Walking Through Partick, Past and Present

Walking Through Past and Present Partick

Last year I took myself on a tour of Maryhill in Glasgow, guided by old photographs. As I moved home away from Maryhill when I was 12 years old I thought it was time to come up to date and do the same thing around Patrick where I stay now. As before my plan was to search out some old photographs and see what changes have occurred since they were taken. What was immediately obvious was that the past century has been less cruel to Partick than it has been to Maryhill, with many old buildings and street layouts surviving. The gap sites that are scattered throughout Maryhill don't seem to exist in Partick, at least not for very long before a block of studio flats or student accommodation is thrown up. 

Meadowside Granary, Glasgow, with Partick laid out behind it

Whilst there are more and more flats being built in Partick now, all traces of industry are vanishing. A major employment in Partick for centuries were its mills, initially using the power of the lower River Kelvin. Grain mills were such an integral part of Partick life that millstones feature in the Partick coat of arms. There were so many mills down here, supplying flour to Glasgow, that Europe's largest brick-built complex of buildings, Meadowside granary, was constructed to supply the grain. Meadowside granary has now been demolished, replaced by the Glasgow Harbour flats. 

Old Mill of Partick, on Old Dumbarton Road

Also, within the last few months, the last mill in Partick, the huge Rank Hovis one on Dunaskin Street which produced flour for their Duke street factory, has been demolished. I think there is now only one mill building standing, and that is one of the oldest, the Old Mill of Partick, sometimes called Bishop's Mill, now converted into flats. This handsome building (on what is now the Yorkhill side of the River Kelvin) is recognisable for its wheat-sheaf sculpture atop the chimney stack. In the old photo you can see the channel or lade taking the water away from the mill's water wheel.

The shipyards and riverside industries on the Clyde are also long gone, even the scrap yard on Beith Street has closed. Prior to it being a scrap yard, this was the site of a train station and Partick Foundry, producing metal castings until it closed in the 1960s. Where Benalder Street crosses the River Kelvin here there used to stand an entrance down to Partick Central Station. This last remaining building of the old train station mysteriously vanished one night in 2007, before the owner of the land at that time, Tesco, had yet got planning permission to develop the site, but were clearing the ground. Tesco have now abandoned there plans to open a store here and a huge block of flats is emerging from the ground on this site.

The last active mill in Partick, the Rank Hovis mill on Dunaskin Street,
ground down to dust within the past few weeks

Even the Western Infirmary and Yorkhill Hospitals are in the process of shutting up shop and moving to new premises. In 1878 Glasgow University sold the land to the hospital authority where the Western Infirmary was built, but a clause in that deal stated that if the hospital ever moved out, the university would be able to reacquire the 14 acre site. This they have now done, to expand the University campus. Yorkhill Hospital's site I'm guessing didn't have such a clause, so I suspect a tsunami of new flats can be expected to rise over the hill there soon (although the Health Board are apparently thinking of keeping the site going as Western Infirmary out-patient clinics and day surgery wards). The danger is that Partick is becoming a big middle class/student housing scheme, with all signs of its long past and industrial history being erased. A walk down Dumbarton Road on a Friday night shows that there is still plenty of life in Partick yet, but gentrification is creeping down the road.

St Simon's Church, Partick

The oldest Catholic church in Partick is also the third oldest Catholic church in Glasgow. It lies just north of the Old Mill, across the River Kelvin on Patrick Bridge Street. It was opened in 1858 as St Peter's. The first priest was Irishman Daniel Gallagher, who apparently taught Latin to the the young David Livingstone, allowing him to get away from the mills of Blantyre and gain entry to medical school. The church closed when the new, larger St Peter's opened on Hyndland Street in 1903 but 20 years later it re-opened as a church due to the rising population in the area and became St Simon's (the original name of the apostle Peter). I had always known it as "the Polish church" and this was due to soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces based in Yorkhill barracks during the Second World War using it for worship. After the war it continued to have mass in Polish for those who ended up staying here, and with the more recent influx of Poles to the city it has had a new lease of life in this role. I guess it shows that it you stick at something long enough the world will catch up with you.

