The St. Andrew’s Quoiting Club on Butterbiggins Road

From the late 1890s until about 1928, a small patch of ground just off Butterbiggins Road, near what we now call Eglinton Toll, was used to play one of the oldest games in the world – quoits – and was home to one of Glasgow’s most successful teams at the time, the St. Andrew’s Quoiting Club.

Quoits, pronounced ‘kites’ in many parts of Scotland, was a hugely popular game at this time, not just in Glasgow but across the country. There were around 40 clubs in Glasgow and about 200 clubs in Scotland affiliated to the Scottish Quoiting Association, with an average of 80 members each.

In those days, when heavy industry was prevalent in Glasgow, the game was very popular with working-class men, many of whom had moved to Glasgow from small towns and rural areas and had brought their enthusiasm for the game with them.

It was inexpensive to participate, could be played almost anywhere, and there was often a chance to win money. For instance, the winner of the 1913 Scottish Championship took home £100, a prize worth several thousand pounds now.

Games drew large crowds, eager to see their favourite player succeed, and to socialise, drink and gamble on the result. Due to its popularity, quoiting also attracted considerable press attention, often as much, if not more than other sports.

Away from the spotlight at the very top of the game, the sport was enjoyed by thousands of ordinary players. In 1901, the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News reported that – “Possibly the game may lead occasionally to the consumption of a great deal of beer, but he who is an enthusiast at quoits must surely be moderate if he is to play his best game.”

The St. Andrew’s Club took their name from an earlier name for Eglinton Toll, St Andrew’s Cross, so-called because of the saltire shaped intersection which was created there when Victoria Road was constructed in 1862 to connect Queen’s Park with Eglinton Street and the city.

The name Eglinton Toll was also in use in this period, possibly to distinguish other buildings from the triangular shaped gushet-building that stands between Eglinton Street and Pollokshaws Road, which to this day still has the name St. Andrew’s Cross engraved prominently on the outside wall.

In 1946 a barrier was erected between Pollokshaws Road and Victoria Road to ease the flow of traffic and the possibility of being able to travel in multiple directions was lost. The name St. Andrew’s Cross persisted for a few years and was still used on maps in the 1950s. Gradually however, the alternative name Eglinton Toll became more prominent and more commonly used.

One school of thought suggests that quoits originated in ancient Greece and was closely related to discus throwing. Arguably, a version of the sport that became known as quoits could have been played at the first Olympic Games, around 1453 BC, when the athlete who threw the disc or ring furthest was declared champion. Another theory is that the quoits developed from the game of horseshoe throwing, where the object was to pitch a horseshoe around a ring.

Henry V of England was known to have disliked quoits, probably because it distracted men from the business of sword fighting or archery. It was said ‘he as cordially hated the game as the devil did holy water’.

Mary I of England, Mary Tudor, was known to be a keen quoiter but her tutor Roger Ascham, author of ‘Toxophilus: The Art of Archery’ discouraged her, believing the sport to be ‘too vulgar for scholars’.

By the mid-nineteenth century the game had evolved into throwing the quoit – a heavy steel ring weighing at least 11 pounds, often much more – at a pin, often called a ‘hob’ or a ‘mott’ which was is in the middle of a clay or sand pit 18 yards away, sometimes 21 yards away.

According to J. M Walker, in ‘Rounders, Quoits, Bowls, Skittles and Curling’ (1892), there was considerable strength and skill involved in throwing a quoit – ‘In pitching it, the player should endeavour to put on a slight spin with his wrist, so that the missile may pass smoothly and at an angle of about 30 degrees horizontally through the air, the great aim being to make the quoit pitch, so as to ring or encircle the hob pin, or failing that to get as near as possible. Strength in the arms and shoulders, and quickness of sight, with a capacity for measuring distance, and dexterity of wrist are indispensable requisites for this game.’

While it is impossible to say exactly where or when people started to play quoits in Glasgow, there is evidence that it was already a popular and well-established sport in some quarters of the city, as far back as the 1840s. It was almost certainly a popular sport in small towns and rural areas for many decades prior to this time. No doubt the advent of the railways in the 1840s enabled players from far flung places like Paisley and Ayrshire to travel more easily to Glasgow and for Glaswegian players to compete outside the city.

