Dom Hall from Glasgow National Park City shares news of a community celebration at the Hidden Gardens in Pollokshields on Saturday 2nd September and outlines what GNPC is all about in this guest blog…

The idea of a National Park City is simple – to use the familiar idea of a National Park to inspire a shared vision for Glasgow as a greener, healthier and wilder city for everyone where people, places and nature are better connected.

But a National Park City is very different from a traditional National Park which is a formal designation with statutory powers and involves the funding and resourcing of a National Park Authority. Instead, National Park Cities are a movement and network with a shared vision for greener, healthier, wilder cities.

The National Park City group believe that this movement & network can help deliver two crucial elements for a greener, healthier, wilder city:

1: That people see cities differently and recognise the key role that things like nature, greenspaces, heritage, adventure and play can have in cities just as much as they do in traditional rural National Parks. We believe seeing the city differently is key to encouraging people to get out and explore cities more and to collectively see that a positive, greener, healthier, future is possible.

2: There’s a fantastic network of individuals, organisations and communities who are contributing to this greener, healthier, wilder vision. They believe the National Park City designation would provide recognition for their work, and the opportunity for greater collective voice and resources for these organisations in the future.

The first National Park City was declared in London in 2019, followed by Adelaide in 2022. In Glasgow the National Park City group is a community movement led by volunteers who have been working to develop a local vision and a network for the National Park City since 2018.

By the end of 2023 we’ll submit an application to the National Park City Foundation with the aim of Glasgow being recognised as a National Park City. We’ve produced a proposal for a shared vision and charter for Glasgow and since then nearly fifty organisations from across the city have signed up as supporters of that shared vision ranging from community groups and charities through to Glasgow City Council.

Now we’re expanding ways for you to get involved:

1 – Come along to the Event at the Hidden Gardens behind the Tramway in Pollokshields on Saturday 2nd September

2 – Coming soon – share your ideas and opinions on the National Park City – watch the National Park City website and social media (Twitter / Facebook) for an online questionnaire soon to have your say

3 – Get involved – this can be as simple as signing the charter, through to joining the committee or developing your own projects. Find out more here.

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Thanks to Dom for this guest blog. South Glasgow Heritage & Environment Trust is a supporter of Glasgow National Park City – discover the city-wide range of supporter groups & organisations and get info on joining the Glasgow National Park City network.

Header image: Hidden Gardens in bloom and Tramway brickwork by Deirdre Molloy

Photos of GNPC outdoor exhibition in June 2022 copyright of Friends of King’s Park

The post Let’s make Glasgow a National Park City appeared first on SGHET.

Join us at 6.50pm on Thursday 27th April at The Deep End on Nithsdale St for the second of our 2023 #SouthGlasgowHeritageNights events – an illustrated talk from the After The Garden Festival team, followed by Q&A.

Places are limited – BOOK HERE

The 1988 Garden Festival changed how the world saw Glasgow, and how it saw itself. It lives on only in people’s memories as the buildings, objects and artworks from this temporary event are gone forever – or are they?

Join Urban Prehistorian Kenny Brophy, Project Maestro Lex Lamb, and Holder of the Official Garden Festival Umbrella Gordon Barr to learn how they have used crowdsourcing to build an ever growing digital record of the hundreds of pavilions, sculptures and attractions that made up the Festival.

“Items and memories are scattered across the globe with stories to tell: from the large (the Coca-cola Roller Coaster, now in Suffolk), to the small (a Garden Festival tea-towel, now in Papua New Guinea); we’ve identified surviving artefacts, ephemera and even some of the original plants and gardens that delighted visitors over that unforgettable summer, more than thirty years ago.

We’ll outline what we’ve learned so far about how the 1988 Festival was put together, taken apart and spread around the world, with the help of hundreds of individual submissions and leads, with plenty hidden in plain sight closer to home – and we’re learning more every day!

But we still haven’t found the giant tap, sorry.”

To donate directly to support the ATGF project please visit: https://tinyurl.com/AtGF1988

[Header image kindly reporoduced with permission. Photograph © Donald Whannell]

Book your tickets here on Eventbrite

TIMINGS:

6.50pm – Doors Open / Registration
7pm – Illustrated talk from the ATGF team followed by Q&A
8.15pm – Ends

More #SouthGlasgowHeritageNights coming soon

The post #HeritageNights talk: Taps aff? What happened after the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival appeared first on SGHET.

The trail is a circular route starting and finishing at the gates to Queen’s Park and leads trail followers through three Southside parks. The route introduces walkers and cyclists to 12 Southside trees, which are also common across Scotland. We suggest you set aside a good hour or two to enjoy the route.

To embark on the tree trail, pick a leaflet up from South Seeds at 514 Victoria Road or check out and download the leaflet online.