Plaques at St Simon's church marking its Polish connections

Just around the corner on Dumbarton Road is found the entrance to Kelvin Hall subway station, called Partick Cross station until 1977. Merkland Street subway station became Partick station at this time too. Regarding the overground train stations, I've already mentioned Partick Central station (which became Kelvin Hall station in 1959) just south of Partick Cross. There was also Partick West near Meadowside granary and Partickhill station.

Old Glasgow subway map with Merkland St and Partick Cross staions

At the time of the redevelopment of the subway system in the late 1970s, Partickhill station was closed down and moved about 100 yards south to become Partick station and share a site with the subway on Merkland Street. Partickhill station was on the north side of Dumbarton Road and above the old Woolworths here. A metal door still covers over the stairway that led up to it from Dumbarton Road, and it you are waiting for a train from Partick, look northwards 100 yards and you can see the remains of Partickhill station's platforms.

Entrance to the station formerly known as Partick Cross,
now Kelvin Hall station

When I was young the F&F Bingo used to stand diagonally across the road from this subway station. Before then it had been the F&F Ballroom, which also accommodated roller skating. In the 1980s I wasn't down here for the bingo, but started many a Saturday trawl around the local record shops at West End Records a couple of doors down from the F&F. Then it was a walk up to Realistic Records on Dowanhill Street (or later Music Mania at the bottom of Byres Road), Echo and Woolworths on Byres Road (also later the upstairs record shop in John Smith's bookshop that became Monorail) and Lost In Music upstairs in De Courceys Arcade. By then you were halfway to Firhill and a few pounds poorer. I can still list off albums I remember buying in each shop, but I'll save you from that.

The F&F on Dumbarton Road, now Carlton Bingo

Recently all the other low shops either side of the old F&F building have been cleared, and replaced by a block of modern flats, but throughout the building work you could see them building around the bingo hall and it is still going strong, just less obvious. Is that grey cladding meant to echo the old shape of the building which the flats have swallowed up?

Dumbarton Road, looking west from Dowanhill Street

In the old photo above you can see the low shops on the left which have now been cleared, and on the right hand side, one block on, is a block of three storey tenements which are long gone, with Mansfield Park now here. The post box is still in the same position though, which is nice.

Looking north up Hyndland Street from Dumbarton Road

Above, these photographs are looking up Hyndland Street from Dumbarton Road, with the Quarter Gill pub on the left. You can see the three storey tenement building in the old photo, which was cleared to create Mansfield Park, where the Farmer's Market sets up its stalls every fortnight. At the bottom corner of this block you can see the shop is run by William McColl. The tower of Dowanhill Church, now Cottiers bar/restaurant/ theatre, can be seen at the top of the street and St Peter's church halfway up on the right. The offices of the Glasgow Gaelic Centre are on the other side of Mansfield Park. Partick has always had a large community of Gaels. This dates from the days of drovers coming down to Partick from the Western Highlands with their animals, on the route into Glasgow. Later there was an influx of people from the Highlands and Islands coming to find work in the city.

Over 130 years ago, my ancestors arrived in Partick from Alness and Kilmonivaig,
John McPhee, Kate Henderson and their children.

My great-granny McPhee was born in a flat on Dumbarton Road just west of Partick Cross in 1888. Her mother had come to Glasgow from her home in Alness, Rosshire as a domestic servant, working in a flat just off Mansfield Park here. Her husband was living in Partick, at this time working as a hotel servant. He had come from Kilmonivaig, near Fort William.

The Heid o' the Goat, now Keith Street

In the days when my family arrived in Partick there would still have been traces of old Partick cottages hereabouts. The centre of pre-industrial Partick was 'the Goat', an old Scots name for a small burn, which ran down where Keith Street is now. The "heid o' the Goat" was the north end of this burn. These photos are at the top of Keth Street where it meets Dumbarton Road at the bottom of Hyndland Street (it always annoyed me that when a pub opened calling itself "The Goat" it was about half a mile away from the Goat). These cottages weren't demolished until the 1930s, and where Comet used to have a shop now stands a shiny new block of student flats.

Another view of Keith Street. Note the Criterion Ices shop 

Society of Friends Burial Ground, Keith Street, Partick

At the bottom end of Keith Street lies what is surely Glasgow's smallest graveyard. A plaque shows that this is the Society of Friends (Quakers) Burial Ground. Although it is still neat and maintained, no gravestones still mark the plots. John Purdon, who gifted the land, is remembered in nearby Purdon Street (where The Smiddy pub is) and his wife was apparently the first person to be buried here.

