still heavily industrial, there were pockets of non-industrial space, and succumbing to the American trend, the stadium of financially struggling Clyde F.C. since 1898 next to Richmond Park agreed it could be used for greyhound racing while still also holding football matches.

The stadium was slightly altered to incorporate a greyhound track and re-opened to the public on 14th November 1932, eventually being sold outright to Shawfield Greyhound Racing Company Ltd (SGRC) in 1935, with a fully-transformed stadium boasting an American-style oval greyhound racetrack listed as having been completed in 1936.

When Shawfield part-shifted to racing track status in 1932, there were already four National Greyhound Racing Society tracks in Glasgow, plus three other independent tracks in the city, so Shawfield needed to stand out against its competitors. As an entertainment-cum-“sports” venue that was part of the gambling industry we shouldn’t be surprised then – in terms of the track’s defining features as it morphed further under full SGRC control – that the owners went for the style of the moment to lure folk in and add some swagger to proceedings: Art Deco.

This is where the iconic Shawfield Stadium gates come in and what drew your correspondent down there on a dry but typically cloudy July afternoon in 2021. Cyclling through the Gorbals, the contrast with other great enclosure of the area passed en route – the Southern Necropolis – couldn’t be starker.

One is a welcoming and tranquil green space, an oasis of biodiversity, history and sculpture amid the high-rise and mid-rise flats of Hutchesonstown and the warehouse district of Oatlands on its southern flank. The other is disjointed in feel and brutal in parts, a void encircled with hulking corrugated iron exteriors in places, clashing with earlier more delicate parts.

Shawfield is pervaded by a lifeless, unearthly air that permeates beyond the stadium…. people live nearby in sizeable numbers, it’s the streets that are devoid of life apart from traffic. What these enclosures have in common, however, is great entry points.

Gateways to escape: eternal and earthly

The Southern Necropolis gate lodge (1848) was designed by Charles Wilson (1810-1863), an architect with a huge output of work all over Scotland, famed for such other buildings as 1-16 Park Circus and 18-21 Park Terrace in Glasgow, Strathbungo Free Church, Glasgow Academy, and Lews Castle in Stornoway. The architect of the Shawfield Stadium gates is likely to have been John Easton, whose catalogued output is minimal.

His design oversight can only be inferred, as Easton is named as the Stadium’s architect in the Dictionary of Scottish Architects, so we assume he must have also fashioned the gates. Information surrounding the design history of the site is so scant though that a degree of conjecture is necessary. Closer inspection of the site however, turns up other affirmative clues.

The first thing that strikes you about the gates is the stepped arch or pyramidic ziggurat design – a style originating in Mesopotamia (largely within what is now Iraq) which was re-ignited in the Art Deco era, enlivening everything from New York skyscapers to suburban fireplaces. It was seen everywhere, including in the proliferation of shops, garages and dancehalls built in the era.

The ziggurat also defined the totalisator board (or ‘toteboard’) inside the stadium. It was perfecly suited to the passtime’s central engine, betting, constantly drawing the gambler’s eye to their possible win or lose scenario. Only two things mattered here: the dogs on the track (though not their health or happiness) and the money.

The ziggurat toteboard became a feature of other 1930s-built racing tracks, a famous survivor being that at Walthamstow Stadium racing track in north east London completed in 1932.

Interestingly the stadium entrance and toteboard at Walthamstow, while no longer part of a greyhound racing track, is a listed building – Grade II listed on the system operated by Historic England. It only became listed in 2007 but its key features have been restored while incorporated into a mixed usage housing and retail development.

Where Shawfield’s design differs most notably from Walthamstow is in its use of that most Glaswegian of surfaces, and the main reason I ventured here, the redoubtable ceramic tile…

The iconic photo of Shawfield Stadium gates in 1937 held by Glasgow City Archives at the Mitchell Library (photo 5 in this article) shows two extruding columns faced in what looks like tiling and topped with lamps, but the monochrome photograph makes it impossible to be certain of the surface material.

Seen in situ there’s zero doubt, as the grey captured by the camera’s lens is revealed as rich green tiling affixed to the bricks behind, smooth to the touch albeit much chipped, missing some tiles entirely, and crudely painted over at points.

Design-wise the ziggurat arrangement matches the old photo but on closer scrutiny something’s not quite right. The tiled columns don’t extrude in exactly the same way. What’s gone on here then? Nothing in fact. There were two sets of gates, these being the slightly less grand set although still impressive in their day. Thanks to Lost Glasgow for the tip.

Another discrepancy is the small flagpoles on the present gates, which don’t appear on the other set. We can see they later had a (now rusted) spotlight affixed to each. Flagpoles are common features of many Art Deco and Streamline Moderne buildings, particularly on corner sites.

Lack of documentation of the building means we don’t yet know if they were there at launch in 1936 or added later. Maybe we can find out…

Do you have any old photos or newspaper cuttings of either sets of gates that show them in better times? We’d love to see them if you do and optionally you can donate old images to our South Glasgow Archive, whether in digital or orginal format. Leave a comment or contact us on social media if so.

