Few know of the link between Cathcart and the origins of helicopters. However many are aware of the Weir Group, probably one the last remaining great Glasgow engineering firms.

Started by the Weir brothers, they developed innovative devices for steamships and set up at the Holm Foundry, Newlands Road in 1886. Running of the business passed to the sons of James (The J of G&J) in the Edwardian period. Elder son William was more of the manager while the younger James (J.G. Weir), born in Cambuslang, was an intelligent and talented engineer.

Both brothers were interested the latest technology, especially the nascent powered flight scene. JG gained the Royal Aero Club’s 24^th pilot certificate in 1910 and served World War One in the Royal Flying Corps. Both assisted the rapid expansion of the RFC and by the end of the war, Cathcart had produced over 1000 De Havilland DH9s.

JG Weir seems to have been quite the “chap.” He left school at 16 because his maths teacher had nothing left to teach him. In 1911, Barlinnie became his home for two weeks after being found guilty of assaulting Glasgow University’s Professor of Divinity for jilting his sister! In later years, he was probably the only director of the Bank of England with a criminal record.

Like many firms that flourished due to the Great War, leaner times arrived in the twenties. Weirs were unafraid to diversify and managed to maintain the business.

1925 was a significant year in the development of the modern world. Paris held the ‘Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes‘ which ultimately led to the term ‘Art Deco’. John Logie Baird transmitted the first television signal, the Bauhaus commenced building its modernist facility in Dessau to the designs of Walter Gropius and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published.

1925 also saw JG Weir witness a demonstration of a strange futuristic craft called the Autogiro. A Spanish nobleman, Juan De La Cierva found a way of generating lift at very low speeds using a rotating set of blades. Picture an old aeroplane with a helicopter rotor mounted on top of it.

Although never a serious business proposition, JG Weir still provided capital for the Cierva Autogiro Company in 1926 and it produced the first practical rotary wing aircraft.

Over time, problems were solved and it had the notable safety feature of descending in control after a power failure. Also, developments allowed control of the rotor, which, through a licence from Cierva, allowed the German company Focke-Wulf to create the first true helicopter in 1936. Sadly, that same year, Cierva was killed in one of the early airline accidents, when his KLM DC-2 crashed after take-off from Croydon.

Throughout the 1930s, Weirs continued their involvement. JG Weir and his wife Mora (first woman to hold a rotorcraft licence) used an Autogiro to commute from their home, Skeldon House in Ayrshire, to the Cathcart factory. An Autogiro even appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film of The 39 Steps through connections with Weirs.

More seriously, the engineering team brought in by JG Weir to aid Cierva were strong enough to continue after his death. This was the group that developed the UK’s first helicopters post World War 2.

So, imagine walking through the Southside one pleasant morning ninety years ago. You look up after hearing a strange noise in the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Air Commodore James George Weir in his Autogiro heading to work in Cathcart.

By Cameron Winton

Published 27th June 2025

References

The Weir Group – The History of a Scottish Engineering Legend, by William Viscount Weir, Profile Books (2013 edition)

Wikipedia:
The Weir Group
James George Weir
William Weir, 1st Viscount Weir

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On re-reading Jean Marshall’s history of Cathcart ‘Why Cathcart?’ (published 1969) I puzzled again over this mention of the change in local industry towards the end of the 19th Century … “several local firms closed down, among them …Verel’s Photographic Works and the Cassel (Castle?) Gold Extracting Company …”

I knew about the local Mills, Dye and Carpet works; however, I had never thought about the possibility of Gold from the White Cart! Clearly I needed to do some digging (pun intended).

Verel’s Photographic Works

Searching business sources and Ordnance Survey maps for mid to late 1800s, I discovered an Albion Albumenizing Co., founded in 1864 and located at Cathcart. Albumen was used for paper photography and Gelatine was an ideal binder.  It became F.W. Vérel & Co. around 1891 when the manufacturing company spun-off.  Verel’s works were until then part of the Albion Gelatine/Dry Plate manufactory.