Society of Friends Burial Ground, Keith Street, Partick

There is evidence of a bishop's residence in the village of Partick dating back to the 12th century and old pictures record the ruins of "Partick Castle" down by the River Kelvin. For centuries the main importance of Partick was as a ford to cross the River Kelvin when travellers moved between Dumbarton and Glasgow.

Balshagray Farm, Partick. Not much farming goes on now in Partick
and Balshagray Avenue is a dual carriageway into the Clyde Tunnel.
You can see the tenements of Partick in the background of this picture, marching towards the farm

With industrial expansion in the 19th century a village of 1,235 people in 1820 had grown to over 10,000 people by 1860. By 1911 over 66,000 people lived in Partick. To cope with the changes Partick became a Police Burgh in 1852. The original Burgh Hall and police station can be seen at the back of Morrison's car park, on Anderson Street. Everyone knew this building as "Partick Marine" as the police force had a marine division, although they were only responsible for the quay and warehouses and didn't take to sea.

Partick Marine. Former Police station and courtroom.You can
see the barred windows of the cells on the left and a rooftop exercise yard here

In 1872 the Burgh Halls moved to larger premises opposite the West of Scotland Cricket pitch, where Partick Burgh Halls still stand. As Glasgow continued to expand, Partick was eventually absorbed into the city and in 1912 Partick was a burgh no more.

Partick Burgh Halls on the left, opposite the West of Scotland Cricket Club pitch

Partick Burgh Halls is a grand old building, designed by Scottish architect William Leiper, who also designed Dowanhill Church/ Cottiers and the Templeton Carpet Factory at Glasgow Green. In the picture above you can see the Burgh Halls peeking out between the modern flats on the far side of the cricket pitch. Cricket has a surprisingly long history in Glasgow. The West of Scotland Cricket Club which still plays here was formed in 1862, before that the Clutha Cricket Club played on the northern part of this land. On the right hand side of the picture above the houses on Peel Street run down towards Dumbarton Road. You can see that the street here is a mixture of old tenements and modern flats. This was because this row was badly damaged by German bombers during the nights of the Clydebank Blitz. On March 13th 1941 a land mine dropped from a plane struck this block, killing 50 people here. Another landed on Lauderdale Gardens and a third on Dudley Drive in Hyndland, killing 36 people.

Before houses stood on Peel Street, a map from 1861 shows that a curling pond and bowling green were to this side of the cricket ground. Between 1883 and 1885 Partick Thistle played at Muir Park to the south east of the cricket ground (see here). And whilst were still on a sporting theme, I'm sure that everyone knows by now that the world's first international football match was played upon the grass of the West of Scotland Cricket Club? Scotland and England played out a 0-0 draw here on St Andrew's Day, 1872. A crowd of 4,000 paid a shilling each to attend.

Looking north up Merkland Street, now the
site of Partick train and subway stations

The other side of Dumabrton Road from Partick Burgh Halls, Merkland Street is now home to a large Morrisons, Partick train station and underground stations and the bus "interchange". However in the old picture above you can see none of that. Even the Merkland Street subway station is hard to make out in the old picture, the entrance was in a close on the left hand side just under the railway bridge (which is no longer there). The flats coming down the right hand side of Merkland Street in the old photo have been cleared after one block. You can see the painting of the netball player, done for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games on the remaining gable end.

Looking east along Dumbarton Road from Peel Street

Continuing westwards along Dumbarton Road the photos above again show that material changes have been minimal. I think that all you can learn from these two pictures is that the air is now clearer to allow you to see the University tower at the end of the street. 

Bridge over Dumbarton Road to Partickhill Station

Going onwards another 100 yards and looking back west towards town you can see that the rail bridge shows the way to Partickhill train station, which was up the stairs on the left hand side of the road, above the old Woolworths shop. Elsewhere in the picture trams have been replaced by traffic jams and fish shops by Credit Unions. 