The tree trail leaflet is packed full of information explaining how to identify the trees. There’s a clear map to follow and the locations of the trees are marked. It also features descriptions of the trees and an illustration of the leaf shape.

During the winter, when some trees lose their leaves, tree identification can be a bit tricky. For this reason, we’ve included ‘What three words’ for each tree. Using the three unique words and the What Three Words app you will be able to easily locate each tree.

Spotting & identifying historic and everyday trees

The route introduces walkers to some outstanding southside tree planting. This includes the tree-lined Queen’s Drive, the ancient yew trees in Queen’s Park, the cheerful Rowan trees of East Pollokshields and the magnificent Ash trees In Govanhill Park.

Once you have walked the trail and located the tress you can keep an eye on those trees throughout the year and notice how they change throughout the seasons.

Learning how to identify trees at any point in the year is a valuable skill. The next time you’re out and about in town or the countryside, you’ll be able to tell the different between a Beech and a Birch tree.

South Seeds’ urban croft for the community

The tree trail route takes walkers past the entrance to the Croft on Queen’s Park recreation ground. Through the chain link fence passers-by can see the community garden where residents are invited to adopt-a-raised bed each March. There are 24 raised beds to be adopted and they are allocated to those that apply in March each year.

There’s a programme of support for the growers delivered by South Seeds’ expert gardener Eric. Growers adopt the beds until November, when they will have harvested all their produce. South Seeds looks after the beds over the winter to nourish the soil and conduct any maintenance in time for the next round of adoptions.

Southside Tool Library & home energy advice

South Seeds has an office on Victoria Road, open 9am–5pm on week days and 10am–2pm on Saturdays. From it South Seeds also runs the Southside Tool Library where you can borrow tools. In turn, we have energy officers who can help people reduce their energy bills.

If you’re interested in any of our projects or services, mitigating climate change, saving the environment or becoming more sustainable drop in to our Victoria Road unit!

Share ideas Sat 21st Aug at Queen’s Park Recreation Ground Croft!

South Seeds is holding its open AGM at the Croft, our beautiful community garden on Queen’s Park recreation ground. We’re keen for locals to help us shape the next 10 years, so please do come along and share your ideas. The AGM is on Saturday 21 August 2021, it starts at 10.30am and will finish by 11.30am.

Guest blog post by Lucy Gillie, South Seeds

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For more information about South Seeds visit www.southseeds.org and find them on Twitter and Facebook and at their premises at 514 Victoria Road, Glasgow, G42 8BG.

If you spot any trees around the Southside and have identified or guessed the species, share your images and tell us on Twitter or Facebook.

The post Glasgow Southside Tree Trail and community croft appeared first on SGHET.

History teacher and new SGHET board member Thomas Oldham reports from the second half of the 7-day archaeological excavation at the site of First Hampden Park in Crosshill and reveals where they got to with exploring and mapping the world’s first modern football stadium …

Firstly, apologies for the delay in getting out report number 2. After the excitement of the first day, day two of the dig in Queen’s Park Recs. came to a quick halt after asbestos was found. From painful personal experience I can confirm that this is not stuff that we need to look any further into. It is horrible, should have been banned long before it was.

With the first pit’s findings inconclusive, attention then shifted to the geophysics work on the bowling green and Kingsley Gardens. And this is where my quip about ‘why dig?’ in my previous report comes home to roost…

Despite having a map seemingly showing us exactly where the pitch was, the digital mapping suggests it was actually a wee bit north and east. Or maybe other physical landmarks have also shifted a little? Either way, things were starting to show that everything is/was not quite as it seems in the archives. And this is why we dig!

With the new geophysics data in hand, the Kingsley Gardens dig began in earnest. Three plots were staked out and the turf was lifted (meanwhile the gardeners politely peeped to check their flowerbeds were untouched). Over time, all three sites revealed something quite flummoxing – a single plain of broken halves of bricks. Again, this is why we dig!

My instant instinct was that this was evidence of an early ‘astroturf’ – a pitch design to allow water to drain quickly through the turf and also maintain a good level surface.

Kieran and others from Archaeology Scotland had their own hypothesis – these bricks may actually have been the foundations of the stadium perimeter. After a lot of chat, digging and reflection on the wider history of the site they realised that this layer was probably the foundation of tennis courts that had been on the site.

Whatever is found in a dig can always be interpreted in a number of ways to support different hypotheses or versions of history, but therein is the joy of archaeology and history – however scientific and factual all the information laid in front of us is, something is always left to the imagination, or still has a question mark next to it.

We are invited to dream and wonder, and however recent the history under Kingsley Gardens, our imaginations were still wandering freely.

On Sunday 13th June 2021, on the site of the First Hampden Park, we were once again left to speculate, to theorise and to dream. Who knows what future investigations will reveal and confirm!

