Happy Birthday Hyndland After School Club

25 years of Hyndland After School Club

My oldest child finished school this week. He finished his last exam yesterday and had a well deserved lie in this morning. It is hard to imagine the wee child that we used to have living with us, now that we have this gangling teenager towering over us. When my children were too young to look after themselves once school was finished, we relied on after school clubs and family members to pick them up at 3 o'clock to allow us carry on working full time. 

Hyndland After School Building, White Street, Glasgow

We were lucky enough to be able to afford childcare and carry on working, unlike many people nowadays. Continuously for the past 11 years at least one of my children has been going to Hyndland After School Club, and this year they are having a party to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Set up in 1992 by a voluntary committee of parents, it became a not-for-profit charity a few years later, and now organises after school childcare at several local schools in the west end of Glasgow. A big part of their success has been the management and staff, who have navigated their way through all the appropriate regulations on the sector to provide a safe and enjoyable space where children can play, chill, get muddy, build dens, make friends and have fun. 

For the 25th anniversary of the Hyndland After School Club (or Afty) they are inviting all former staff, pupils, board members, teachers, parents and carers to come to their birthday party at the end of the current school term. On Saturday 24th June from 1-4pm they will have stalls, face painting, burgers, music and more to help them celebrate. 

Housed in a curious old drill hall at the end of White Street, I have tried to find out what this hall was used for before the Afty took up residence. If anyone has any memories or ideas about previous tenants please get in touch to let me know. As I grasp any excuse to have a day guddling about among old records in the Mitchell Library, I tried to see what I could find there.

Hyndland Primary School and the (white coloured) Hyndland After School Club building today

Hamilton Crescent Junior Secondary School opened in the late 1880s. The building was designed by William Landless for the Govan Parish School Board in 1887, and was originally a secondary school for up to 1,000 pupils.

The photo above shows Hamilton Crescent Junior Secondary School, on the right hand side of what is now called Fortrose Street, in Partick (called Hamilton Crescent at that time), overlooking West of Scotland Cricket Ground. This picture is about 100 years old. Two villas lie just north of the school in this photo, where the gym hall and the school football pitch are now. Hamilton Crescent was renamed Fortrose Street in 1931.

This 1911 map showing the school building and two villas north of it on Hamilton Crescent which have since been demolished. In 1912 many of the staff and pupil from the school moved to Hyndland School and their old school became Hamilton Crescent Supplementary School. In 1927 it became Hamilton Crescent Advanced Central Public School and in 1940 Hamilton Crescent Junior Secondary. The junior secondary closed in 1972, when Hyndland Primary School in Clarence Drive (now the Hyndland Secondary school building) was relocated to this building on Fortrose Street.

In 1913 alterations were made to the school building. The villa beside the school at 40-42 Fortrose Street was altered and became an annex to the school. The current school gymnasium was built, extra rooms were added to the school building and new playground toilets were built behind the school. 

The school footprint expands in 1913, with the neighbouring villa soon to be altered

1913 plans to build a gym hall and alter the villa beside the school

New gym hall to be added to the school in 1913

In 1932 architects at the Corporation of Glasgow Education Department, drew up plans to build a new “Drill Hall” on the school site. This was built behind the former villa/annex building which was still standing in what is nowadays a playground of the school. A new entrance to the school from White Street was constructed. This building, now 85 years old, is what Hyndland After School Club has called home for the past 25 years now. Sadly the plans are badly water damaged, but the new building can still be made out, below, on one page which is just about legible.

1932 plans for the new drill hall at Hamilton Crescent School (now the Afty building at Hyndland Primary School)

Hyndland Primary School 1970s

In 1975 new plans were drawn up. The annex to the school was to be altered to provide additional classrooms (in the playground in which the bike shed now sits). A proposed new “recreation area” was also created, where the red blaise football pitch is now. This involved the demolition of the next villa up the street to make space. On these plans the “drill hall” was at that time being used as the school dining hall, with a “servery” located where the Afty kitchen is now.

Plans showing the dining hall in 1975 (now the AFty building)

1975 architect's plans for a new path behind the dining hall (Afty building)

The “annex building” was still shown on the 1975 plans, but is now a playground, it is not clear when this building was demolished. In about 2005 due to lack of space, a new school annex was created in the space behind the school, which houses the current dining hall, four classrooms and a connecting corridor to the gymnasium.