A twentieth century temple to flock to

Leaving the gates and cycling round to the opposite end of the site I came to the other stadium structure still abiding from the 1930s. Was it the stadium offices, perhaps a customer bar or cafe with cloakrooms and restrooms, or even a member’s club area? Were you ever in it?

Getting closer the design conveys aspects of both modernist and far eastern architecture, with the almost pagoda-style roof extending over the door reminiscent of Buddhist-influenced roof designs common to China, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and elsewhere in East Asia.

Overall there’s a Japanese feel to this building when looked at in the round, with its minimal but precise use of ornamentation and vertical window arrangements. This echoes some of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work which anticipated Art Deco modernism in the Art Nouveau era, with this pared-back style particularly evident at Hill House (built 1904) in Helensburgh and his posthumously realised House for an Art Lover (built 1989-1996) in Bellahouston Park.

While modernist in direction, it’s not fully attuned style-wise with the gates. Maybe the architect didn’t have a singuar vision he wanted to project and was happy to vary styles within the larger stadium site, or perhaps he did and the business wouldn’t allow it. A third possibility is that John Easton didn’t design both structures, so someone else was involved in one of them…

In turn the upper floor windows themselves are metal-framed, possibly Crittall windows. Crittall became the go-to window fitting supplier in many 1930s buildings due to its manufacturing prowess producing windows of reliably tight-fitting seal and weatherproof durability. These ground level windows however are more indeterminate vis-à-vis their material.

Crittall became so successful they even built a village of modernist housing for their workers in Silver End, Essex in 1926-27, contracting a range of architects to design them, most notably Paisley-born architect Thomas S Tait (of 1938 Empire Exhibition fame), on behalf of John James Burnet & Partners practice. Tait designed the manager’s house ‘Wolverton’ among others pictured here.

There’s a well-preserved interwar Crittall advertising sign in the corridor of The Engine Shed, Historic Environment Scotland’s premises in Stirling, which I spotted in 2018 when visiting to attend a conference.

Here too, as at the gates, the green tiles play an ornamental and shape-accentuating role, and suggest at their deployment at the gates by the same architect, John Easton, although green tiles especially in tenement wally closes are ubiquitous across Glasgow.

Meanwhile, below the doorway, a surrounding terrazzo stone step carries the staff, or punters, in.

Zooming closer in, a look at the window panes reveals a pattern. It’s impossible to confirm, but if these are the original panes then its fitting that the patterned glass has a playful Art Deco design.

Another possibility is that this ‘textured glass’ or ‘figured rolled glass’ was fitted later, with patterned panes felt to be in sympathy with the surrounding period style. I’d like to think these were original but haven’t found a match to pin down the production period yet. There’s a great selection of Victorian, Edwardian and 20th Century patterned textured glass collated here.

Either way, the pattern detail has a Jazz Modern swish to it that adds a little zing to proceedings. Have you seen this style elsewhere? Maybe someone could bring it back into production!

The many lives of Shawfield Stadium

Few today will mourn the decline of greyhound racing but Shawfield has hosted many other events over the years, such as music concerts and of course plenty of its original activity: football.

From big cup to local club games, it’s been home to plenty of memorable outings for Glaswegians and other Scots who follow the beautiful game, and a key site for Scotland’s sporting heritage, both as home to Clyde F.C., host to visitors prior to 1932, and an ongoing site for matches even while a greyhound track.

In turn, it’s been incorporated into ‘Football’s Square Mile’ by The Hampden Collection project to develop the world’s biggest outdoor football museum centred on the birthplace of the modern game of passing football, namely First Hampden in Crosshill, its successor pitches Second and Third Hampden in the Southside, and connected historic Glasgow (and now Rutherglen) football sites.

Shawfield has a more troubling history too. The site of J & J White’s Chemical Works was built on the lands of Shawfield Estate, owned by Daniel Campbell (1671/2–1753). As Mark McGregor notes in our #SouthsideSlaveryLegacies article on The Tobacco Lords:

“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… 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.”

The house can been seen still standing eerily amid the Chemical Works complex in this 1967 photo, part of the John R Hume collection in Historic Environment Scotland’s Canmore archive.

This was it closer-up, in 1966, again photograped by Hume while on his odyssey of capturing Glasgow’s decaying industrial heritage.

Environmental legacies of Shawfield’s industrial past

The planning application to demolish Shawfield Stadium and redevelop the land with homes was submitted on 5th November 2021. South Lanarkshire Council responded 22nd December requesting an Environmental Imapct Assessment (EIA) of the proposed works before the application can progess to a final decision, an EIA as yet unreceived at time of publication. This is required as a large area around Shawfield is known to be contaminated with chromium, including hexavalent chromium 6, a poisonous and carcinogenic substance toxic to humans.

Chromium ore processing residue was a byproduct of the aforementioned White’s Chemical Works which operated on the site between 1820 and 1967 producing mainly bichromate of potash, for use in the tanning and textile dying industries. The manufacturing process produced a significant ratio of unusuable chromium byproduct including chromium 3 and hexavalent chromium 6, the latter of which is highly soluble and mobile in the environment.