The factory was located close to a source of water in the White Cart for use in the manufacturing process. It was demolished before World War One to make way for the extended G And J Weir’s Holm Foundry. This itself has recently been demolished to make way for a new housing development. I was making some progress, with the Photographic Works now located, but I could not find any location for the Cassel Company.

Pumping Gas

Time for a name search. First up was a British publisher, coffee merchant and social campaigner named John Cassell, who had struck liquid Gold – Oil – in Pennsylvania in 1859 and began importing it into the UK under a variant of his own name – Cazeline.

On 27th November 1862 he placed an advertisement in The Times of London for: “…the Patent Cazeline Oil, safe, economical, and brilliant […] possesses all the requisites which have so long been desired as a means of powerful artificial light.”  [Source: Wikipedia]

A slight difference in spelling of surname but he still had a connection to the chemical industry… perhaps there was still a link? I then found note of court proceedings around the patent for the oil. It turns out that sales of the oil had taken a major downturn during 1863, specifically in Dublin.

It transpired that a Mr Samuel Boyd was selling counterfeit Cazeline, changing the name by adding a stroke onto the letter C to ‘create’ Gazeline. Mr Boyd denied imitation. The court ruled in Cassell’s favour – but it’s believed to be the source of a new word to the English language – Gasoline – which is ubiquitous in its use in North America.

The Treasure of the Sierra Tharsis

However, that Cassell would appear to have no connection with Scotland, let alone Glasgow and Cathcart. A sideways search revealed that a Charles Tennant had shares in the Cassel Gold Extracting Company, as well as a mineral mining venture in Huelva Province in Spain, a place known to the Romans as Tharsis.

Charles Clow Tennant (1823–1906) was the grandson of Charles Tennant (1768-1838), the founder of the St. Rollox Chemical Works, and succeeded him in the business.

The mines, in the Sierra de Tharsis, were rediscovered by a French engineer Ernest Deligny in 1853. However, by 1860 there were difficulties especially in relation to transport, and approaches were made to a group of British alkali makers, headed by the second Charles Tennant, to acquire the venture.

The alkali makers were primarily interested in the business as a means of obtaining sulphur, a by-product of the process whereby copper is extracted from pyrites. Importantly, gold could also be recovered from the residue. It was agreed and Tennant renamed the company – the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Co. Ltd., with its Head Office at 136, West George Street, Glasgow.

Fast forward 20 years and by the 1880s the world’s gold industry was in a precarious state due to the low yields from ores from mines.  Tennant and his partners turned to Henry Rennel Cassel; a German-born metallurgist from New York. The Cassel Gold Extracting Company was formed in Glasgow in 1884 to exploit Cassel’s patents for an electrochemical process. However:

“… his activities proved wholly fraudulent. As The Glasgow Herald noted, ‘Yankee cuteness has been too much for Scotch credulity’. Cassel, having swindled the Glasgow adventurers out of some £8 million at today’s value, absconded to the USA…” [Source: New Scientist 29/6/1996]

This was more a major blow to pride rather than finances, as it is noted of the Tharsis Company that:

“…During the twenty-one years ending December 31st, 1887, the company’s gross profits from all actual industrial and commercial undertakings, have amounted to £5,983,082, of which £3,942,318 have been distributed in dividends. These dividends have, in many instances, been remarkable in their eminently satisfactory character.” [Source: Glasgow Index of Firms, 1888]

‘MacArthur’s’ Gold

What could be done about the existential problem of low recovery rates from ore..? Step forward Glaswegian chemist, John Stewart MacArthur, who was then working in the laboratory of the Tharsis Company as an apprentice chemist.

He entered into a partnership with Doctors William and Robert Forest to develop a process using a dilute cyanide solution and then zinc, to dissolve gold, silver and other ores. On the 19th of October 1887, a patent (No. 14,174 of 1887) was granted to J MacArthur and Wm. Forrest for an invention of “Improvements in obtaining gold and silver from ores and other compounds.”