Since 1992 Hyndland After School Club have used the old drill hall. As it was built by the education department of Glasgow Corporation, it may just have been intended to be used to drill the school children, but if anyone can remember using the hall for some other purpose, I would be delighted to hear how it was used over the past 85 years since it was built. 

Disappearing Glasgow by Chris Leslie

Disappearing Glasgow by Chris Leslie

Disappearing Glasgow is a handsome and hefty book by Chris Leslie, a photographer and filmmaker based in the city. The book and the accompanying videos are a wonderful record of the demolition of some contentious Glasgow estates. For me, personally, it also brought back many memories of my years living up the flats, which I will write about below this short review of the book.

Over the past 8 years Chris Leslie has been documenting the latest cycle of urban demolition in Glasgow; the razing of many of the city's tower blocks and neglected tenements. It started as a project for an MA in Documentary Photography, recording the flattening of the last tenements in Dalmarnock for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. It then took him on to witness the bulldozing of multi-storey flats in Sighthill, Red Road, Gallowgate and in Yoker at Plean Street, and the demolition of deserted tenements in Oatlands. 

Disappearing Glasgow by Chris Leslie

Attending the book launch at the CCA this week we were able to watch some of the short films he has made whilst investigating this, which show that it was much more than just a voyeur taking elegant photographs of the end of Glasgow's flirtation with brutalism. He excavated multiple stories (sorry) of those that lived, played and grew up in the flats. This film below, available on YouTube, shows what he managed to unearth beneath the Red Road flats. Before the flats came down he went with the demolition teams to an underground bingo hall for a 1000 people, and a windowless pub fashioned as a sailing ship, The Brig. Then he tracked down former residents who had frequented the pub or the bingo hall and recorded their stories.

The book is divided into chapters featuring the six Glasgow areas documented, with introductory essays from Chris Leslie to give some context, and six essays from an interesting and varied selection of contributors providing a historical, sociological or architectural perspective. The book contains sumptuous photographs with buildings in various states of destruction or demolition. People in the foreground are often dwarfed by the scale of the ruins behind them. In other pictures when Chris Leslie has donned his hard hat and explored the stripped out buildings from within, the shadows of former residents emerge from their empty homes. Whether the peeling wallpaper reveals a hand painted picture of a stag on an empty sitting room's wall or a frameless concrete window void frames a beautiful vista of open hillside beyond the city limits you can start to put yourself in those homes.

In Dalmarnock the photographer followed the story of Margaret Jaconelli who held out in her flat in Ardenlea Street for months until forced out by the Police. Living in a sandstone tenement that in another part of the city would have been renovated and sought after, as the area was deemed a "sink estate" the decision was made that it needed flattened. The promise of jam tomorrow is something the locals awaiting their "legacy" are not holding their breath for.

In each case we are witnessing a passing of "the architecture of the welfare state". Many of the early residents of the high flats talk about the great improvement it was for them when they moved in, having more room and not only an indoor toilet but a bathroom too! It was a genuine attempt in the 1960s and 1970s to improve the living conditions of thousands of people in the city living in squalor. But it was done cheaply and quickly. When Thatcher's government passed the Housing Act in 1980 and introduced the "right to buy" for council house tenants they intentionally started unpicking of the structure of social housing in Britain. Coming at the same time as the destruction of industry in Glasgow, the flats became poorly maintained and a housing of last resort for many people in desperate situations. In the multi-storey flats you weren't allowed to buy your flat (even if you had wanted to for some reason), the rents began to rise steeply and it is hard not to see the council getting more money from placing those on housing benefits into them. If you did buy your flat in an area deemed as failing, as Margaret Jaconelli did, you still did not buy control of your future. When a local councillor is quoted as saying "someone had to take it on the chin" about the Dalmarnock demolitions, you know what social class in the city are expected to just accept the decisions of their betters. By the end of the 1980s many of those interviewed in the book complain that drugs and decay went hand and hand with neglect, making the flats unwanted and unwelcoming homes.

