FEATURED
Nithsdale Mission Hall
You may have heard about Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson’s Queen’s Park United Presbyterian Church on Langside Road (destroyed by bombing in 1943). As well as the church on Langside Road, there was also another church built on Balvicar Drive (which you can still see today) and then also a Mission Hall on Nithsdale Drive. Although this hall looks like a Greek Thomson building, it was actually designed by architect Alexander Skirving, who worked under Alexander Thomson.
Skirving also designed some other wonderful Southside buildings and monuments including Langside Hill Free Church (Church on the Hill) and Battlefield Monument (see our Langside tour). This Category B listed building came into ownership of Glasgow City Council before a fire destroyed the roof and interior in 2005. The building was then bought and is on track to become four flats and a house with the beautiful exterior being retained.
In August 2019, we were walking by to take some pictures for the upcoming tour book when we bumped into the project manager who was in charge of the redevelopment of the building. He offered us a look inside and we jumped at the chance. At this stage, the exterior of the building had been completed, as well as the house at the back but the interior was a shell. He told us that when the fire started a beam had fallen on one of the firemen and so all water had to be pumped in through the roof as the building was too dangerous to enter. This meant that when the developers took over the building it was still full of water, even all these years later.
The developers have given a lot of thought to the re-development and the attention to detail is obvious when the project manager talks about the process of re-casting the original railings and the build and installation of the windows.
English
I mentioned this before on “Shields is Gallus”….In the 1950s perhaps earlier there was a Youth Group called “The Black Panthers” who met here. Nothing to do with any other group by that name just youths who met in this wee hall. I have never met anyone else who remembers this info. but I have remembered it since the 1950s although I was never a member. This might not be particularly noteworthy but its still a wee bit of the history of the building for anyone interested.
I have passed this building on the way home for the last 2 years and have been blown away by the progression in the restoration of the building.
Fantastic
More on the history of Nithsdale Hall on the Bygone Bungo website, incuding the full set of original architectural plans. Good to see it slowly coming back to life.
https://bygone.bungoblog.com/wp/nithsdale-hall/
It really does look amazing, any idea what the Mission Hall is going to be once it’s restored?
It’s going to be a house and 4 flats
This wasn’t the first UP Mission Hall in the area, however: there was an earlier one in Pollokshaws Road: ‘New United Presbyterian Church near Crosshill. – A Preliminary Public Meeting of those Favourable to this object will be held on Thursday First, the 27th instant, at Eight p.m. in the Strathbungo U.P. Mission Hall, Pollokshaws Road’: Glasgow Herald, 26 Jun 1872. Do we know what happened to that?