DM Hoey and the Rosevale Bar on Dumbarton Road

On the block across the road from the train station as we continue to move west there used to stand DM Hoey's at one end and the Rosevale Bar at the other end, only the pub has survived. In the 1960s there were six braches of Hoey's in Glasgow (Dumbarton Road, New City Road, Maryhill Road, Ibrox, West Nile Street and Argyll Street) for all your men's casual clothing needs. In the 1980s I used to get my school tie at the branch in Knightswood shopping centre, and the first time I bought my dad a Christmas present it was a box of three cotton hankies from the Partick branch. The company was founded in 1898. I thought that there was still one going on Victoria Road, but I can't find it on Street View so maybe Hoey's is no more. The nearest thing to it now is Man's World which still inexplicably manages to keep trading on Byres Road. So where a fishmonger has been replaced by a Credit Union across the road, a clothes shop has been replaced by a bookies. Other than shifting the entrance, The Rosevale hasn't changed.

Looking east from junction of Crawford Street onto Dumbarton
Road, this junction no longer exists. 

These photos above are a further 100 yards west from The Rosevale and the tenement block on the right hand side was demolished to re-arrange the junction at the bottom of Crow Road and has been replaced with modern low houses. The Ettrick pub which the couple are walking past as they cross Crawford Street has gone from here, and for a while there was an Ettrick Bar on Dumbarton Road at the bottom of Gardner Street, but it has now been re-branded as Heisenberg's. If you are trying to track down an old Glasgow pub can I point you in the direction of oldglasgowpubs.co.uk.

After coming this far along Dumbarton Road I walked up Crow Road to Broomhill Cross, then up Clarence Drive and down Hyndland Road to head back to Partick via Byres Road.

Looking north up Byres Road from the junction at Dowanside Road

Grosvenor cinema on Byres Road 1980

Looking north up Byres Road again the changes over time are fairly minimal. Hillhead subway station is still up on the right, just past the old Grosvenor Cinema. Atop the tenement on the left, (above what is now Nardini's cafe) is the sign "Victoria Cross". Previously the road  north of here was called Victoria Street and Dowanside Road continued straight over at this point towards the university, before the junction was reconfigured to take it across at Highburgh Road.

The cinema here opened in 1921 and used to be entered from Byres Road. It has now been refurbished and is entered from Ashton Lane. The first time I went to the pictures without my parents was here, and I remember standing outside on Byres Road waiting for them after I'd seen a Disney double bill of Dumbo and A Spaceman In  King Arthur's Court. I've just checked and this means that me and my brother were 7 and 9 years old! The old cinema foyer here is now the Masala Twist Indian restaurant, and the stairs to their toilet used to take you to the cinema balcony.

The next pictures below are again looking north up Byres Road, from the end of Havelock Street this time. Other than the trams and the old cart in the foreground, little has changed.

Looking north up Byres Road from Havelock Street

Since we are the end of Havelock Street now, let's wander down to Dowanhill Primary School, which is now Notre Dame Primary School. After years of poor maintenance by the council they proposed closing Dowanhill Primary and flattening it to build a new school to house pupils from Notre Dame Primary, St Peter's Primary and Anderson Street Nursery. Local parents were savvy enough to contact Historic Scotland and get the old building listed. This forced the council to refurbish it, and build a fancy extension. This has created a school which has since won design awards which the council are happy to crow about on their website (without mention that this wisnae their plan).

Dowanhill Primary School and Dowanhill Church in the background,
now Notre Dame Primary and Cottiers Bar in the background

Pupils from Dowanhill Primary School were moved to the newly built Hillhead Primary School, which the council built on land at the edge of Kelvingrove Park (eg it was free) whilst closing and/or selling Hillhead, Dowanhill, Kelvinhaugh and Willowbank Primary schools and Willowbank and Dowanhill nurseries. Despite local parents campaigning against this ill-conceived plan (I know, because I was one of them who told them their plans did not have sufficient capacity) they went ahead and Hillhead Primary is now bursting at the seams. This was entirely predictable (and predicted). Still, I hope that they made lots of money for the council budget from the process, who cares about the children's education?

Looking west towards Partick Cross

Anyway, crossing Byres Road again and heading down Church Street (which no longer has a church on it) we arrive back at Dumbarton Road and can look west towards Partick Cross again. The stonework is cleaner now, the tramlines have gone, but otherwise it is all instantly recognisable. In the old picture you can see The Kelvin House draper's shop on the right, a Partick institution. It opened in 1919 on Hyndland Road and soon moved to Dumabrton Road, where it stayed until it closed in 2005 leaving the people of Partick nowhere to buy their net curtains, bed jackets, knitted tea cosies and nighties. I might be thinking of somewhere else, but did it used to have a kind of Hornby train set in a glass case that did a few loops when you put in 10 pence? Maybe I'm imagining it.