Over the decades up to 2.5 million tonnes of chromium-containing waste was dumped by White’s – legally at the time – buried mainly in claypits and disused mines all around this area and elsewhere in Glasgow. Toxic clouds of chromium dust were also present in the air at high levels for many decades inside certain parts of the industrial complex.

In 2019 The Herald newspaper spoke to descendants of workers at the plant for an article: ‘Polmadie Burn: Everyone knew chromium waste was damaging health’.

“Workers at the chemical plant responsible for polluting a large area of the south of Glasgow were known as ‘White’s whistlers’, due to the damage caused to their nasal packages by cancer-causing chromium, relatives have claimed.

Men who worked for the company, J&J White’s of Rutherglen, came home clouded in dust, many bearing ‘chrome holes’ – burns in the skin, and with septums ruined by chemicals they had inhaled.”

In recent years large-scale remediation works have been carried out in various parts of the area (both within Glasgow and South Lanarkshire’s municipal borders) to measure and mitigate the leaching of chromium into both the water system and into new structures built locally, by containing or diverting it, by converting chromium 6 in-situ into the less toxic chromium 3, and to a lesser extent by removing it, but the sheer scale of the dumping has made this a huge challenge that’s only partly been addressed.

In the meantime, the chromium 6 continues to leach out, turning Polmadie Burn luminous yellow-green as recently as both 2019 and 2021, causing the waterway and local playing fields to be fenced off and raising alarm among residents and public representatives.

For this, unfortunately, is the most concentrated area of chromium-polluted urban land in the UK by an order of magnitude. While it was produced elsewhere, for several decades J & J White’s gained a near monopoly on bichromate of potash production in Britain from their Shawfield complex, accounting for 70% of UK output in the 1930s.

For now the outcome for the site remains uncertain, and environmental safety concerns are paramount, but the remaining Art Deco fragments of Shawfield Stadium provide a stepping stone into the longer shared history and memories of the area, as well as the interwar era’s design trends.

However development plans proceed, it would be worthwhile keeping these historic elements intact, restoring them, and considering their addition to the register of listed structures in Scotland, as they’re local landmarks and part of the area’s unique character and social history, beacons of its shared past in an area dominated by new developments.

There are good memories here, alongside bad ones, when you get the full measure of the place. Some spectres though might be best not disturbed too hastily until we can figure out how to better tame them. Until then, as sure as it rains in Glasgow, they’ll keep haunting us.

What are your memories of Shawfield Stadium? Tell us in the comments below.

By Deirdre Molloy

Published: 14th October 2022

This is the third in our #SouthsideModerne series of articles, documenting the range of Art Deco and other interwar modernist buildings south of the Clyde for the two-decade Centenary of Art Deco architecture and design.

Follow the hashtag on Twitter and Facebook.

Read part 1: James Miller’s Art Deco Leyland Motors

Read part 2:  Renewing Govan Lyceum’s Faded Ambition

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Sources & Further Reading:

John Easton, architect (1898-1977); entry in Dictionary of Scottish Architects

Charles Wilson, architect (1810-1863); entry in Dictionary of Scottish Architects

Southern Necropolis Gate Lodge, 316, Caledonia Road, Gorbals; Buildings At Risk website

Friends of Southern Necropolis website

Lanarkshire racetrack faces uncertain future with environmental report needed for planning application to proceed; Daily Record, 19th Sept 2022

Polmadie Burn: Everyone knew chromium waste was damaging health; The Herald, 6th March 2019

Whites Chemical Company; Rutherglen Heritage Society

Soil 2017 | Lecture 3 Characterisation of Cr(VI)-Contaminated Urban Soils; online talk by Professor Margaret Graham, University of Edinburgh for the International Institute for Environmental Studies, 20th Mar 2017

Contamination tests over toxic green burn in Glasgow; BBC News website; 12th April 2019

SEPA called to investigate ‘toxic’ Glasgow burn; Glasgow Evening Times, 26th April 2021

The Toxic Burn, Future Climate Info, undated 2021

Football’s Square Mile; The Hampden Collection

Image Sources:

Glasgow Road, Shawfield Chemical Works General view from NE showing SE side of works, 23 July 1967, John R Hume Collection, SC 595654. Copyright: Canmore / Historic Environment Scotland

Glasgow, oblique aerial view, taken from the SW, centred on Shawfield Stadium, 31 August 1998, SC 1685599. Copyright: Canmore / Historic Environment Scotland

Shawfield stadium boundary wall and gates, 1937. Copyright: Glasgow City Archives, Mitchell Library

Totalisator Board at Shawfield; Burrell Collection Photo Library, 1955 Survey. Copyright: Glasgow Life

Walthamstow Stadium toteboard, August 2006. Copyright: Futureshape, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Refurbished frontage of Walthamstow Stadium, 25 April 2017. Copyright: Acabashi; Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Glasgow, Shawfield Chemical Works General View, 27 March 1967, John R Hume Collection, SC 591198. Copyright: Canmore / Historic Environment Scotland

Glasgow Road, Shawfield Chemical Works View from SSE showing SW and SE fronts of old mansion house ‘Shawfield’, 11 September 1966, John R Hume Collection, SC 591469. Copyright: Canmore / Historic Environment Scotland

All other images copyright of the author, July 2021 (Shawfield) and April 2020 (Southern Necropolis).