In one of the most interesting essays in the book, sociologist Dr Kirsteen Paton quotes Karl Marx from the Communist Manifesto saying "all that is solid melts into the air" to illustrate the impermanence and cyclical nature at the heart of Capitalism. The unmentioned second half of this quote makes an important point too, when he says "...man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." The former residents of all this demolished housing can see where they stand in society. Ignored, unable to control their environment, and rehoused with nothing learned from the mistakes of the past.

Despite being full of dust and destruction, empty buildings and piles of rubble, the book also evokes the people who made a home in these buildings. The cycles of neglected housing and demolition have been documented by memorable photography before. Thomas Annan, with his photographs of "Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow" in 1868 to 1871, recorded the last days of the medieval buildings around the Saltmarket and Gallowgate, They were replaced by the Victorian tenements, which Oscar Marzaroli documented in the 1960s as the bulldozers moved into the Gorbals. These buildings were replaced by the tower blocks which now Chris Leslie has recorded for us. Hopefully he is "documenting a fight for housing equality" here as one of the contributors states, and not just another cycle of disjointed and ill-judged "regeneration".

BUY THE BOOK, AVAILABLE HERE.

What made this book resonate with me?

My pathetic attempt to ape Chris Leslie's trick of superimposing old family
photographs onto my flats as they were demolished in 2015

When you pass by a street that you used to live in, or see a building that was once your home for many years you remember your time there. Playing games there, the route you walked to school, the parties that you had in that place, the neighbours. You remember where you came from and who you are. With Thomas Annan's photographs of the Saltmarket I can imagine my great-grandad Peter Donnelly who lived in one of those houses at that time. When Oscar Marzaroli photographed the last days of the Gorbals tenements he was documenting the streets my mum was playing in as a child before they were moved from their home in Crown Street to the new scheme at Drumchapel. Although I am only in my forties I am already witnessing the second wave of demolition of my Glasgow homes. I was five years old when we were moved from our tenement in Whiteinch which was chosen for demolition. With my brother, my parents and a cat to keep down the mice, we were living in a room and kitchen with no bath or hot water. By the time we were the last to be rehoused we were happy to see the building fall. Where our solid tenement once stood a gap site still lies empty. In retrospect renovation and modernisation would have created pleasant, substantial housing instead but demolition is the recurrent solution in Glasgow. 

Our Whiteinch tenement

Me in our 1970s Whiteinch room and kitchen

After five years in Maryhill we moved to a flat in one of the multi-story blocks in Knightswood. In Chris Leslie's book the Plean Street flats in Yoker were exactly the same structure and lay out as the Lincoln Avenue flats that I lived in nearby as a teenager. We lived there through the 1980s and the problems that arose repeatedly in the book were seen by ourselves. 

We were very happy in our flat, with two verandas I had plenty of place to work on my bike out there and you had lovely views over Knightswood Park. The underfloor heating was only present in the hall and the living room, but could, with a couple of days run up, warm those rooms. Anybody that had it on can remember how nice it was to lie on the carpet until the half of your body that was sweating required you to stand up and cool down. Apart from the huge cost of the electricity required to heat those two rooms, the bedrooms never got the benefit of the heating. With all the condensation that built up in the flats, there was always thick ice on the inside of your bedroom windows on winter mornings. 

Winter in the 1980s at the Lincoln Flats, Glasgow

When the flats had been built, above the 19th floor was another floor where the lift mechanism was housed. Here there was an open, glass-walled space, "the roof drying area", which is seen in one of the Plean Street photos, where the residents of the 114 flats in the block could hang their washing...if they didn't mind all the pigeons that lived up there. Whenever we went up there to run about or enjoy the views, it was only a few minutes before the 19th floor residents, already in a bad mood as the lift only went to the 18th floor, would come and chase you away. Seeing Chris Leslie's photographs of the metal lifts brought back the smell they always had - a combination of urine and strong bleach. The stairs too carried that smell, and as time went on you were more and more likely to find either people lurking or suspicious wet puddles on the stairwells. 