Anyway these are my recollections and conjectures of Partick, the area of the city that gave its name to Glasgow's greatest football team. Please let me know if you think there is more that should be added.

Edit :- My mum has reminded me that she used had a summer job in the Grosvernor Cinema
"@grannygrandad I worked in the Grosvenor Cinema summer 1969. I watched the moon landing over and over on Pathe News wow!"

Shabazz Palaces, Glasgow, November 2014

Gig review - Shabazz Palaces, Nice 'N Sleazy, Glasgow, Nov 2014

It is over 2 years now since I last saw Shabazz Palaces live in Glasgow, and I was surprised then with how much I enjoyed it. There wasn't much audience interaction as they started their set and kept going for the next 90 minutes. To be perfectly honest there wasn't much audience either and I thought that their latest album, Lese Majesty, may have scared people away rather than brought in the crowds with its leftfield assault on conventional hip-hop. However it turns out I was wrong as instead of 20 people in the basement of a pub they had managed to fill Nice 'N' Sleazy this time around. Their current album is woozy, funky and as close to hip-hop as Miles Davis was to "jazz".

Shabazz Palaces are Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire, Seattle based musicians and much as I found when I had seen them before, they don't go in for chirpy audience banter but plough on with their set, which encompasses tracks from their current and previous albums. Whenever the audience showed signs on bopping up or down or starting to dance the beat melts away and we are off in a different direction. Always captivating though, they had the rapt attention of the full house for their 90 minutes set. 

Where they take their music next, who knows?

Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray Season, a Glasgow Polymath

I don't know Alasdair Gray but I feel that I should as he has been such a familiar sight in Glasgow for many years.

I've seen him at things. I've been to events that he has been involved in, and heard him talk at events I've been to. I've heard him talk about Scottish Independence, about books and about nuclear war. I've been to events where he was meant to be talking, but had nodded off and nobody wanted to wake him. I've been enticed into buying other people's books for his illustrations. I've walked over floors with his murals upon them and sat in bars with his murals adorning the walls. I've read and enjoyed some of his books and read and not enjoyed some of his other books. In September 2012 I came up an escalator to find myself amidst Nicola Sturgeon's official "opening ceremony" of his mural at Hillhead subway station. (They were kind enough to let me duck under the red ribbon to escape before they cut it.) He is literally and metaphorically in with the bricks of Glasgow.

Hillhead Subway station mural being officially opened by Nicola Sturgeon in 2012

Just taking a few minutes to ponder what I think about Alasdair Gray makes me think of the diverse things that he does. Brought up in the east end of Glasgow he went to Glasgow School of Art where he spent 4 years training in mural making. His distinctive novels usually have the author's hand not only in the story but in designing the typeface and layout, with pictures and words coming together to tell the tale.

Alasdair Gray in book format

On my shelves I've got novels, short stories, some history of English literature, a play, an essay on "Why Scots Should Rule Scotland", pictorial autobiographies and an illuminated book of Scottish song. They are all instantly recognisable from his style which is often described as being inspired by William Blake and Hieronymus Bosch but also has elements of his childhood readings of the Beano and the Dandy where, according to a video interview on show in Kelvingrove at present, he became familiar with the idea of words and pictures telling a story together.

Characters and ideas are often remembered and reworked in other places, such as Bella Caledonia who is first seen in the book Poor Things in 1992. She also appears on the ceiling mural of Oran Mor, has become the symbol of an online magazine since 2007 and an illustration for the First Minister's Christmas card in 2011. The Christmas card artwork is now on display in Colin Beattie's Granny Gibbs pub in Whiteinch. The Hillhead illustration adorning the walls of the subway station on Byres Road is adapted from an illustration in the book Old Men In Love.

Bella Caledonia in Poor Things, 1992.

As he celebrates his 80th birthday this year, Alasdair Gray says in an interview on show at the Kelvingrove exhibition "Oh dear, I'm becoming popular in Glasgow. I never expected that in my lifetime."