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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.

Early Life and Education

Hannah Frank (1908-2008) was an artist and sculptor based in the Southside. She was born in Glasgow and lived in the Gorbals in her formative years, first in Abbotsford Road and later in South Portland Street. She then moved further south, living at 72 Dixon Avenue, Crosshill, where she was part of the vibrant local Jewish community around Govanhill.

Her parents were Jewish migrants from Russia. She attended Abbotsford Road Primary School, Strathbungo Public School on Craigie Street, and Albert Road Academy in Pollokshields, before attending the University of Glasgow from 1926–30, and Glasgow School of Art.

Drawings

She is remembered for her distinctive black and white drawings and her graceful bronze sculptures. She produced these drawings, in an Art Nouveau style, from the age of 17, under the pseudonym Al Aaraaf. (This pseudonym was a reference Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name). Her drawings below are reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley but carry Frank’s unique style.

You can see a 2016 reproduction of one of these images, Girl in a Wood (1928), in the 7 Arches of Cleland Street underpass. The 7 Arches was created by Liz Penden and arts group WAVE Particle. Their artworks also depict local legends Thomas Lipton of Lipton teas and boxer Benny Lynch.

Poetry

Hannah Frank was also a poet, and memorised her early poem ‘Faery,’ which she was always happy to recite. It was published in the Glasgow University magazine, GUM, in February 1927.

Faery

I stayed me there in tall trees’ shade
In Faery. And wild strange music played,
Piercing the air with sweetest strain,
So that I trembled. Dimly lit, a train
Moved from the forest’s depths.

I saw them by the weird moon’s gleam
On horses pass. As the riders of  a dream
They passed – noiseless hoofs and harness swaying.
Fair ladies singing songs, and strange words saying,
As olden stories tell.

In Faery I stood in tall trees’ shade.
Dim were the windings of the glade.
They were gone. I heard music still,
Faintlier, wafted faintlier, till
It died in the forest’s depths’

Sculpture

Her sculptures are mostly figure studies, in plaster, terracotta, or bronze, focussing on female forms. There was an exhibition of her work on what would have been her 110^th birthday at Glasgow University Chapel in 2018-2019, which included her Seated Figure (below) from 1989. Her work has been exhibited on three continents and at the Royal Glasgow Institute, the Royal Academy, and the Royal Scottish Academy.

This artistic legacy and body of work makes her one of Scotland’s most significant artists. She produced sculptures well into her 90s and died aged 100 years old, posthumously receiving Glasgow City Council’s Lord Provost’s award for Art, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Glasgow. She is buried in Cathcart Cemetery (who also have website and can be found on Twitter).

You can learn more about Hannah at hannahfrank.org.uk, find some of her prints in the Glasgow Women’s Library archive, buy books about Frank from the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre, and explore Southside sites connected with her life on our Govanhill and Gorbals heritage trails in South Glasgow Heritage Trails: A Guide (2019).

By Saskia McCracken

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The children were hunting the ‘Gorbals Vampire’ – a seven-foot-tall monster with long metal fangs who had killed and eaten two local boys.

These vampire hunters returned the following two nights to continue their hunt.

Adults in Glasgow blamed American comics, full of vampires and monsters, for the wild events of that week. Gorbals’ Labour MP Alice Cullen took the issue to the House of Commons, resulting in the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act of 1955, banning the sale of ‘repulsive or horrible’ reading matter to children.

That said, those involved in the hunt later recalled that they had ‘no idea’ what a vampire was, saying, “nobody knew we needed stakes – we didn’t have Christopher Lee [of the Hammer Horror films] to explain you had to put a stake through the heart to kill him. We were just going to cut the head off, end of story. Don’t know what we’d have done if we’d met one, like.” These children couldn’t afford American comics and didn’t have TVs at home.

The vampire was probably the product of big imaginations, local ghost stores, the scary atmosphere of the cemetery with the ironworks in the background, and the vampire’s appetite for children could have been connected to the hunger that was part of everyday life in what was then a deprived area.

The story was adapted for the stage at the Citizens Theatre in the Gorbals in 2016. In preparation for the play, the community ran writing competitions for schools and comic book sessions where children learnt about the 1950s horror comics that were censored after the Gorbals vampire incident.

There was an exhibition accompanying the production featuring recorded interviews, an anthology of the children’s winning stories, and artworks designed by the locals as part of a ten-month project leading up to the show. There’s also a mural of the Gorbals Vampire by teenager Ella Bryson and Art Pistol street artists, in an archway on St Luke’s Place near the Citizens’ which includes a short description of the hunt.