The Lincoln Flats

We often had our flat crowded for parties or for meetings. When the council threatened to close our secondary school my mum with other parents organised against it. At one of their meetings Donald Dewar, our local MP was invited to attend and with a lack of seats in our living room I can remember him happily arranging his gangly frame on a wee telephone table we had there, as he listened to our concerns. The school didn't close. With furniture cleared we could put tables down the middle of the living room for Christmas dinner. In the book there are rooms of exactly the same lay out as the ones we lived in, but stripped and empty, looking spacious and dead, but these are the memories those pictures brought back to me - my family getting together, my bedroom, me studying for my Highers.

Christmas party up the flats

Seeing my Christmas photo there reminds me of the other post-Christmas tradition that we had, of taking the tree out onto the veranda to avoid dragging the needles all through the house. With someone keeping a lookout down below to make sure we didn't kill anyone, my dad would hurl it over the railing and my brother and me would haul it into the bin area. It came down like a dart and as it hit the ground, "bang", every needle would fall off making a heap in the car park. If you were unlucky the wind that sometimes whipped around the bottom of the flat would catch the tree and we would chase after it as it headed towards Archerhill Road. One day the wind picked me up as I came out the doors at the bottom of the flats to head to primary school. I was swept away until I crashed into a bench, which has left me with a wee scar on my ankle. I learned to look out on windy days after that. 

Demolition begins at my old tower block
on Lincoln Avenue, Glasgow. 2015

 After about 10 years living there we decided to move on. The old neighbours on our floor who used to take their turn cleaning the landing had died or moved on, replaced often by young single men who often had problems they were dealing with. Noisy parties, late night argy-bargy and less and less maintenance was becoming obvious. In my bedroom the plasterboard was cracked and a cold draught of air from the bin chute shaft behind came through that wall. The recurrent dampness in the living room plaster was crudely repaired and when the workmen were in, things were stolen from the flat. It was time to move on. With all the decent housing on the council books being bought by the people living in it, we knew we would never have enough points to get a move to another council house, so my parents were coerced, like many others, into becoming mortgage owners if they wanted to move.

Different fates awaited the many tower blocks in Knightswood. The Kingsway flats on Dumbarton Road, like the Plean Street flats were of the same design as ours and were the first to be demolished. The Kirkton Flats seem to be untouched. Two of the six blocks on Lincoln Avenue were earmarked for demolition, the others were slowly refurbished. This I find confusing. Either the council have deemed these to be housing failures, or decided that if they are properly maintained, with concierges in the ground floor and secure entry, better insulation and a fresh lick of paint they can be decent homes again. How can it be both?

My old block on the corner of Archerhill Road and Lincoln Avenue was stripped ready for demolition, but had a long stay of execution. I understand that the electricity substation for the whole row of flats on the street was built into it and needed re-directed before the block could come down. Eventually in June 2015 the demolition crews got to dismantle my old flat. Within a matter of weeks 20 floors of concrete and steel was reduced to dust. In some ways I was sad to see it go, as I had lived all my teenage years there, but in the end the flats had become neglected by years of poor housing policy that at no point engaged with the people actually living there.

I stumbled across this oil painting in the Hidden Lane Gallery a couple of years ago. Hilda Goldwag was an artist born in Vienna in 1912 who escaped from Nazism to Scotland in 1938. In 1968 she moved to Knightswood and continued painting until she died in her 90s. This abstracted painting is from Archerhill Road according to the title.  This means that the high white towers on the left are the Lincoln Flats, with the Kirkton Flats on the right and the low houses that line Archerhill Road at its western end in the foreground. Like the Red Road flats with several novels and films set there, I am glad that the Lincoln Flats were commemorated by an artist too.

Religious Sites of Glasgow. Doors Open Day 2015

Glasgow Doors Open Day, 2015

The annual "Doors Open Day" in Glasgow has been running for 26 years now. Organised by the Glasgow Buildings Preservation Trust it aims to celebrate the architecture, history and people of the city by public talks, walks and open access to many buildings normal closed to the public. This year, endeavouring to see some buildings which I haven't previously visited I seem to have ended up going to several religious buildings for a change. Despite these buildings being such prominent parts of the city skyline I had never before been inside the Glasgow Central Mosque, the 'Greek' Thomson designed St Vincent Street Church or the Catholic St Andrew's Cathedral down by the Clyde. So this is what I saw, arranged for no particular reason chronologically by their religion's origins. Religious bigotry and sectarianism has an ugly history in the west of Scotland, and I have avoided taking any interest in religion, so I apologise in advance for any wild factual inaccuracies in what follows.