To mark his birthday there is currently an "Alasdair Gray Season" running in Glasgow. At present there are exhibitions on at the Glasgow Print Studio in the Trongate (for free) and in the basement at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (for £5). Later there will be linked exhibitions within the Gallery of Modern Art and the Glasgow School of Art looking at his "Spheres of Influence".

The Glasgow Print Studio exhibition is titled "A Life In Print and Posters". This includes numerous old posters for plays and the like, which he has produced over the years at the Print Studio as well as showing draft versions of some of his prints to illustrate the process which he goes through. There are also early written pieces, produced by the Print Studio's old literary wing, Print Studio Press, such as his "The Comedy of The White Dog". Screenprints of illuminated poems which have more recently been on display here also line the walls but for me the highlight was seeing a series of new screenprints he has produced, based upon the artwork of his most famous book, Lanark. Some of these, the title pages of the four "books" of Lanark are versions of classic title pages from Versalius's anatomical book De Humani Corporis Fabrica, from Hobbes's Leviathon, from Bacon's Novum Organum and Raleigh's History of the World.  Each is given his individual twist, such as the Glasgow University logo appearing in one and James Kelman's face in another and these new versions are great to see (view here).

Lanark, the book, is now regarded as a Scottish classic. Published in 1981 it tells the parallel stories of Duncan Thaw in Glasgow, and of a young man called Lanark in a Glasgow-like town of Unthank, with Kafkaesque oddities and twists. I read and enjoyed it years ago now, but seeing the new versions of the prints has made me dust down my copy and give it a go again.

The exhibition in the basement space at Kelvingrove Art Gallery is titled "From The Personal to the Universal". Excellently curated by Sorcha Dallas who continue to represent Alasdair Gray, it is a retrospective of his work from his schoolboy art classes in Kelvingrove galleries, to the present day. As is often the case with many of his works, some are listed as unfinished as he often goes back and alters and colours old works. From his earliest works on show here he really grabs the attention. In the first room a piece from his student days in the Glasgow School of Art of the "cutty sark" episode in Tam O'Shanter show his already developing distinctive style.

A room of seemingly simple portraits belies the attention to small detail contained within them. In one, which is only shown as a photograph, of Scottish Nationalist and Socialist Bill Skinner in his Otago Street flat in 1968, if you look closely a fire can be seen outside his window. This is the old Kelvinbridge train station burning down, which I had only read about a week before. This attention to documenting detail was picked up on by Elspeth King when she commisioned him as "city recorder". Whilst curator of the People's Palace in Glasgow in the early 1970s she was aware that it contained no scenes of Glasgow or its people from its more recent past. There is great pleasure to be gained by spending some time looking at the detail he got into these drawings. Whether it is the ticket stubs collected from a typist's handbag when she was sketched on a break from work or the shop hoardings, crumbling buildings or a motorbike in the background of a drawing of Arcadia Street. Some of the best are of Glaswegians he knew and he documented their lives with great insight such as poet Tom Leonard, union leader Jimmy Reid both pictured with their families or of James Kelman, with his influential bookshelves behind him.

London Road Between Templeton's Carpet Factory and Monaco Bar, 1977 by Alasdair Gray

 Several of his own self portraits are seen here too, a familiar sight in many of his books, often with the artists' hand still drawing in the style of Escher's hands drawing each other.

There is a brief section on his mural painting here, with a recreation of his first mural commission. This was for the Scotland-USSR Friendship Society premises on Belmont Crescent and rather than ape the Socialist Realism style that you may have expected, he created a rather more dystopian vision in "Horrors of War", inspired by works of Durer and Brueghel. As a child I attended many functions in this building with my family, and cannot for the life of me recall ever seeing this mural before, but I do remember playing in the long garden that they had at the back of the building. The building has since been sold on and the mural is now underneath wallpaper apparently.

Part of the roof mural at Oran Mor by Alasdair Gray

Other murals however can be seen in the west end of Glasgow, such as mentioned above in the entrance to Hillhead underground station, outside the bar in the Western Baths Club, lining the walls of the Ubiquitous Chip stairwell and most famously adorning the roof and walls of Oran Mor's auditorium.

Floor mural at the Western Baths Club, Glasgow

Palacerigg Nature Reserve, Cumbernauld

If you aren't handy for the west end of Glasgow then you can see other murals out at the Greenbank Parish Church in Clarkston, Kirkfield Tavern near Lanark or in Cumbernauld on the walls of the exhibition centre of Palacerigg Nature Reserve (which is a grand wee day out if you've got children).