While football might not be coming home in its most visceral and physical form in 2021, we Scots / Glaswegians / Southsiders / Crosshill folk can remain safe in the knowledge that the game’s roots are snugly tucked up under some roses and neatly trimmed grass in the Southside of Glasgow.

As we at SGHET are a living, breathing and perpetually curious local heritage organisation I’d like to invite anyone with memories, knowledge or photos of Kingsley Gardens and First Hampden Bowling Club to share in the comments or get in touch with us directly.

Speculation and imagination are fun but knowledge and personal memories or stories are also great and we’d love to build on the various glimpses into and windows on the past that this archaeological dig has opened up.

By Tom Oldham

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Images by Tom Oldham (SGHET) and Kieran Manchip (Adopt-a-Monument Project Officer, Archaeology Scotland)

Read Part One: First Hampden Park Archaeological Dig

Find out more about about the First Hampden Park archaeology project at: https://hampdencollection.com/4326-2/

Follow Adopt-a-Monument and Hampdeners on Twitter

Discover more about the footballing history of First Hampden, Second Hampden and more on guided walks at https://glasgowfootballtour.com/walking-tour

Crosshill at 150

This article is also part of a series of local history and heritage coverage we’re publishing to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the founding of Crosshill in 1871 as an independent police burgh before eventually being annexed to the city of Glasgow in 1891. See #Crosshill150 on social media,

The post First Hampden Park dig part 2: discoveries and speculations appeared first on SGHET.

History teacher and new SGHET board member Thomas Oldham digs into the archaeological excavation at First Hampden Park and what the Archaeology Scotland volunteers are hoping to find at the old site of the world’s first international football stadium …

So, it’s day one here at First Hampden. The tension is palpable and the excitement bubbling, ahead of what is expected to be a special and historic moment for Scottish football. The away team are wearing yellow and have arrived early – though their captain appears to be running a little late – that’s Kieran (Manchip, not Trippier), from Archaeology Scotland…

Kieran is a friendly and enthusiastic guy, and even has time to have a wee blether with me as we walk through the tunnel (of verdant green) towards his team (of volunteers…OK, OK, I’ll stop now)… Annoyingly he has already started answering my deep philosophical questions – he knows what idiots like me think of archaeology and is already infecting me with his enthusiasm. My inhibitions are not at all connected to the fact I’m English.

Surely there is no actual site of the fantastical early drubbing of England by Scotland (5-1) in 1882? Surely the English built the first purpose built international football stadium somewhere in England; and surely the English invented the passing game that we know today…It turns out First Hampden might have something to say about all that.

Quite what evidence they are hoping to find of the 5-1 drubbing I’m not sure, copious amounts of yeast from spilled celebratory pints? Huge chunks of chewed tobacco spat from nervous English mouths? Maybe a trophy?! Maybe there’s bleedin’ treasure down there! Who knows?

I am currently sitting in my loftily placed media box high in the North stand (i.e. my flat on Kingsley Avenue). As I look down, the team are now standing around in a circle (beautifully planted by volunteer gardeners David and Tahitia McCabe) and are discussing tactics and having a wee stretch. The topic of temperature drifts in the wind – it is uncharacteristically warm for a home game!

So, to ‘pitch’ out the week’s dig to you, the work will involve two plots in the beautiful Kingsley Gardens, an ultrasound scanning of the Hampden Bowls bowling green, and a dig in the trees in Queen’s Park recreation ground between the railway and skate park.

The bowling green ultrasound aims to seek out the centre spot and maybe some old pitch lines like penalty areas. The recs dig aims to find evidence of the grandstand. And the rose garden dig hopes to find remains of the clubhouse.

We have maps, know roughly where all this was (before the sleepy Cathcart circle line rudely blasted its way across Southside), know what happened here, and therefore why it is such a significant site. So, why dig here? I ask.

Being an oft-harsh critic, a historian, and a history teacher who spends their life desperately drawing out explanation, explication, and justification from begrudging, opinionated teenagers, I really, really want to know why we (humanity) bother with things like this. Hopefully we will start to find some answers from this enthusiastic and open-minded bunch of (mostly volunteer – much respect!) archaeologists. It can’t just be an opportunistic moment to get coverage for the bowling club, via a tournament programme filler during Scotland’s first international tournament in a generation, can it?

As we walk and talk, Kieran excitedly says he doesn’t even know what size this pitch was, or how big the penalty areas were. No wonder Scotland won 5-1, aware of England’s ‘prowess’, they probably just put the penalty spot 30 yards up the pitch!

A little later on I catch up with the team deep in the woods of the recreation ground. I finally ask Kieran why they are here and what they hope to find. While politely ‘understanding’ my scepticism of digging for things we know about and have a clear map of, his enthusiasm for the dig is palpable and catching.

