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

—

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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Bruce Downie immerses himself in some of the oldest known references to Polmadie, and explores the history of the ancient hospital. Get lost in a world of medieval references and travel through Polmadie’s history via kings, popes, pigs and recycling.

In the 19^th century, Polmadie, just east of what we now know as Govanhill, was one of the busiest industrial areas of Glasgow. Notable businesses located there included Dübs and Company – later called the North British Locomotive Company who made steam trains that were sent all over the world – and Alley and McLellan, engineers who built steamships and the renowned Sentinel steam waggon, spelled with two g’s.

There has long been debate about the meaning of the name Polmadie’. The most commonly accepted interpretation is provided in Colonel James Robertson’s ‘Gaelic Topography of Scotland’ (1869) that Polmadie is derived from two Gaelic words, ‘Pol’ for pool and ‘maddah’ for wolf, translating as ‘the wolf’s pool’ or ‘the pool haunted by wolves’.

Today, Polmadie is still largely an industrial area of Glasgow, home to the Alstom train depot, one of the largest train depots in Scotland, where Virgin Trains and other operators stable and repair their carriages. It is also home to the Viridor Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre, previously the Polmadie Refuse Works (which opened in 1958).

However, Polmadie and in particular the site of the Viridor Recycling Centre, on Polmadie Road near the junction with Calder Street, was the likely location of the Ancient Hospital of Saint John the Apostle, or the Hospitti Sanct Johannis de Polmadde in Cliddesdale as it would have been known in official documents. Built in the thirteenth century or possibly even earlier, this hospital was for the relief of pensioners, poor men and women, and possibly as a place of rest for pilgrims and travellers.

Establishing exactly when the hospital was created is impossible. Some historians have speculated that it was built in the twelfth century, during the reign of David I (1124-1153) because of the interest he took in the area, giving the Lands of Govan to the Church of Glasgow and granting Rutherglen the status of a royal burgh but a connection to the hospital cannot be proven.  According to the ‘Origines Parochiales Scotia’, published in 1851, the hospital was known to be in existence during the reign of Alexander III (1249 to 1286) because of a charter granted to the hospital by Robert the First in 1316. In that charter, the ‘Registerum Episcopatus Glasguenis’

‘Be it known that we confirm to the Master, brothers and sisters of the hospital of Polmadie, near Ruglen, all the rights and privileges they were accustomed to have in the time of my predecessor, King Alexander, and we have forbid that anyone should presume to oppress or annoy the said Master, brothers or sister against this our confirmation.’

The Mastership or ‘de custodia’ of the hospital was a coveted position but perhaps not as influential as some hoped. The remote location may have suited the residents but may also have been frustrating to men of ambitious temperament, eager to advance their careers.

“Oot o’ the world and into Polmadie”

An old phrase ‘oot o’ the world and into Polmadie’ may indicate just how far the hospital was from court or civic life but Polmadie has always been an outlier of sorts, a kind of no man’s land because it has always been divided by the boundary between Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire and between the parishes of Govan and Cathcart.

In fact, in the 19^th century, when modern municipal burghs were being established and new boundary lines were being drawn part of the area could not be easily classified, and was thus known for a while, at least informally, as No Man’s Land.

Despite being defeated at Bannockburn just a few years earlier, in 1319 Edward II still harboured ambitions of conquering Scotland, much like his father before him. From the relative safety of York, he ineffectually nominated several English priests to Glasgow prebends, including Guliemus de Houk as Master of the Hospital in Polmadie, but Guliemus was unlikely to have ever served in that position.

That same year, Bishop Robert Wishart of Glasgow, a friend of King Robert, constituted Patrick Floker as ‘Master and Guardian of the Home’ with the power of ‘restraining the excesses and correcting the faults of the brothers and sisters therein or of removing them for their delinquency’.

In order to attend to his duties in Polmadie he was given dispensation for non-residence at his church on his lands in Kilbryde, provided that he took care that it was not left ‘destitute of the due celebration of divine duties.’

A sixteenth century link between Polmadie and Crosshill or earlier?

Floker would have been able to rely on revenues from the Lands of Polmadie which, tradition suggests, included what we know today as Crosshill. Proof that Polmadie and Crosshill were indeed linked only comes to light two hundred years later during the Reformation when land was secularised.

In 1564, the land was feued to Sir John Stuart of Minto, Knight, a Provost of Glasgow, by Robert, Bishop of Caithness, Provost of the Collegiate Church of Dumbarton, with the consent of Mathew, Earl of Lennox, the patron. The feu charter reads ‘All and singulars the five merk land of Polmadie and Crosshill’, a clear indication that the two places had been linked for some time, leading many historians to suggest and believe that Crosshill had been part of the outfield lands of the hospital.

The name of Crosshill probably comes from a cross that stood at the top of the hill, probably marking the southern boundary of the hospital’s lands. According to the Statistical Accounts of Scotland from 1845, – ‘the cross erected at the top of Crosshill was made of hard stone, ten feet high and three and a half feet broad, ornamented with various figures. The most remarkable has that of our saviour riding upon an ass. This religious monument fell, the sacrifice to the fury of a mob during the civil wars’, that is, during the seventeenth century.