Alasdair Gray has spent years recording a version of Glasgow in words and pictures, so it is great to see Glasgow trying to return the compliment and I would encourage anyone who hasn't been to these exhibitions yet to go along and see them.

Ghost Signs of Glasgow, The Fading Works of the Signwriter

Old shop signs of Glasgow

When I'm out jogging I pass many old, fading shop signs or "ghost signs" as they are known, slowly vanishing into obscurity. Despite the wee insights into another era that these give they are rarely afforded any protection, which probably adds to their charm. You still see old signs in several places. You see them above pubs, where old signs are remade, as if they are unchanging. You see them on Italian cafes (eg Jaconelli's at Queens Cross) where the faded art deco signage has almost become their calling card. Also now you see them on some bars and cafes where old battered signs which they have uncovered in the course of renovation works are kept to add a "quaint" ambience to a place. 

However in most cases these signs are uncovered briefly in the course of building work and then covered over again with a bland, disposable plastic sign. The best collection of old signs put to good use in Glasgow is surely inside the Old Fruitmarket, where the stallholders signs from the market days hang from the balcony.

Firhill Stadium. It has been a while since it was £3 to get in to see Partick Thistle,
most home games cost £22 for an adult now, but these old signs lives on

Cafezique on Hyndland Street, Glasgow

Kelvingrove Cafe, a bar on Argyle Street at Kelvinhaugh Street

Sign writers and gilders were important and skilled tradesmen in the days before adverts could be mass produced on posters and signage printed cheaply on plastic hoardings. Gilded street signs and their distinctive fonts seem a million miles away from our uniform modern ones (even the olde names are better).

Old gilded sign for Edelweiss Terrace in 3D "Lounge Bar"
font, now just boring old Partickhill Road

Fading but gilded versions of "Crown Mansions, Partickhill"
in two different fonts, now Partickhill Road

Part of the appeal of these old signs is the fact that they are passing, like the sentimental nostalgia you feel on seeing someone's naff decor revealed high up on the wall of a half-demolished building. They recall shops and trades that no longer exist and seem to have some charm and individuality. Nowadays it is often felt that the rows of shopfronts in one town can look exactly the same as every other streetscape in the land.

Two of my favourite ghost signs in Glasgow are the barely visible "Capstan" sign beside the Brazen Head pub in the Gorbals and the "Red Hackle" advert high up on a building on Otago Street.

Capstan cigarettes

Railway Bridge on Cumberland Street, Glasgow, advertising Capstan cigarettes

Capstan cigarettes were produced by the Wills tobacco company, a company originally founded in 1786 in Bristol, trading tobacco from the colonies (see blog on Glasgow's tobacco merchants). Other brands which they owned included Woodbine, Strand cigarettes and Gold Flake tobacco. In 1953 Wills opened a cigarette factory on Alexandra Parade where my uncle worked for a time, this factory continued churning out cigarettes until it closed in 1990.

Former Wills Tobacco Factory, Alexandra Parade, Glasgow

 In 1971 when tar and nicotine content of cigarettes was first published in the UK, Capstan cigarettes had by far the highest content. For 10 years I drove under this bridge on my way to work and depending on the lighting that day, I could usually see the words "CAPSTAN cigarettes" shining out at me as I sat at the traffic lights. The railway bridge at Cumberland Street in the Gorbals is near to where my gran and grandad lived as children. There is barely a photograph of my grandad without a cigarette hanging from his bottom lip, so I imagine this Capstan advert he must have passed a thousand times as being aimed directly at his teenage self. 

Today when I ran past to take a photo of the bridge it is now almost impossible to discern the old writing, particularly as some latter day artist has scrawled (I think) "TOGS....SOO" across it. (Young Sooside Cumbie? Anyone?)

Red Hackle Whisky

Ghost sign of "Red Hackle" reading across with another
"Red" visible at the top and a whisky bottle on the right

The building now at 37 Otago Street in Glasgow is home to the Rug Rooms flooring company amongst other things, including a Sikh temple. 