One of the tales in our Stories from the Southside collection is set on the first night of the hunt and takes you right to the heart of the Southern Necropolis. Harry Nixon’s ‘A Night to Remember’ walks you through ‘the ominous gatehouse and into the land of the Dead’ – enjoy a spooky this spooky Halloween read by buying the collection on our website or reading our book on the City of the Dead: A Guide to the Southern Necropolis.

You can also follow the Friends of Southern Necropolis on Twitter, and visit the Southern Necropolis and mural yourself!

By Saskia McCracken

Published: 26th October 2020

Sources

‘The Gorbals Vampire.’ Plays to See.

‘Gorbals Vampire Brought Back to Life.’ Glasgow Live.

‘The Ghastly Tale of the Gorbals Vampire.’ Herald Scotland.

‘Gorbals Vampire Mural.’ Glasgow Discovered.

‘The Gorbals Vampire, Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis.’ David Castleton.

‘Gorbals Vampire.’ Plenty of Nothing.

‘We Went Hunting the Gorbals Vampire.’ Glasgow Live.

‘Children playing in Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis’ (Photo by Bert Hardy, 1948).

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Queen’s Park and Langside synagogues form a fascinating part of South Glasgow’s heritage.

Scotland’s Jewish Community

Many Jewish people moved to the UK in the twenty years leading up to World War I, fleeing the Russian pogroms, with later generations moving to Glasgow, as a result of Nazi persecution. The Scottish Jewish community was once considerable, with about 15,000 Jewish people living in Glasgow in 1939. While some communities were established in Garnethill, many settled in areas such as the Gorbals, Govanhill, Battlefield, Langside, and Shawlands. The Gorbals was a real hub, with a Zionist Centre (which later moved to Queen Square), the Jewish Institute, the Jewish Board of Guardians, and the majority of the synagogues, kosher butchers, bakers, and Jewish grocery shops. Sophie Geneen also ran Geneen’s Hotel in the Gorbals, where she dispensed charity and food to those in need.

Synagogues in the Southside

Further south, Queen’s Park Synagogue was founded in 1906, and moved to a substantial new building in Falloch Road in 1926. About the same time, Langside Synagogue, originally founded in 1915, moved to Niddrie Road. In later years synagogues were established in Pollokshields (1929), Giffnock and Newlands (1934), Netherlee and Clarkston (1940) and Newton Mearns (1954). A Reform synagogue opened in Pollokshields in 1931, and later moved to Newton Mearns. A short-lived community was also established in Hillington, Mosspark and Cardonald (1937). Queen’s Park eventually closed in 2002; Langside Synagogue remained active for longer but closed in 2014.

Queen’s Park Synagogue

Land in Lochleven Road, donated by Sir John Stirling Maxwell for a nominal sum, was to become the Queen’s Park Synagogue. Plans were put on hold during World War I. A ‘tin Shool’ of concrete with a corrugated metal roof was constructed temporarily. Surviving plans show a simple building with pitched roof covered with asbestos tiles. The official Queen’s Park synagogue opened in the mid-1920s. It was designed by McWhannell & Smellie, with a red-painted and rendered Romanesque artificial stone façade. It was closed in 2003 and was converted into flats. The synagogue’s stained-glass windows by the Scottish glassmaker John K. Clark, made to mark Glasgow City of Culture in 1989, were moved to Giffnock Synagogue, and the Ark was salvaged and re-used in a new-build synagogue in Manchester.

Langside Synagogue

Langside Synagogue was established on Langside Road in 1915. The synagogue moved to 125 Niddrie Road, to a design by architects Jeffrey Waddell & Young with a Romanesque style façade. It re-opened in 1927, and was home to the Langside Hebrew Congregation. The building has a traditional immigrant shul interior. The Ark (two-tiers made of timber and gilding in traditional Eastern European style), bimah and decorative details including the clock on the gallery front were carved by a Lithuanian-born cabinet-maker called Harris Berkovitch (c. 1876–1956), who was a member of the congregation. Woodcarving and wall-painting in folk-art style was a characteristic of synagogue building particularly in Poland, Ukraine, and Romania. The tall upper tier includes large gilded Luhot (Tablets of the Law) with painted glass panels to either side, and the pediment contains a Keter Torah (Crown of the Torah) with gilded sunrays, both motifs found in traditional Jewish art. It is one of the only two (the other being in London) truly Eastern European-style synagogue interiors in Britain!

Contribute to Our Archive of the Southside

If you have memories or any artefacts relating to South Glasgow’s synagogues and Jewish history, please get in touch with us: info@sghet.com. We are seeking memories, local knowledge, donations and photocopies of material relating to the Southside for our archive of South Glasgow!

Sources:

• Canmore
• Kenneth E. Collins, Ephraim Borowski, and Leah Granat. Scotland’s Jews: A Guide to The History and Community of The Jews in Scotland. 2^nd ed. (Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, 2008).
• Sharman Kadish. ‘Jewish Heritage in Scotland’. Jewish Historical Studies 47 (2015): 179-216
• Langside Hebrew Congregation
• Scottish Jewish Archives Centre
• The Glasgow Story

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Thomas Lipton was born on 10^th May 1848 at 10 Crown Street, Gorbals. The son of immigrants from County Fermanagh, Ireland, he was the youngest of 5 and was the only one to survive infancy. In the 1860s Thomas’ father setup a small shop in the Gorbals, selling basic provisions to the local community. Thomas left school at the age of 10 to start his first job at a stationers on Glassford Street, earning just “half a crown’ for a wage.