There are newspaper reports in the Glasgow Herald and other newspapers in 1844 of a match played at Weir’s Curling and Quoiting Green in Tradeston near present-day Kinning Street for the princely sum of 100 sovereigns, more than £10,000 in today’s money, between David Weir of Glasgow and a Mr Smith from Mauchine in Ayrshire. David Weir, the proprietor of the Green, was a farmer from Mauchline originally, but his talent for quoits earned him a quoiting green in Glasgow and some degree of fame.

The game took place over five days in the middle of winter and attracted national attention. Eddowes’s Shrewsbury Journal reported that –

‘On no match at quoits ever played in Glasgow was there so much betting, or half the amount of excitement as to the result. In Liverpool, where heavy bets were pending, the result was anxiously looked for’.

‘This game, in the month of December – usually devoted to the sport of curling – was somewhat out of season; but the weather was highly favourable, and the spectators were numerous. The betting at first was even, but after the first day’s play Smith was the favourite, and slight odds were offered and freely taken. Latterly however, three to one was offered on Smith with no takes. The games were frequently so prolonged that, although the players commended each day at eleven o’clock, it was quite dark before they finished, and an artificial light was not allowed. In the dark, Smith, although alleged by his supporters to be short-sighted, had always the best of the play; and on Wednesday night displayed more skill, and played far more successfully, than he had done during the day.’

Weir’s Green also played host to a benefit match later that year, featuring ‘the most celebrated players from around Scotland’ to raise funds for the widow of a player killed by a quoit in Port Dundas, so it is reasonable to assume there was also a quoiting ground located there.

That same year, elsewhere in Tradeston, on Centre Street, a Mr John Norris became proprietor of Tradeston New Washing Green and Quoit Ground. Watchmen patrolled the ground day and night, to protect property left by clients and quoit playing was permitted within the grounds at ‘a very low charge’. The price for season tickets was described as ‘moderate’.

There was a ground in Shettleston belonging to Mr Paton, another on Garscube Road, sometimes referred to as the Springfield Grounds, belonging to a Mr Melaugh and other clubs in Pollokshields and Pollokshaws.

Pub landlords were often more than happy to allow the game to be played on vacant ground outside their premises. There was known to be a quoiting ground outside the Black Bull Inn on Argyle Street.

One particular quoiting ground came to prominence in the 1860s, on Greendyke Street next to Glasgow Green, which was already the focus of most sporting activity within the city. Open, public space within the city boundaries was limited and increasingly difficult to find, so the Green attracted players from many different sports, many would-be sportsmen, and occasionally women, eager to test themselves and try something new…

James Banks McNeil, a boatbuilder, swimming instructor and one of the proprietors of the St Andrew’s Baths on Greendyke Street, saw an opportunity and provided space for a dedicated quoiting ground outside the baths, which became known as the St Andrew’s Baths Quoiting Ground.

In June of 1865, the inaugural competition at the new ground attracted Robert Walkinshaw, from Carlops in the Borders, who was then British Champion. He defeated all the best players from Glasgow and then afterwards graciously declared that the new ground ‘…is not surpassed by any other in Scotland, either for practice or match playing’.

The St. Andrew’s Baths closed in the early 1870s and was converted to a clothing warehouse. The closure likely came about because more and more people were moving westwards, and southwards, out of the city, to escape overcrowding and pollution and newer, more modern bathing facilities were being built or would soon be built. Byelaws and regulations also began to restrict what was able to happen on or near the Green, so the quoiters on Greendyke Street would have had to find another place to play.

A connection between those players and the club that would later emerge in Govanhill, called St Andrew’s, is tempting to imagine but unlikely; the shared name is probably just coincidence. Many clubs and organisations were keen to use the name St. Andrew’s to reinforce their Scottish credentials.

The opening of Queen’s Park Recreation Grounds in 1862 began to ease the pressure on Glasgow Green. This new public park would provide the opportunity for popular and emerging sports to be played and enjoyed. One of the earliest known organised events on the grounds was a pony race in 1864. By the end of the decade, many other sports including golf, cricket, bowling, rounders and of course football would gravitate towards this new space which was at the time outside the city boundaries, almost in the country.

Modern association football was in its infancy and Queen’s Park, the oldest football club in Scotland, played all their early matches on the Recreation Grounds before sectioning off part of the estate and building their own stadium, the first Hampden Park.

It soon became impossible to accommodate every fledgling sports club, would-be-athlete, or group of lads just looking for a kick-about on the new Recreation Grounds. Many vacant patches of ground in the rapidly developing southside were transformed into places to play, some temporarily, just for a few hours on a particular day, some permanently, for several years, into proper sports fields.

