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Gas, Petrol and Alchemy in Cathcart
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 […]
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Govan’s Monument to Mary Barbour
A reflection of history and the spirit of a community 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, […]
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Decoding the Gorbals’ Girl With Rucksack statue
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 […]
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Golf in Queen’s Park
Glasgow Golf Club was formed in 1787 and they played originally on Glasgow Green. Industrialisation in the first half of the nineteenth century led to a rapid increase in Glasgow’s population, which meant that there was more pressure on the available green space within the city than ever before. Faced with a lack of […]
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The True Story of a First World War Nurse from Crosshill
Mary Mortimer Geddes My great aunt Mary died when I was a baby. I don’t recall meeting her. She was my father’s maternal aunt. My mother told me when I was older that she was a nurse during World War One and showed me a family album with her photo in nurse’s uniform. When […]
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The Tobacco Lords Part 1
The connections between Glasgow and the tobacco trade of the eighteenth century are well-known.
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Hannah Frank
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 […]
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The Gorbals Vampire
The children were hunting the ‘Gorbals Vampire’ – a seven-foot-tall monster with long metal fangs who had killed and eaten two local boys.
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The Stevens and Bellahouston Park
Bellahouston Park is known for its outdoor artworks, sculptures, and House for an Art Lover, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and built in 1996. Few know of the estate’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade.
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The Pollok Free State and its Legacy
In the early 1990s, local communities gained international attention for protesting against having their access to the park obstructed by a motorway.