Even so, these revenues were not quite sufficient for Floker to maintain divine services in Kilbryde and provide for the pensioners in Polmadie, so in 1320, the Bishop of Glasgow granted him part of the Lands of Little Govan, laying between the hospital and the western boundary of those lands, probably taking in some parts of present-day Govanhill.

Strains, strife & power struggles over the hospital in the medieval period

In 1333, the Earl of Lennox, granted the Master ‘a charter of exemption’, freedom from all kinds of services, burdens, and extractions both as regards their own house (the hospital) and the Church of Strathblane. In 1334, Adam, son of Alan, Burgess of Dumbarton lent the Hospital a sum of money ‘in their necessity’.

On the 18^th of May, 1347, Margaret, wife and Queen to David II, ‘by grant of her Lord the King, made on her behalf from the Bishop of Glasgow, William de Kirkintulloch, Master of the Hospital.’

On May 10^th, 1391, a precept from Bishop Glendoning of Glasgow directed the Master, brothers and sisters to receive Gillian de Vaux and ‘grant her all the rights due to a sister and portioner of their house during her lifetime.’

In 1403, the Earl of Lennox appointed William de Cunnyngham, Vicar of Dundonald as Master of the Hospital, but the Bishop of Glasgow opposed this appointment, claiming that Cunnyngham ‘had intruded himself into the administration of the Poor’s House of Polmadie’. The bishop laid claim to ‘the right of presentation’ and threatened Cunnyngham with excommunication if he dared to take up the post.

This tension between the Church and the Lennoxes continued until a summit in 1424, held in the west chapel of Edinburgh Castle where Duncan, Earl of Lennox, surrendered to Bishop William Lauder, any and all supposed rights he and his progenitors had to the hospital.

The beginning of the end for Hospital of St John the Apostle in Polmadie

In 1427, Bishop Cameron, with the consent of the chapter, erected the Hospital and the Church of Strathblane into a prebend of Glasgow Cathedral, basically ensuring that the Bishop retained the patronage. This was confirmed by a Papal Bull, signed by Pope Martin V, two years later, in 1429.

The Bishop then appointed a clerk ‘cantu bene et notabiliter instructus’ to manage Polmadie and Strathblane. The clerk was instructed or ordained to raise the money to pay a vicar in the Church in Strathblane and to teach and instruct four chorister boys in singing, giving them 16 merks annually for sustenance.

This arrangement was almost certainly the beginning of the end for the Hospital at Polmadie. The final blow came around 1453, when the Lands of Polmadie, including Crosshill, (those parts of Crosshill in Govan parish anyway) and the Church of Strathblane were without any apparent objection from Bishop Muirhead of Glasgow, disjoined from the hospital and handed over the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary in Dumbarton, which had recently been founded by Isabella, Countess of Lennox.

Nothing now remained to the Ancient Hospital of its original endowments, and we can only conjecture that without sufficient financial support it fell into decline and eventually closed. That decline may have been accelerated by the building of a new hospital in 1470, dedicated to Saint Nicholas, established with similar aims, of which only one part remains, known today as the Provand’s Lordship, near Glasgow Cathedral.

Nothing remains of the hospital at Polmadie, but the best evidence for its location comes from a number of sources. Joan Blaeu’s map of 1654, shows a house near a place called Pomadi, which may have been the original hospital building, long fallen into disuse, but could equally have been a small settlement because other villages are indicated in the same way.

More conclusive proof comes from a well-documented and tragic incident which took place in 1685, in the village of Old Polmadie, believed to have been built around the ruins of the hospital, in which three Covenantors were apprehended and executed for their beliefs. The Covenantors were buried in the churchyard of Old Cathcart Parish Church and are known to this day as The Polmadie Martyrs.

In 1755, the Roy Military Survey, the first systematic map of Scotland, shows a number of buildings in Polmadie, a clear indication that there had been a village in that location for a number of years.

In 1793, according to The Statistical Account of Scotland, there were ‘vestiges of religious houses’ in the grounds of the farm-house in the village, much older than the farm itself, which were assumed to be part of the ancient hospital or of its outbuildings.

According to the census, in 1851, there were fifty miner’s families living in Polmadie and over two-thirds of them were Irish. There were two main streets in the village one called Young’s Row and the other called Paterson’s Row.

The ‘vestiges of religious houses’ and the village itself had been built over by the late nineteenth century and replaced by tenements, schools, churches and shops, part of a much larger thriving area, but the farmhouse itself remained in place until around 1914, downgraded to a piggery, surrounded and eventually overwhelmed by industry.

Thankfully, its appearance on modern maps, on the site currently occupied by the Viridor Recycling Centre, provides us with the most likely location of the ancient hospital.

By Bruce Downie

Published: 19th August 2021

Image sources:

1. The Viridor Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre, Polmadie Road (photo by Bruce Downie)

2. Polmadi in ‘Praefectura Renfroana, vulgo, dicta Baronia. The Baronie of Renfrow’ From Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654; reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Scotland

3. Polmadie in The Roy Military Survey, 1747-1755; accessed via National Library of Scotland maps online; reproduced by kind permission of the British Library

4. Polmadie area in Ordnance Survey, 1858; reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Scotland

5. Polmadie in Ordnance Survey, 1910; reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Scotland

6. The Viridor Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre, Polmadie Road (photo by Bruce Downie)

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