Prior to building the first Cathkin Park, Queen’s Park’s great rivals, the Third Lanark Rifle Volunteers, played on Victoria Park, on Victoria Road, located somewhere between Calder Street and Allison Street. A long-forgotten team called Crosshill Athletic played their matches on Coplawhill Park, just north of Calder Street. Another team called Glasgow Wanderers played on Eglinton Park, where Inglefield Street and Govanhill Park is today.

Whether quoiters found space in or near Queen’s Park Recreation Grounds at this time is unknown. The area on the north side of Butterbiggins Road was still private land but given the popularity of quoits at the time, especially amongst working men, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that it was being played in the area slightly to the north and east of the park known as Fireworks Village in the Lands of Govanhill, which lay outside the municipality of Glasgow and was home to a significant population of mineworkers, ironworkers and agricultural workers.

Those workers were known to have enjoyed their recreation. There was a reservoir at the junction of Cathcart Road and Aikenhead Road which was designed to provide water to Govan Iron Works, better known as Dixon’s Blazes, just to the north. That reservoir or Dixon’s Pond as it became known, was a favourite swimming, fishing and skating spot for the denizens of Fireworks Village. If they were enjoying those loosely organised pastimes, they were no doubt playing other unregulated games as well.

In 1877, the population of Fireworks Village and the surrounding area had increased sufficiently, earning the district the status of a ‘populous place’, which allowed the Burgh of Govanhill to be formed. Around the same time, the western portion of the Larkfield estate on the north side of Butterbiggins Road was sold. The area was not instantly transformed but a new railway junction was constructed that year, linking the Glasgow, Barrhead and Neilson line, with the Polloc and Govan Railway line, which became known as the Larkfield Junction.

The Scottish Quoiting Association was formed in 1880, with over 60 member clubs from across the country, including 10 clubs from in and around Glasgow, the Gardner Street Club, the Camlachie Club, the Clydesdale Club, based in Kinning Park. Two clubs from Barrhead, the Caledonian Club, the Arthurlie Club and other clubs from Whiteinch, Pollokshields, Pollokshaws and the Govan Manse Club.

There was not yet a registered club near St. Andrew’s Cross but the Larkfield Junction was greatly expanded in the late 1890s, and other manufacturing businesses had set up in the area, including a ropeworks, a cooperage and even an organ builder, so the number of working men in the vicinity of Butterbiggins Road would have increased and inevitably they would look to play sports in their free time, including quoits.

The St. Andrew’s Quoiting Club and the ground on Butterbiggins Road, is first mentioned in the press in 1898, in a match against Springside Kilmarnock. The Kilmarnock Club won convincingly on that occasion by 100 shots to 44.

Despite that early defeat, the St. Andrew’s Club would go on to become one of the most successful clubs in Scotland in the early twentieth century, regularly competing in the Glasgow League and regional and national competitions, and notably in the most prestigious individual tournament open to Glasgow, Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire players, the Wylie Cup, dubbed ‘Glasgow’s Premier Competition’ and the winner was considered the Champion of Glasgow.

The Wylie Cup competition was organised and hosted by Stanley Club, based on Scotland Street in Kinning Park, from 1901. This prestigious trophy was the gift of Baillie Wylie, an enthusiastic player, who donated this valuable prize in order to promote has favourite sport.

Unfortunately, the Stanley Club disbanded in 1909 and so care of the trophy and the honour of hosting the competition transferred to the St Andrew’s Club at Butterbiggins Road. One of the members of St Andrew’s, whose name only appears in results as J. Dalrymple, won the Wylie Cup at least 5 times between 1903 and 1914.

Many of the members of St. Andrew’s could have been iron workers employed at the nearby Dixon’s Blazes or locomotive builders, working for the North British Railway Company at the Queen’s Park Yard, tram workers employed at the recently opened Coplawhill depot, workers from the nearby St Andrew’s Cross Electricity Station or even miners working in one of several local collieries.

Quoits were available commercially but amongst the ranks of enthusiastic players, there would have been skilled metal workers, capable of crafting a metal ring, suitable for playing quoits and well-matched to the hand of the individual. Also, many former footballers, keen to continue competing, and to supplement their wages, took up quoits after retiring from football.