It soon became the global standard.  Within two years of its introduction in South Africa the total weight of gold produced had risen from forty thousand to one hundred thousand ounces per month. Stagnation in the gold-mining industry was arrested and the new process had striking effects. Instead of being able to refine only around 45% of metal from complex ores, as before, 98% extraction could now be achieved.

John Stewart MacArthur went on to develop processes for the use of radium compounds in medicine, and for luminous paints, and died in 1920 at the age of 63 in his home at 12 Knowe Terrace (now Shields Road) in Pollokshields.

Gold or Poison?

The process development was initially housed in doctors William and Robert Forest’s office in the Gorbals. So how did it end up in Cathcart? I went back to the records for the Tharsis Company (which had a stake in Cassel) to look at its ownership and management.

“…very large and handsome offices are occupied in West George Street, and the routine business of the concern receives the attention of an executive staff, consisting of Mr. Jonathan Thomson Secretary; Mr. William A. Verel, General Manager; and Mr. Theodore Merz, Technical Manager. At the head of the directorate appears the well-known name of Sir Charles Tennant”  [Source: Bart Glasgow Index of Firms, 1888]

So, the connection seems to be Mr William Verel, the owner of the Photographic works. It would be likely that his company would be well suited to this enterprise, given its background in chemicals and the location close to a supply of both power and water.

The ‘Spanish’ Connection

An interesting aside is that the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Co. Ltd base in Huelva encouraged a flow of students to the University of Glasgow. As a blog post from the University in December 2012 says,

“…while looking at the Spanish-born students from the late nineteenth-century, we spotted a increased number of those students born in the province of Huelva … Among the students born in Tharsis around that period were Mercedes Margaret Morton, the daughter of Alexander Young Morton, a medical graduate of the University and a doctor for the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Company Ltd. She returned to the University, following in her father’s footsteps, and graduated MB ChB in 1917…” [Source: University of Glasgow’s International Story, blog post, December 2012]

As well as students coming to Glasgow, Glasgow’s rail infrastructure was added to Spain!

“The company added infrastructure, constructing the Tharsis railway along the river Odiel, which was completed and in use by 1871. Its unusual dimensions also had a direct Glasgow connection: with a width of 4 feet, or 1.220 mm, they were the same dimensions used exclusively for the Glasgow underground. The railway had 53 steam locomotives, serving both industry and passengers, and is today the only mining railway in Huelva that is still used for industrial freight.”  [Source: ibid]

Cathcart’s long association with Spain continued until ScottishPower, part of the Spanish owned Iberdrola Group, moved to its new offices in the centre of Glasgow.

The White Cart is the golden thread that interweaves the industrial, economic and social history of Old and New Cathcart, and indeed much of the Southside. It also created a golden link to a much older story, connecting the Phoenicians who established mining operations in Huelva with Victorian engineering, entrepreneurial expertise and a generous helping of Glaswegian verve.

—

By Graeme Boyle

Published 14th September 2024

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Mrs. Barbour’s Army spread through Glesga like the plague

The maisters got the message and the message wisnae vague

While oor menfolk fight the Kaiser we’ll stay hame and fight the war

Against the greedy bastards who keep grindin’ doon the poor

Alistair Hulett, Mrs. Barbour’s Army

International Women’s Day, 8 March 2023, marked the fifth anniversary of the unveiling of the now-iconic monument to Mary Barbour and her “army” in Govan Cross.  Barbour, whose husband was an engineer at Fairfield Shipbuilding, became a resident of Govan shortly after her marriage in 1896, and she soon became active in the Independent Labour Party, the Kinning Park Women’s Co-Operative Guild, and the Socialist Sunday School, a movement founded in Glasgow to organise society ‘on a basis of love and justice’.  While all of these groups encouraged equal participation among men and women (aside from the lack of women’s suffrage), the co-operative guild in particular encouraged working-class women to value themselves not only in the domestic sphere, but also in social and political matters affecting their communities.