Tallits, Jewish prayer shawls

Judaism

Garnethill Synagogue, Glasgow

Judaism is usually dated back to the times of the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, over 3000 years ago. Widespread throughout Europe in the modern era, the earliest records of Jewish people in Scotland come from the 1600s. The first openly Jewish graduate of the University of Glasgow was Levi Myers in 1787, forty-eight years after the earliest university graduate in Scotland, Jakob de Castro Sarmento qualified in medicine from Aberdeen in 1739.  The first person buried within the newly laid out Glasgow Necropolis was Joseph Levi, a quill merchant who died of cholera in 1832. This was because the Jewish community of the city contributed to the fundraising when the necropolis was being created, and a Jewish section was designed within it. In the early twentieth century larger numbers of Jewish immigrants arrived in Glasgow, escaping persecution in Europe and Russia. Like the Irish and Italian immigrants to Glasgow they lived in large numbers in the Gorbals area of the city. Glasgow's first synagogue apparently dates from 1823, on High Street. It moved several times before finding a permanent home in Garnethill in 1879 in Scotland's first purpose-built synagogue.

The words carved in Hebrew above the door are from Deuteronomy and translate as "God alone let him, and there was no strange God with him". I am not sure how the calculation works, but apparently the numerical value of the Hebrew letters used in this verse adds up to the date of the foundation of the building.

Inside the Garnethill Synagogue, Glasgow

So, donning the yarmulke I was given at the door to cover my head, I stepped inside. It is strange that I have visited synagogues before on holiday, but never actually been in one in Glasgow. It contains a strange mixture of familiar Victorian Glasgow architecture mixed with exotic extras, evident straight away from the floor tiles in the entrance hallway.

Floor tiles

Downstairs there was an interesting Scottish Jewish Archive Centre, where a group of local Muslim women were having their numerous questions answered.

Catholicism

The Christian church can be dated back to the followers of Jesus Christ and the term 'Catholic' was used from about 110AD. After the East-West schism of 1054 the Eastern church became known as "Orthodox" and followers of the Bishop of Rome "Catholic". In Glasgow St Mungo is said to have founded his church in the 7th century at the site of the Glasgow Cathedral on Castle Street. From the 12th century this was the seat of the bishop of Glasgow and became an archdiocese of the Catholic Church in 1492. In the late 16th century Glasgow Cathedral was one of the few churches which was not destroyed during the Scottish Reformation and passed into use as a Protestant church. The current Catholic Cathedral of Glasgow, St Andrew's Cathedral, was designed in 1814 by James Gillespie Graham. It lies in the city centre on the north bank of the River Clyde, almost overwhelmed by a modern day cathedral of commerce, the St Enoch's Shopping Centre, which sits behind it. Saint Enoch was a saint of medieval Glasgow, the mother of Saint Mungo (or Kentigern as he is also known).

Saint Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow

From the time of the Scottish Reformation in 1560 until the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1791, which restored the freedom of worship, Roman Catholics in Glasgow had to worship covertly.  With industrialisation in the city and increasing numbers of Catholics arriving in Glasgow from the Highlands and from Ireland it was decided to build a church for their use. The Catholic church to St Andrew was completed at this site on Clyde Street in 1816. This was not a trouble-free construction, with saboteurs damaging the nascent building at night in the early stages, requiring guards to be employed to protect the construction site initially.

Interior of Saint Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow

A major renovation project was undertaken between 2009-2011 with new artwork commissioned and the construction of a cloister memorial garden to Italian Scots who died aboard the Arandora Star. This ship was torpedoed and sunk in 1940 whilst carrying "enemy aliens" during the war. Of the 734 Italians on board, 486 died.