First and foremost it’s about finding things that relate to the structures he says – it would be really great to find traces of the old clubhouse, that’s the dream! That is, a piece of the foundations from what they think is the same building that now serves as clubhouse to Hampden Bowls (give or take the odd extension).

There is also talk of trying to find a piece of old turnstile – Hampden was the first ground to have had them! Kieran laughs. He’d even be chuffed with a button or two, at which point Detectorists is mentioned and, like that, a ring pull emerges from the top layer (date unkown, probably Irn Bru). Most importantly though it is about deepening that sense of place and the layered history of Southside Glasgow, something that we at SGHET also care a lot about.

Meanwhile, the team have taken the top layer off their plot and are in good spirits. So far, the artefact tray has a piece of a till (!) and a lovely old Glasgow brick from Paterson and Sons (which once stood at 522 Pollokshaws Road near the junction with Albert Drive where Scottish Ballet now is).

After a wee chat about how to smash a till open and who might have been robbed, the brick leads the conversation. This brick correlates with others used in late 19^th century Glasgow. Is it a remnant of the grandstand? Or a piece of railway construction material? Or just a random old brick? Whatever it’s from, a locally made 19^th century brick seems a fitting first find to start this session of industrial archaeology.

By Thomas Oldham, SGHET Board Member.

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You can find out more about Scottish brickmaking here and more about Archaeology Scotland’s excavations at First Hampden here.

Read: First Hampden Park dig part 2 ~ discoveries and speculations

Crosshill at 150

This article is also part of a series of local history and heritage coverage we are publishing to coincide with the 150th Anniversary of the founding of Crosshill in 1871 as an independent police burgh before being annexed to the city of Glasgow in 1891. See #Crosshill150 on social media,

The post First Hampden Park archaeological dig appeared first on SGHET.

Despite a long and proud history, the Pollok story that most people are familiar with is one of post war housing, of growing up in a community on the margins, a community that was overlooked and easy to ignore. At G53Together, we’re planning on changing that narrative through a fuller telling of Pollok’s story. In telling that story we want to celebrate our community and shape its future, by understanding its past, both the good and the bad.

Today’s Pollok owes much of its existence to Sir John Stirling Maxwell, the 10th Baronet of Pollok, who sold a 746,368 acre site of fields and farms from his family lands to the City of Glasgow Corporation for the sum of £111,712 and 15 shillings in 1937. Working with some visionary Corporation Officials, they set to work on creating Pollok as a prototype community. Pollok is Glasgow’s first large scale housing scheme. It was fastidiously considered and confidently planned; Stirling Maxwell saw to that. In the year following the sale of the land, he writes in his book Shrines and Homes of Scotland:

“It is at last realised that the creation of a new suburb entails more than the mere erection of rows of houses – the indefinite extension of a large city, without attempt to preserve the beauty of the countryside or provide space for recreation, can end in nothing but discontent and calamity.”

The plan was to create a community, not just houses. Key to the plan was the inclusion of open community green space with local shops, schools and other amenities.

A report from the Corporation’s Housing Department in October 1937 details the desired hopes for the area to include “pleasure walks and garden plots which will give health and delight to many” “romping space for children” to play and explore among the “sylvan beauties” and “extensive woodlands.” The report further details the “central idea” of Pollok as the “foremost garden suburb in the City” with 50% of the total area of land “set apart as open space”.

It was a revolution of civic thought.

In the decades that followed, the Pollok project would suffer cutbacks and blows. The vision was bulldozed in favour of higher density, lesser quality, flat roofed, cramped, damp, cheaper housing. But people continued to arrive and Pollok became a home to tens of thousands of people; several generations of families have passed over the threshold of these homes.

Throughout those times, Pollok suffered from a lack of hope and an absence of belief. And that’s understandable when so much of what made the community was robbed from it. Schools and community centres, local shops and whole neighbourhoods have been wiped from the map. The last farm and parts of an ancient woodland were levelled for a motorway.

But the seed of a new idea has been planted. Covid-19 and isolation has in a strange way brought the community back together. It has given Pollok a new boldness and a growing sense of self resilience. We’ll be enabling a new sense of community spirit and empowerment through G53Together, a community collective of organisations, charities, housing associations and local residents.

While our focus for now is on covid-19 recovery, from next year, G53Together and our community partners will turn our attention to working to protect Pollok’s rich inheritance, to remembering the people and places that have shaped our community, to celebrating our heritage, and enhancing our green and public space.

If you want to be part of the dialogue and help build Pollok’s future, visit www.g53together.scot or like and follow our social media @G53Together (Facebook / Twitter).

By councillor David McDonald.

The post Pollok’s Story: G53Together appeared first on SGHET.