At the turn of the twentieth century, with the proliferation of tenements, Glasgow’s housing was seen as being among the worst in the nation.  At the outset of World War I, as the men of the city were joining the front lines in Europe, profiteering landlords – hoping to capitalise on the influx of workers to the munitions factories and shipyards –  raised rents in the city by 8-23%, assuming that the women left behind would have little recourse but to pay or be evicted.  The Labour Party soon established the Glasgow Women’s Housing Authority, and Mary Barbour was head of the South Govan branch by 1915.

Struggling not only to pay rent but also to secure food for their families, the angry housewives of Govan began to agitate for a rent strike.  Barbour organised the first of these in May 1915 along with what Red Clydesider Willie Gallacher named “Mrs. Barbour’s Army”, and by November, over 25,000 tenants were refusing to pay the exorbitant rents.  When eighteen families in Partick were taken in to the Sheriff Court for failure to pay, Barbour, who was joined by fellow activists Helen Crawfurd, Agnes Dollan, and Mary Burns Laird, organised a massive demonstration throughout the city, joined by men from the factories and workshops, to descend upon the court.  This forced the hands not only of Glasgow officials, but also Parliament, with Lloyd George, then the Minister of Munitions, being forced to cap rents and mortgages at the August 1914 rate through the issuance of the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act 1915.

After the successes of the Rent Strike of 1915, Barbour turned her energy to securing food for the people of Govan by working with local fish mongers to distribute the fish they discarded as too small to sell to families in Govan Cross.  She then advocated for green spaces for children and greater opportunity for working-class women and the working classes in general.  Barbour went on to achieve many firsts in Glasgow.  She became the first female councillor for Govan’s Fairfield Ward in 1920; became Glasgow’s first female magistrate and first female bailie representing Govan in 1924; and founded the woman-staffed Women’s Welfare and Advisory Clinic, Glasgow’s first family-planning clinic for married women, in 1926.  After a life of service to the working classes of Glasgow, Mary Barbour died in Govan in 1958.

Unfortunately, though not uncommon among historical women, her story was soon somewhat forgotten; though, she lived on in the memories of many Govan residents.  As regeneration efforts were undertaken in the community at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Govan Reminiscence Group (GRG), invaluable curators of Govan’s social history, sought to commemorate her achievements by having one of the newly built streets named in her honour.  Esmé Clark, GRG’s secretary, wrote a letter to the Glasgow City Council to make this request and received in return what she called “the cheekiest letter”, which claimed that it was the Council’s policy that no twentieth-century figure be named in the built environment.  Members of the GRG contacted local councillors, who could find no evidence of this rule.  Additionally, Clark cited the fact that Nelson Mandela was honoured with a square in the city centre, so it was unclear why a street in Govan could not be named after Mary Barbour.

Still, the idea of commemorating Barbour in some public and permanent way continued to simmer, and in 2013, The Remember Mary Barbour Association (RMBA) was formed with the aim of installing a monument in her honour.  The group was chaired by Maria Fyfe, a former Labour MP from Maryhill, and when they formally organised as a charity to raise approximately £110,000 for a statue, their stated objectives were ‘to advance education for public benefit in the life, works and importance of Mary Barbour as an iconic figure in the history of Govan, Glasgow, Scotland, and the UK’ and ‘to advance the arts, heritage and culture through the erection of a statue in a public place to commemorate Mary Barbour.’

Esmé Clark was soon invited to join the RMBA, and in fact it was she who came up with the name for the organisation.  As news of the monument began to spread, she recalls how enthusiastic Govanites would hand her money on the street so often that she had to start carrying small envelopes around with her to ensure these impromptu donations were properly documented and accounted for.  Councillor Stephan Dornan, Vice Chair of the RMBA, likewise described “weans giving their pocket money” as excitement began to build.