As well as St Mungo establishing his church on Castle Street in Glasgow of the 7th century, St Constantine had arrived maybe 100 years earlier, about 500AD, and established a wooden church at Govan. With Glasgow only a small town at this time, Govan was a completely separate hamlet for centuries. The first Govan church was built beside a ceremonial hill and sacred well. The people here were Britons, different from their neighbouring Picts and Scots and Govan means "little hill" in their language. Ironically the hill in Govan no longer exists, as it was flattened in making the industrial Govan we know from the 20th century, to make space for the sheds of the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding company. The kingdom of the Clyde Britons was controlled from Dumbarton (Dun Breatann meaning "fort of the Britons") and was a powerful kingdom in the British Isles after defeating the Scots of Dalraida. In 756 the combined Picts and Nothumbrians ford the Clyde at Govan and defeat the Britons at Dumbarton. The early church in Govan is at the site of what is now called Govan Old Parish Church. Although I have previously read about the Govan Stones, I had never gone to see them before. The church is home to many famous early medieval stones, carved between the 9th and 11th century. One of the earliest is a beautiful stone sarcophagus from around 850AD, carved from a single block of stone.

Carving on the Govan Sarcophagus

Norse Paganism

After a four month siege in 870AD Vikings destroyed the fortress at Dumbarton. The king of the Britons is killed. A new king is appointed and moves up river, becoming based at Govan and a new name appears for the kingdom, "king of the Britons of Srath Clúade (Strathclyde)". The other stones found in Govan Old Parish Church come from the period 900-1100AD.

Five carved Norse "Hogback" stones in Old Gorbals Parish Church

These include carved recumbent stones, free-standing crosses and Norse 'hogbacks'. The hogback stones are usually associated with Viking settlement and suggest that over this period high status Vikings were living in this area. Although Vikings had their own pagan beliefs, in Denmark and Sweden they converted largely to Christianity in the 11th and 12th century. To which gods the Vikings of Govan prayed may never be known.

The 'sun stone'

Around 1000AD the kings of Strathclyde have their palace across the river Clyde in Partick, but worship in the old church of St Constantine at Govan, and use the hill to the east of the church for ceremonial purposes. Their royal graves are in the churchyard at Govan. Around 1050 King David I conquers the kingdom of Strathclyde and takes it into his Scottish kingdom. The importance of Govan fades as he bases religious activity in the cathedral in Glasgow. The royal lands at Partick are taken over by the bishops of Glasgow. Over 500 years the village of Govan grows up around Govan Cross. A new church is built and the gravestones from this time show the trades of the contemporary local residents.

Gravestone in Govan churchyard. Date looks like 1690

After the Scottish Reformation of the 16th century the church here became run as a Protestant church. The village of Govan continued to get bigger and in 1864 was made into a Burgh, with its own administration. Soon the church was felt to be too small for its needs and was replaced with the current building, constructed between 1884-1888. Over the next 50 years Govan continues to boom and grow with the arrival of shipbuilding. The growing town was annexed to Glasgow in 1912. In the same year Harland and Wolff buy three small shipyards and flatten the Doomster Hill to build their slipways and huge worksheds.

Current Old Govan Parish Church

A notable minister of the Govan Old Parish Church from 1930 was Rev George MacLeod. Disillusioned with post-war Britain after the first World War and concerned over social inequality in Scotland he became a Socialist and an active member of the Peace Pledge Union. He resigned his position in Govan in 1938 and set up the Iona Community.

Former fitting out basin of Harland and Wolff,
across the Clyde from the current Museum of Transport

Islam

Muslims follow the Islamic faith, a monotheistic Abrahamic faith which originated in Arabia. The Qur'an is the holy book for Muslims, which was revealed to the prophet Muhammed over 23 years by the angel Gabriel. Muhammed lived from about 570AD - 632AD.

Although many more may have been undocumented, the first Muslim known to live in Scotland was a medical student from Bombay, Wazir Beg, in Edinburgh in 1858. Manufacturing and trade in Glasgow meant that many Muslims arrived in the city working as lascars or sailors. Records from the Glasgow Sailors Home on the Broomielaw from 1903 show that at that time nearly a third of the 5500 boarders were Muslim lascars. Immigrants from South East Asia, particularly Pakistan, in the late 20th century increased the Scottish Muslim population to about 1.4% of the population by 2011. More recent immigrants from Africa, Afghanistan and the Balkans have added to the diversity of this population. The first purpose built mosque in Glasgow opened its doors in 1984.

