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

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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.

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Maxwell Park and Pollokshields Burgh Hall have a fascinating history, involving barrage balloons, West Indies slave plantations, and freemasons.

Maxwell Park

In 1887, Scottish politician, baronet, and philanthropist Sir John Stirling Maxwell gifted the land that is now Maxwell Park to the burgh of Pollokshields, for the development of Pollokshields Burgh Halls and public gardens. The area was entirely agricultural until 1850. The park contains a variety of different plants and flowers that were taken from the gardens of his home Pollok House, in what is now Pollok Country Park. These species are believed to have been brought back from around the world by botanist and explorer George Forrest. Many of the flowers can be found in the ornamental bed that used to be the base of the Hamilton memorial fountain. Forrest’s expeditions to the Himalayas were responsible for many unique species becoming part of Scotland’s garden heritage at Pollok House and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Building on this heritage, the community launched a plant nursery with the support of the Friends of Maxwell Park in 2012.

Not many people know that there was a barrage balloon mooring site in the South West section of Maxwell Park. This site was part of a network that protected the people and war-time industry of central Glasgow and the Clyde from low flying enemy bombers during World War II. The park has many significant features including Pollokshields Burgh Hall, ornamental horticultural bedding displays, a formal play area, and a commemorative George Forrest display plant bed. There’s also a pond with wildlife, and what the local Helen Millar and her friends called the ‘elephant stone’, when growing up – a large rock for children to play on – nearby.

The Stirling Maxwells

The Maxwells/Stirling Maxwells of Pollok House in Pollok Park were one of the most eminent families in South Glasgow. Sir John Maxwell, 2^nd Baronet, had Pollok House (now A listed) built from 1747-1752. The 10^th Baronet, Sir John Stirling Maxwell (1866-1956) inherited Pollok House in 1887, and opened the estate to the public in 1911. He gifted land that now contains Maxwell Park to the burgh of Pollokshields in 1887; you can still see the Maxwell family motto, ‘Do Good While the Holly is Green,’ carved on the wall of Pollokshields Burgh Hall (also A listed), in the park. He was Chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland, and a Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland, one of the founding members of The National Trust (and one of its first Presidents) and became a noted art collector. After he died in 1956, his daughter Anne gave Pollok House, the art collection, library, and 361 acres of surrounding land, to the City of Glasgow.

Links to Slavery

The Stirling Maxwells inherited their wealth in part from Archibald Stirling the elder (1710-1783), who made his fortune through his sugar plantations, using slave labour, in Jamaica. Archibald Stirling the younger (1768-1847) was also planter and slaveowner in Jamaica. After the British Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833 the younger Archibald Stirling was awarded £12,517 in compensation (over £50 million in today’s money) for the 690 enslaved people across his estates: Hampden in St. James, Frontier in St. Mary, Kerr or Keir Settlement in Trelawney, and Grange Hill in Westmoreland, all in Jamaica. He returned to Scotland and married Elizabeth Maxwell (daughter of Sir John Maxwell (7th Baronet and sister of Sir John Maxwell (8th Baronet of Pollok). Their son Sir William Stirling of Keir went on to become Sir William Stirling Maxwell (9th Baronet of Pollok). You can learn more about this family in our July 2020 blog on the Maxwells.

Architect Henry Clifford

Pollokshields Burgh Hall was exhibited in 1890, and officially complete in 1893, to a design by architect Henry (Harry) Edward Clifford (1852-1932). Clifford has connections to slavery both through his family and his work for the Stirling Maxwells. He was born in Trinidad to a family of sugar plantation holders. When his father died, the Cliffords moved to Glasgow. He studied and taught at Glasgow School of Art, won prizes for his work, and set up his architecture partnership Landless & Clifford, before going solo. He lived with his mother and sisters in Pollokshields. Clifford achieved national fame in 1901 by winning the Glasgow Royal Infirmary competition, although the commission was eventually given to James Miller. Clifford designed Pollokshields Burgh Hall in the Scottish Renaissance style. He clearly remembered his time in the Caribbean fondly as well, and named two of his buildings Woodbrook House after the Trinidad estate, one on Elphinstone Road, Whitecraigs, the other at Reigate.

Pollokshields Burgh Hall

The A listed halls form an asymmetrical composition of 17th-century towers and wings, made of dark red sandstone (in contrast to the blond sandstone of many surrounding villas). The buildings include an adjoining Jacobean lodge (refurbished 1996), and gate leading to the Maxwell Park drive. The Maxwell coat of arms appears on the entrance archway, flanked by lions, and is set in marble on the floor of the building entrance. You can see Maxwell’s motto ‘Do Good While the Holly is Green’ carved on the wall outside the building, and in the large east window. The halls feature a range of stained glass windows gifted by Pollokshields residents, a Venetian window, a 1935 west window bearing the emblem of the Corporation of Glasgow, and 17th-century-style Masonic stained glass. The building is maintained by Pollokshields Burgh Hall Trust.

Freemasons

The building has been used as a masonic lodge since it was built, and the arch built into the back wall displays several carved Masonic emblems and the Masonic symbol. The Memorial Window in the main hall depicts the glory of the afterlife, with the two pillars on the side panels representing the entrance to the Sanctum. The inscription on the centre panel reads:

“To the memory of departed brethren”.

The Minor Hall features a window dedicated to Saint John, Patron Saint of Freemasonry with the motto ‘Gloria in Excelsis’, presented by Morris Carswell, First Master of Lodge Pollok. The other window is dedicated to St. Andrew the Patron Saint of Scotland, with the motto ‘Virtute in Silentio’, and was also presented by a freemason, David R. Clark. Both windows display masonic emblems, and were gifted in 1890.

Southside Slavery Legacies Project 2020

South Glasgow Heritage and Environment Trust are currently working on a Southside Slavery Legacies project, including a potential heritage trail and walks, as well as blogs on our website, and published articles. If you would like to know more or become involved, please contact info@sghet.com.

Sources:

Canmore: Maxwell Park

Canmore: Pollokshields Burgh Hall

Discover Glasgow

Friends of Maxwell Park

Legacies of British Slave-ownership

MeasuringWorth.com

Pollokshields Burgh Hall

Pollokshields Trust

Rias.Org

Runaway Slaves in Britain.

Scotland and the Slave Trade

Scottish Architects

Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow

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