Through donations big and small (including from Govan legend Sir Alex Ferguson), GRG bake sales, and the sale of merchandise and event tickets, the RMBA raised the funds needed to commission a monument.  After significant community input, a design by sculptor Andrew Brown, which reflected Barbour’s ‘grassroots campaigning and down-to-earth nature’, was selected.  Dr Catriona Burness, who served on the RMBA board and functioned as its historical researcher, believes Brown’s design was chosen because it represented working people coming together to achieve a goal, with Barbour as the leader but still a part of the group.

Though originally intended to be in place by the centenary of the 1915 Rent Strike, the statue was unveiled on 8 March 2018, International Women’s Day (IWD), to a great deal of enthusiasm.  At the event, Maria Fyfe expressed her confidence that ‘the memorial [would] help the people of the area reconnect with their rich social history and heritage [and would] serve as a beacon of inspiration to women everywhere.’

Former Councillor John Kane, Treasurer for RMBA, also noted that it was ‘an exciting, important and proud day for the people of Govan and Glasgow.  It’s highly appropriate that we gather on International Women’s Day to celebrate the legacy of Mary Barbour…who made a massive contribution to this city, and beyond.’  As proof of Barbour’s legacy, the Govan Reminiscence Group has led an IWD celebration at the monument every year since the monument’s installation.

Councillor Dornan and members of the GRG note how the statue has become a rallying place for groups not only in Govan, Glasgow, and Scotland, but across the UK, including housing associations, Scotland’s Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPIScotland), artists, groups against gender-based violence, and politicians from all creeds.  GRG Chair Colin Quigley is pleased to see that the groups that gather are promoting ‘good causes, fitting for what Mary Barbour herself did.’  Furthermore, a week after the monument’s unveiling, one of the figures received the famous Glasgow “cone treatment”, and Barbour and her army have also been “yarn bombed” in hats and scarves on cold nights.

Of great surprise to members of the GRG is the fact that the monument has never yet been vandalised and that “all the kids respect it”.  Clark recalled an incident when two inebriated football supporters were seen throwing chips at the monument.  However, when another local reprimanded them, saying, “You can’t do that! That’s Mary Barbour!”, one of the men apologised and immediately picked up the chips and took them away. Quigley expresses with some satisfaction the fact that more young people now know about Barbour and what she did for Govan, and her activism has since become part of the school curriculum.  In a time when statues are more and more contested in public spaces, he notes that he has never heard a bad word about the statue nor does he know of any occasion when it has been spoken of in a negative context.

Despite not occupying a place among the grand academic narratives of Scottish history, Mary Barbour has been remembered and respected by the citizens of Govan who aspire to her ideals of community cohesion and of neighbours helping neighbours.  The unique nature of Govan’s socialist and industrial community in Mary Barbour’s time helped shape her as a leader, activist, and politician, and she used her influence not to her own benefit but to improve the lives of Glasgow’s working classes by helping them help themselves.

By Erin Burrows

Published 23rd March 2023

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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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Many of us who walk through the Linn Park area admire the river Cart and its surroundings, but if you look closely you can find some reminders of the river’s industrial past.

Mills existed on the river Cart from Netherlee to Pollok from the late 1600s and provided employment for many local people, made some families rich, and also played a central role in the development and prosperity of the area.

We are going to focus on three mills that we can see (or detect in part) while on a walk through the park and point out at least one other that has now disappeared. If we look for them today, we can still see some signs of these early industries.

Starting at the southern end of Linn Park, the first waterfall and mill was at Netherlee…

Netherlee

Netherlee mill lands are situated immediately over the boundary wall from the Lime tree avenue at Netherlee. There were at least six types of water powered industry at Netherlee, including a waulk mill (1730s), snuff mill (1750s), bleachfields (1766), and paper mills from the 1730s.

Remains of the dam can be seen, especially on the Netherlee side of the river. Below the dam, on the Crematorium side of the river, the Ramloch Burn falls into the Cart on the park boundary. The mills turned Netherlee into an industrial village which by the 1850s employed hundreds and competed with Cathcart in scale. Everybody relied on the flow and power of the White Cart for their livelihood.