Glasgow Central Mosque

I have visited some of the smaller mosques of Glasgow before but this was my first visit to the Glasgow Central Mosque, just south of the River Clyde at the edge of the Gorbals. It is one of the most recognisable buildings in the city with its dome illuminated at night and its prominent minaret. The majority of early Muslim immigrants to Glasgow, like the Irish, Jews and Italians before them, lived in the Gorbals area of the city where the mosque was later built. The main hall can accommodate 2,500 people at prayer and will be busy later this week with Eid marking the end of the Hajj.

Inside Glasgow Central Mosque

Taken on a tour of the building, with its adjacent community centre, our Malcolm X quoting guide was at pains repeatedly to clarify misconceptions about Islam. It is clear that some Muslims can feel at times there are constant media reports of their perceived role in all the problems round the world, causing misunderstanding and fear. When he talked about the un-Islamic actions of those fighting their fellow Muslims in Syria just now, it was hard not to see echoes of this in accusations down through the centuries within several other religions. It seems to me that most wars and battles fought in the name of a religion tend to be about power, resources and land once you break it down rather than a battle of ideals. This is the same whether talking about ISIS in the Middle East, the Christian Crusades, the Rough Wooing of Mary Queen of Scots, King Billy and the Battle of The Boyne, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Troubles in Northern Ireland... Take your pick.

Not remembered in the current portrayal of Islam are the contributions Muslim thinkers have given to the world, particularly in science, medicine and mathematics. You only need to think about the origins of the words algorithm, algebra and alchemy to see where they originated.

Protestantism

The Christian church in Scotland means many different things to different people. The Church of Scotland website has an "Historical Directory To Glasgow Presbytery" listing the changes in parishes and churches over the years in the city and it runs to 360 pages if you have an interest in this. The roots of the Church of Scotland date back to the Scottish Reformation of 1560, led amongst others by John Knox, whose statue looks out over Glasgow from a pillar atop the Necropolis behind Glasgow Catherdral. He established a Protestant church on Calvinist principles.

Glasgow Cathedral

Glasgow Cathedral is one of the few medieval churches that survived the Reformation and the current building dates back to the 12th century, allegedly on the site where St Mungo (a.k.a. St Kentigern) built his church in the 7th century. If you want to get an impression of how close it came to being destroyed during the Reformation look at the bullet riddled door in the Sacristy from this time. It was saved because the organised trades of the city took up arms to defend it from the mob intent on bringing it down. The defenders outnumbered the attackers and it survived, "cleansed of its Catholic trappings". The University of Glasgow was founded at this site too, within the precinct of the cathedral in 1451, before later moving west in the city. 

St Vincent Street Church, Glasgow

In contrast to the austere, gothic medieval cathedral, the Glasgow City Free Church have their home in one of the most grand and beautiful creations of famous Glasgow architect Alexander "Greek" Thomson. At the time he rejected the popular Gothic Revival style of many of his contemporary architects, getting his inspiration from Greek Classical styles. Built in 1859 for the former United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the St Vincent Street Church is currently used by a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland. It is the only one of the three churches Thomson designed which is still in tact.

Interior of St Vincent Street Church, Glasgow

Here you can see the interior which he designed for it too, full of light and space. the decorative motifs inside are more flamboyant than would normally be acceptable in a Presbyterian church. It is so sad to see the empty shell of the Greek Thomson designed Caledonia Road Church sitting in the Gorbals, with its interior destroyed by fire in the 1960s.

Another church that I visited on the Doors Open Day was also commissioned by the Free Church using an innovative Glasgow architect. In 1896 the Free Church of St Matthew, Glasgow commissioned a new church and hall from architects Honeyman and Keppie. The job was allocated to their young, talented, trainee architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Architectural drawings for the Queens Cross Church

Following the beliefs of their religion the design had to be simple, yet Mackintosh managed to handle this beautifully, producing a distinctive, charming, warm and functional building. Queens Cross Church is one I pass whenever I head to see Partick Thistle, whose ground lies just behind the church. Built between 1898 and 1899 it was the only church he designed.