At 16 Thomas signed up to work as a cabin boy on a steamer between Glasgow and Belfast and managed to save up enough for passage to New York before being let go from his position. He travelled around the US for 5 years and worked in a number of positions including obacco plantation in Virginia, as an accountant and bookkeeper at a rice plantation in South Carolina, as a door-to-door salesman in New Orleans, a farmhand in New Jersey, and finally as a grocery assistant in the World’s largest retail store (at the time) A. T. Stewart & Co at 280 Broadway, Manhattan, New York.

It was here that Lipton learned the many unique selling methods that allowed him to change the way of shopping in Glasgow when he returned home in 1869, strategies such as “low mark up, high volume” and “set prices”.

When he returned in 1870 he setup his first store – Lipton’s Market – at 101 Stobcross Street in Anderston. Here he employed many of the techiques that he had learned in New York – the sales assistants were in bright white aprons with rows of ham and cheese. It was bright and airy and ridiculously clean and Lipton behind the counter being as charming as ever.

It wasn’t just about the store, it was also about the products on sale. He sold a number of irish goods but also imported a number of high quality goods from further afield. He also employed someone to go out and meet the farmers before they arrived at the market – and guaranteed a price, cutting out the middle man and allowing him to control the supply chain. As more stores started to pop up Lipton proved to be a master of marketing too. He had butter sculptures, giants cheeses on elephants, pig parades and much more!

By 1888 Lipton had 300 stores and wanted to grow his empire further. Tea prices were following and his middle-class customers were demanding more so he decided to open his tea-tasting office and bought Ceylon tea gardens before establishing the Lipton tea brand and distributing it throughout Europe and the USA . In doing so was able to in order to sell teas at low prices to a poorer working class market, who had previously been unable to afford such a luxury.

By this point Lipton’s stores had made it as far as London and he was mixing with royalty and the upper echelons of Victorian Society. In 1898 he floated his company, retaining a controlling interest, but pocketed £120m (£1 billion in today’s money).

In 1901 he was created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) by King Edward VII.

Growing up on the river Clyde it is understandable that Lipton had an interest in boats, making and floating models as a child. Lipton tried to join the Royal Yacht Squadron but was turned down due to snobbery. He ended up joining the Royal Ulster Yacht Club in Bangor (County Down) and set out on a quest to win the America’s Cup in his yacht ‘Shamrock’, in 1899 but was defeated. The image of Lipton in a yachtsman’s hat ended up featuring on a lot of Lipton packaging. He challenged again a number of times up until 1930 but was always defeated each time and was labeled the “most cheerful loser” but Hollywood actor Will Rogers.

Lipton died in 1931 and huge crowds lined the streets as the funeral cortege made its way to the Southern Necropolis, where he is buried less than a mile from the Gorbals street where he was born.

Published: 25th September 2018

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Since its closure in 1958 and later liquidation in 1960 the Dixons Ironworks has been a strong part of the historic past of the Gorbals and those who are able to recall its physical dominance within the area have similar memories of this part of the environment that was known to “light up the sky with a glow of red in the night”

Through recollections from individual recordings, anecdotes and past newspaper articles SGHET has been working on archiving information on this unique (and now gone) part of the Gorbals’ rich historical jigsaw.

More info coming soon!

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In 1839 a public meeting was held in the Gorbals Baronial Hall with the proposal that land should be bought for the provision of a much needed Southern Necropolis, resulting from the cholera outbreak of 1832. After further meetings a management committee was set up which included particularly noteworthy member, Colin Sharp McLaws, Tea Merchant from King Street. The committee issued a prospectus and emphasised that the new cemetery was one where lairs could be disposed of at such moderate prices and payment taken in such small instalments as to put the prospect of a burial place within the grasp of even the poorest citizens. There was to be no common ground and of course no pit burials. People were then invited to become subscribers.

The Southern Necropolis was opened in the year 1840. It is a cemetery rich in the history of the past. Early Chartists and Socialists, poets, artists, soldiers, merchants, engineers etc. are all buried here. All were players in the drama of the changing life of the city. Like any other graveyard the Southern Necropolis has its very own white lady. The mournful lady’s head is said to turn after someone passes. But if you ever see it turn you too will be turned into stone. The cemetery and the gatehouse are an important historical and education resource that has much to offer for the present and future generations to come.

History of The Southern Necropolis

The Southern Necropolis was established for two main reasons. Firstly, the old burial ground, first established in 1715 to meet the needs of the one time village of Gorbals was, by the late 1830’s, in an appalling state; the unfortunates “on the Parish” were buried in long trenches, left barely boarded over until the trenches were full; it had been used for mass pit burials in the cholera outbreak of 1832; the bought lairs were full, and not much space was left. Secondly, the city had its great Necropolis by the cathedral, and the new Sighthill Cemeteries-both places of great dignity.