Linn Mill

The buildings of Linn Mill and its settlement were deliberately swept away when laying out Linn estate and building the driveway to Linn House, so nothing is left of this mill. This mill was at the site of the main falls in the park.

Careful inspection of the site will show that this end of the falls is greatly altered to support this mill. A small weir, made of a single course of sandstone masonry blocks, is fixed to the crest of the falls by metal bands to divert the water into the lade. The sluice opening in the bank can still be seen, plus remains of the metal control valve.

Following the path down below the falls, the tailrace of the mill exits at the square opening in the face of the sill. Deep inside the tunnel, the iron waterwheel still lies buried in the wheel pit. The site is crying out for archaeological investigation, both of the sawmill and the earlier waulk mill.

Millholm

The next dam downstream at Millholm powered a paper mill. Millholm was the third paper mill in the parish after Newlands and Netherlee. Initially it was known as the “Mid Paper Miln of Cathcart”, as it was situated between the other two.

Millholm had numerous owners over its two centuries of operation, the most notable of whom were the Halls and the Coupers. The Couper brothers built houses on Netherlee Road at Braehead, then decided to build villas above the mill.

Robert Couper had a villa, ‘Sunnyside’, designed by architect James Smith (now demolished). Shortly after, James Couper commissioned Alexander Thomson to design ‘Holmwood’ alongside, now restored by the National Trust for Scotland.

He also left a sum of money  – the “Couper Bequest” – for the benefit of local people in dire need, the only condition being that they reside within a mile of Cathcart. The Couper Bequest also funded the construction of the now Category B-listed Couper Institute Library (1923-24) built as an extension of the older Couper Institute which was built in 1887-88.

Miss Marion Couper, the last of the family, died in 1933 aged 84. It was she who launched a scheme.to start the Victoria Infirmary as she was disturbed at the lack of hospital facilities on the south side of the Clyde. The ‘Victoria’ was eventually opened in 1890. So, the mills and the wealth they created really transformed Cathcart and the south of Glasgow.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Millholm had become part of paper-making giant Wiggins Teape, manufacturing typing paper from rags and wood pulp. The mill finally closed in 1929 and the chimney and most of the original buildings were demolished in the 1930s.

The gatehouse and two mill houses on the road down to the mill were occupied into the 1970s but damaged by fire and demolished. If you look closely, a great deal of remains survive along the river. On the mill road, the cobbles and flatter paving for the cart wheels, can still be seen.

Snuff Mill

Lastly we get to perhaps the best known mill hereabouts, Snuff Mill, as the surrounding road and bridge share its name and it sits in a scenic location.

This mill was used latterly to produce snuff but had an earlier history as a dye mill. In 1835 the lease was taken over by Solomon Lindsay. His legacy remains in the tenements that he built across from the mill: ‘Lindsay House’.

Next time you visit the Linn Park, try looking for the remains of the old mill industries on the river banks, a reminder of Cathcart’s industrial heritage.

By Dougie McLellan

Published: 1st June 2022

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References & further reading:

Stuart Nisbet from his articles: ‘Netherlee and Linn Mills’ (The Eastwoodian, Vol.1, 1989); ‘Renfrewshire Snuff Mills’ (RLHF Journal, Vol.6 1994); The Four Paper Mills of Cathcart (Scottish Local History, Vol.49, 2001).

Special thanks to Gerry Blaikie whose website gerryblaikie.com was the primary source material for this article. His website has many interesting articles on Glasgow architecture.

Photograph of Netherlee Village courtesy of Gerry Blaikie

Photograph of Millholm paper mill courtesy of Gerry Blaikie

Painting of Cathcart Mill and the Old Bridge (also known as Snuff Mill Bridge) over the White Cart Water, c 1830. Watercolour by artist unknown. Copyright: National Trust for Scotland; courtesy of The Glasgow Story.

What is a waulk mill (aka a fulling mill)?

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