The nave of the Queens Cross Church, Glasgow

 In 1929 the Free Church was reunited with the Church of Scotland, which took over ownership of the Queens Cross church. In 1976 with a declining congregation, the church merged with Ruchill Church and vacated the building, which has become the headquarters of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society.

Mackintosh designed pulpit in Queens Cross Church

In this building Mackintosh designed the interior artwork and fittings too, right down to the communion table, alms dishes and armchairs. His distinctive designs can be seen on the wood carvings of the pulpit.

Sikhism

Topped with their golden domes, there have been two distinctive new additions to the Glasgow skyline in recent years. The first purpose-build Sikh Gurdwara in Scotland opened its doors in 2013, in Polloksheilds beside the Tramway. Another new Gurdwara will also soon be opening soon in Glasgow on Berkeley Street, opposite the Henry Wood Halls. 

Glasgow Gurdwara on Albert Drive, behind the Tramway's 'Hidden Garden'

Sikhism was founded in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century. It is based on the teachings of Guru Nanak (the first Guru) and the ten successive Sikh Gurus. Now the book of Sikh scripture is the Guru and is treated with great respect. The first documented Sikhs living in Scotland are from 1854 in Perthshire. Sikhs date the first Glaswegian Sikhs to the 1920s when a Gurdwara was established in South Portland Street. Further immigration in the later 20th century means that Sikhs now make up 0.2% of the Scottish population, with the largest population being in Glasgow. In the synagogue I had my head covered, in the mosque I had taken my shoes off to enter the prayer hall. Here my head was covered and shoes off to enter the Gurdwara. Our young guide told us with obvious enthusiasm about Sikhism and the Gurdwara and encouraged us to visit the free food kitchen, or Langar, an important part of any Gurdwara.

Hinduism

Although their place of celebration was not open during the Doors Open Day, it seems only fair to also mention the Glasgow Hindu Mandir. Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies and religious cultures and has many deities. It dates to the 6th century BCE and is the religion followed by the majority of people in India and Nepal. The majority of Hindus in Scotland arrived in the second half of the 20th century, many escaping Idi Amin's Uganda in the 1970s. Hindus now make up 0.3% of the Scottish population. I have previously been in the Hindu Mandir Glasgow building at Belle Place, near Kelvingrove Park, for a wedding which was a very laid back, friendly and colourful event. Unfortunately you will have to make do with a photo of the outside which I took when I passed it on my bike today.

Hindu Mandir Glasgow

Summary

In Glasgow I think we are now getting away from the days when the first question a stranger (or someone interviewing you for a job) asked was "what school did you go to?" to work out if you were a Catholic or a Protestant. However we are far from being a city that can preach to anyone about religious tolerance. I sadly think that we are defining people more and more by religion. There is talk of the Muslim population or Jewish community. Religion is only one aspect of a people's culture. I am not a great fan of defining people or a population by their religious views and each religion has a spectrum of differing perspectives and beliefs. Scottish Christians can be a member of the Roman Catholic, Scottish Episcopal, Free Church, United Free Church, Church of Scotland, Free Presbyterian Church, Associated Free Presbyterian Church or the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. That's just our local ones. People living in the same street, or working in the same factory have much more in common with each other than do a businessman and a shop worker of the same religion.

A lot of people, particularly immigrants, feel a cultural link and connection with a religion. The rituals and celebrations their parents and grandparents enjoyed. I am an atheist but still enjoy rolling eggs down a hill with my children at Easter. I understand the symbolism of it and remember doing it as a child with my own parents, but I don't define myself as a Christian. The diversity of religious institutions in Glasgow that I have visited this weekend just reflects the diversity of Glasgow's immigrants over centuries. From Norsemen to Lithuanians, people from the Punjab and Sri Lanka, Scottish Highlanders, Italians and Irish.

I know it sounds corny to end this way but I agree with the city's current slogan that "People Make Glasgow" and I religion is a small part of the culture of those people, if they wish. So I finished my day in Dowanhill Church, built in 1865. I admired the work of the artist Daniel Cottier who designed its interior, the craftsmen that erected the building and those restoring it. I then had a nice pint of beer and some lunch and wondered if the day will come when all the places I saw today will become museums, theatres, community centres, restaurants and bars.

Cottiers Bar and Theatre, Glasgow