Gorbals, now joined by Laurieston and Hutchesontown, and full of merchants and professional people, and prospering mill-owners and engineers, aspired to similar dignity. But with a difference. The dignity was to be shared by all. This later point was emphasised at a public meeting in the Baronial Hall on the fifteenth of November, 1839. There it was proposed that the Southern Necropolis should be established “to enable the working classes to become proprietors of burying places similar to those in the Necropolis, or Sighthill.”

This meeting was chaired by Archibald Edmiston, the Chief Magistrate of Gorbals, Timber Merchant and Builder. A second meeting followed very quickly, on the 27th of February, 1840. A Committee was formed, made up of the Magistrates of Gorbals. Two members are particularly noteworthy: Colin Sharp McLaws (who it was later stated was the projector of the scheme), and Archibald Edmiston. This committee issued a prospectus, re-emphasising that the new graveyard was to be one “where lairs could be disposed of at such a moderate level, and payment taken in such small installments as to put the prospect of a burial place within the reach of the poorest.”

What is now called the Central Division, the original seven-acres, was bought from a Mr. Gilmour, father-in-law of Colin McLaws, and was afterwards vested in a committee of the Magistrates of the Gorbals. (Archibald Edmiston has now disappeared from the scene). This committee`s function was apparently to act as guardians of the land and legal protector. The organisation of the affairs of the division was by a committee of lairholders, who met annually, were elected, were responsible for the recording of, and payment for, lairs, appointment of a superintendent, and his necessary staff. The affairs of the Central Division seem to have gone along fairly smoothly for many years, although signs of alteration to the original plans appear after a while. In the first two years, there is a surprising amount of burials, and then reburials, almost exactly a year later. But this could be explained by the time it would take to prepare the ground, and lay it out.

After the first years though, there is correspondence between the burial books and the actual lairs, i.e. if the burial book says that x is buried in lair 192, one finds that a stone to x is there-or no stone at all, since many have collapsed, and been removed. But this is not so in the Eastern and Western Sections. The Burial Book may say x is in lair 192. One goes to 192, and the stone is inscribed to a totally different family. This happens repeatedly. The reason can be found in the history of these sections.

THE EASTERN SECTION

By 1846, all the cheap lairs in the Central Section had been sold and it was decided to buy more land, and set it out, largely in cheap lairs. These lairs were to be seven feet by three, cost £1/1, payable at 6d a week. When 5/-had been paid, the lair could be used for burial, and when all had been paid, the lair became the property of the buyer. Colin McLaws, accordingly bought from Mr. Gilmour (father-in-law) a further seven acres. And here the first great mistake was made…

The Management Committee of the Central Lair-Holders did not wait to take on extra responsibility, so the agreement between McLaws and Mr.Gilmour was an agreement between individuals. The agreement was that as soon as the price of the additional ground, and the expense of building a wall round it, and laying the ground out, (all paid for by Mr. Gilmour) was repaid by Mr. McLaws, and the new lairs disposed of, then the extension should go into the control of the Magistrates of Gorbals (or of Glasgow when the Gorbals take over took place) in trust for the lair-holders.

In 1847 on the same conditions, McLaws bought a further stretch of land from Gilmour. Clearly the faster the lairs were sold, and the more lairs were sold, the sooner McLaws was out of debt. How he set about this can be seen more clearly when we reach the Western Section. In 1853 McLaws borrowed £300 from Mc Glashan, monumental sculptor, security was the unsold lairs in the Eastern Division. In the meantime in 1848 Gilmour died, in 1857 McLaw went bankrupt. His estate was sequestered, and his rights sold publicly. The rights to this section of the Necropolis were acquired in 1865 by the Central Management Committee.

According to the original agreement, the Management Committee, prepared to convey the extension into the protection of the Magistrates of Glasgow. But all the lairs had not been sold, and so, in accordance with the original agreement, the Magistrates decided it was not yet time for them to come on the scene. This is understandable. What is difficult to understand is that in 1891 when all the lairs were sold, and the Magistrates were approached again in the name of the lair-holders, they still did not want to be responsible. They suggested application should be made to the Court of Session to constitute a new body of trustees. This suggested application was made in 1893 by the Central Management Committee and they suggested as suitable trustees for the Eastern lair-holders, their chairman and treasurer, Mr. J. Hovett and Mr. W. Hovett, of 146 Buchanan Street.