In 1912, the Scottish Referee reported that:

‘…the game is the oldest of our sports and has undoubtedly the most skilful. Not only that, but it requires stamina to last a match playing sometimes for six hours at a stretch with quoits weighing anything up to twenty-four pounds. This is perhaps the reason why some of our well-known professional footballers have taken so well to the game.

Many of them play regularly, one notable personality being A. Brown, late of Tottenham Hotspur and Middlesbrough, who, while playing football, was capped for Scotland against England in seasons 1902 and 1904. He plays second to Matthew Park in the Glenbuck Club and had much to do with the defeat of East Calder in the Scottish Cup a week ago. The Glenbuck team also includes Tom Bone, the champion of Britain, and pitching enthusiasts have a treat in store list have a treat in store when Glenbuck visit Glasgow on 6 July to oppose St Andrew’s in the semi-final round of the Scottish Association Cup.’

The St. Andrew’s Quoiting Club was known to still be active in 1927, but within a year the club would probably have had to disband or relocate when the Larkfield estate was taken over by Glasgow Corporation, the chosen site for a new bus depot which was, when it opened two years later, the largest of its type in Glasgow.

What became of the club after this time is unclear; the exploits of other clubs continued to be reported on in the press throughout the 1930s but no reliable reports or even results for the St Andrew’s Club have yet been discovered.

There was, unexpectedly, a brief mention of a club called St. Andrew’s in the press in 1937 playing a match against the Parkhead Forge team but whether this club had any connection to the one based in Govanhill is impossible to know for certain.

Traditional quoiting is very much a minority sport now, but there are accessible, safer variations of the game still played around the country and abroad. The old game, sometimes called the long game, enjoyed its greatest moments in the industrial era, in the days of large workforces, when many men were engaged together in manual labour, and strength and skills like dexterity, and hand-eye coordination, were highly valued.

Social and cultural changes since those days have seen the sport suffer a near-terminal decline. The Scottish Quoiting Association has been disbanded for many years, but a handful of clubs survived until the 1990s, including the Tarbothie Club from Shotts, near Glasgow.

Now there is just one solitary club left in Scotland, the Dunnotar Quoiting Club from Stonehaven in the northeast of the country, still competing with clubs from England and Wales, and who are valiantly striving to keep the old game alive.

Published: 7th February 2023

About the author: Bruce Downie
Bruce has been a board member of South Glasgow Heritage and Environment Trust since 2019, and chair since 2021. He is the author of ‘Loved and Lost: Govanhill’s Built Heritage’ first published by Govanhill Baths in 2019. Then in 2021, he wrote ‘99 Calder Street: A History of Govanhill Baths and Washhouse‘. A second, revised and expanded edition of ‘Loved and Lost: Govanhill’s Built Heritage’ was published in 2022. Bruce also runs a walking tour company called Historic Walking Tours of Glasgow.

Setptember 2023 update: you can now listen to an audio version of the blog read by Bruce Downie here on our new podcast show Southside Chronicles on Glad Radio!

Sources:

British Newspaper Archive
National Library of Scotland, Maps
‘Rounders, Quoits, Bowls, Skittles and Curling’ by J. M. Walker (G. Bell, 1892)

The post Quoiting in Govanhill appeared first on SGHET.

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

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

Kinning Park Complex

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

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

Govanhill Baths

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotional connections are magnified in times of change

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

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

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

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

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

Old Victoria Infirmary incident in February 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Langside Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Erin Burrows

Published 16th March 2022

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[8] Madgin, p. 8.

[9] Madgin, p. 8.

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

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

[12] Madgin, p. 1.

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

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

[15] ‘Council Criticised’.

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

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

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

[19] Langside Area Partnership, p. 1.

Further reading:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cinematic car showroom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was Mackintosh an influence on Art Deco?

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

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

Industrial chic and everyday escapism

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

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

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

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

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

The birth of Art Deco and Glasgow’s moderne appetite

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

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

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

James Miller’s five-decade legacy in Glasgow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Art Deco makeover and its relevance today

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

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

Dereliction & demolition vs. retrofitting & reuse

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

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

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

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

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

Heritage, history and regeneration

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connected futures: Leyland Motors & Glasgow’s sustainability

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

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

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

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

By Deirdre Molloy

Published: 4th March 2021

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow the #SouthsideModerne hashtag on Twitter

Read the next articles in our #SouthsideModerne series:

Renewing Lyceum Govan’s faded ambition

Art Deco fragments of Shawfield Stadium

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