THE WESTERN SECTION

Still running short of space, Colin McLaws bought more land-9½ acres from the trustees of a Mr. Jardine, claiming that it too was to be laid out in cheap lairs. The ground cost £4,858. (£1,000 paid in cash the rest to be paid for the sale of lairs.) McLaws launched his selling campaign. Canvassers were sent all over the city and surrounding country-offering every inducement. “Lairs were to become private property of purchasers and successors for all time, were to be preserved inviolate as a repository for the reception at death of all held most dear.” So that the ground be tastefully laid out, 30/- lairs were raised to 36/9- the additional charge to be used for ornamental gardening. The section was to be laid out on the general plan of the central. All lairs were to be private. No place for burial of strangers (common ground). No pit burials. Sales were rapid, but not rapid enough…

In 1855 McLaws borrowed from the City of Glasgow Life Assurance Co. £6,000 on security of 9½ acres of Western Division. Three gentlemen were bound with him for interest on the loan, and £700 lodged to build a wall. One of the seventeen was Mr. W.T. Edmiston, son of Archibald Edmiston, who had been chairman of the inaugural meeting of the Central Necropolis. In 1857 McLaws was bankrupt. The Assurance Company sold lairs until 1859, when the three gentlemen (cautioners) who had guaranteed the loan, borrowed from the Royal Bank to pay the balance due to the Assurance Committee and proceeded to pay themselves back with the sale of lairs. Edmiston defended it by saying that he had noticed some “respectable artisans” could not afford the price of lairs, and he had proposed to set aside a certain portion of the 9% acres where this type of burial could be offered, at a low cost of 8/- for an adult and 3/- for a child.

At the same time other actions were brought about the reselling of lairs, on the grounds that a lair had not been selected, or that it was not fully paid. Other practices, totally opposed to the original concept of the Necropolis were hinted at-the re-opening of pits, after a time, and the remains huddled together in a piece of waste ground lying on the south side of the cemetery; certain undertakers claiming that they held land of their own within the cemetery, offering special terms, and making use of the pits, and the waste ground (we have found indications of this service from undertakers in the Burial Books).

All this accumulation of complaints finally brought about collective action on the part of the lair-holders of the Western Section. They sent deputations to Mr. Edmiston, to no avail. Through his lawyers he claimed he was the sole proprietor. They offered to buy the remaining land. No reply. They had a public meeting in October 1869. The complaints were once again recorded, and a decision made that if they were not remedied, they would go to law. A conaittee was formed to collect funds for this purpose. The Committee applied to the sheriff for an interdict on pit burials. This was refused. But a small victory was won, when Edmiston’s lawyer, although he still upheld Edmiston as the proprietor of the ground, conceded that the lair-holders became the proprietors of the lairs.

At a second public meeting in December 1869 the committee of the lair-holders decided that since the land had now very largely been disposed of as lairs, Mr. Edmiston had no right to manage them. That right now belonged to the lair-holders. The meeting authorized the committee to assume management. The committee decided to force a confrontation. They advertised that after the 3rd January 1870, they would conduct internments (until this none could take place without Mr. Edmiston’s consent). Several lair-holders stated that they wanted to conduct internments, but Mr. Edmiston reacted strongly, and advised the committee that a strong body of police would be in attendance to prevent any attempt to conduct funerals without his consent. This the local police superintendent confirmed. Clearly a long battle with the law was imminent, and an appeal was made to the lair-holders to build up funds for it.

SOURCES

Constitution, Regulations etc. of the Original Southern Necropolis-1865.
Report on Burial Grounds to the Town Council-1870.

The Western Southern Necropolis-A Statement of the Dispute between the Lair-Holders and Mr. W.T. Edmiston-1870-71.

Petition by Peter Luineden and other Lair-Holders in the Eastern Section of the Southern Necropolis for appointment of Trustees-to the Lords of the Court of Session-1893.

For more direct information about the site and its programme of community activities: find the Friends of Southern Necropolis on Facebook and visit their website.

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The name “Gorbals” is known throughout the world.
It is commonly and perhaps unfairly associated with all that was worst in housing conditions and mainly for that reason, the area was the first in Glasgow to experience wholesale redevelopment after World War II. Despite redevelopment, there still remain many reminders of the area’s past and these were the subject of the original trails in 1988.

The two Heritage Trails were designed to familiarise visitors and local residents with the three constituent parts of the Gorbals area, past and present. Trail 1 covers Laurieston and the original village of Gorbals and Trail 2 explores Hutchesontown.

The recommended routes, together with the locations of the buildings and points of interest, are shown on the fold out map at the end of the trail.

Historical Background

Gorbals has a long and varied history which will be of interest to readers who wish to follow the Heritage Trail, either on the ground or from the comfort of an armchair.
Gorbals, or Brig-end, was originally a single street village which grew up after completion of a bridge over the Clyde in 1345 by Bishop Rae of Glasgow. Five years later, a leper hospital dedicated to St. Ninian was found­ed close to the bridge to cater for plague victims from the City on the opposite bank. After the Reformation, in 1579, the Church feued the lands of the Gorbals to George Elphinstone, a Glasgow merchant. The town manor house he built in the village Main Street surviv­ed until the mid 19th Century. In the early 17th Century, the village of Gorbals was “erected into a Burgh of Barony and Regality” and, in 1650, the magistrates of the City of Glasgow received a Crown Charter to confirm the purchase of the ancient village, together with the lands now occupied by Kingston, Tradeston, Laurieston and Hutchesontown.

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