Red Hackle whisky

However if you look up at the gable end of the building from Otago Street you can discern two versions of the words "Red Hackle" painted over each other and perhaps a whisky bottle on the right hand side. What you won't be able to see are the words "Scotch By Tradition" at the bottom (which is visible in the old photo below). This building is sometimes referred to as "Kelvin House" or the "Red Hackle" building. It was built between 1887 and 1897 as a warehouse for P Hepburn, "wholesale cabinetmaker and upholsterer" but in 1920 Charles Hepburn and Herbert Ross founded Herbert and Ross Whisky Blenders Company and the building came to be their premises for Red Hackle whisky blending and broking. The two men had both served in World War 1 and had a policy of employing ex-servicemen. The "Red Hackle" that gave their whisky its name is the red feather on the headdress of the Black Watch Regiment. 

1965, Red Hackle building, Otago Street

If you look at this old photograph above you can see two tunnels on the right hand side underneath a small building - this is clearer in the picture below. This was a train station on the Glasgow Central Line, if you follow it from here onto the other bank of the River Kelvin, you'll soon come to the old train tunnels at the entrance to Kelvingrove Park, where they used to hold raves in the 1990s. Going the other way underneath Great Western Road the next old train station is in the Botanic Gardens, then at Kirklee. The station is clearer in the photo below, although obviously in a state of neglect. The Kelvinbridge Station was close to Kelvinbridge Subway Station and opened in 1896. It closed to passengers 56 years later and to freight in 1964. As is often the way in Glasgow with inconvenient old buildings, it was destroyed by fire in 1968.

It's difficult to see the old station now with the trees but the platforms are still there

Staircase up to the station from the platform 

When I went past to try to copy the old photograph above of Kelvinbridge Train Station today it was almost impossible to see it through the leaves on the trees. It sits down beside the River Kelvin beside the beer garden of the Inn Deep Bar. However the gate over the entrance to the old tunnel was unlocked today, so I went inside to have a nosey. It was pretty dark, but the short station platforms are still there and a flight of stairs leading upwards to the old station. There are loads of these old train stations in Glasgow, hidden away.

Old platform of Kelvinbridge train station,
looking towards the tunnel under Gt Western Road

Charles Hepburn, who owned the whisky company, donated the premises across the road on Otago Street to the new Piping School and financed the "Red Hackle Pipe Band". He lived at 7 University Gardens and bequeathed this house and a large part of his valuable book collection to Glasgow University upon his death. He had a major art collection too, and it is known that he got his signwriter to create copies of some other famous artworks, such as The Laughing Cavalier, for his house. 

Entrance hallway inside the old Red Hackle
building, Otago Street. Now a rug showroom.

Unusually we are able to put a name to the man doing the signage here at Red Hackle. Alex McGregor was born in Glasgow in 1910 and in 1927 was awarded "Apprentice Of The Year" after completing his apprenticeship as a painter and signwriter. He later studied at Glasgow School of Art on a part-time basis. 20 years later he was employed by Charles Hepburn as the whisky company's signwriter. He was installed in the top floor at the Red Hackle building on Otago Street, the skylight windows here giving him a great studio space overlooking the River Kelvin. When the building was refurbished in 1952, a rather odd baronial-style entrance hall was created. If you go into the Rug Rooms showroom you can still see it, and on the roof of the hall Alex McGregor was commissioned to paint shields depicting the clans of Scotland. He also painted a frieze of famous Scots around the wall of Charles Hepburn's office, which suggests he was very familiar with the one in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. Shortly after completing this work, Mr McGregor sadly had a massive heart attack and died, aged 42. I guess it stands now as an opportunity for us to view the skills and abilities the men who created these now fading adverts and signs really had.

Part of the frieze of famous Scots in the office at the Otago Street building

So for Alex McGregor all the other sign painters of Glasgow here is a random selection of their works that I have spotted on jogging through the streets of Glasgow this past week or two.

"Home Bakery" on Hyndland Street, now vacant

Fruit and Vegetable sellers advert on St Georges Road. Only recently
 there was a modern billboard hiding this (see Google StreetView)

Now Mother India Cafe on Argyle Street

A mess of old and new signs at The Hidden Lane, Finnieston

Goods Entrance, Woolworths at Charing Cross, Glasgow

Also at old Woolworth's, Charing Cross

Okay, not that old, but I pass it on my way to Firhill and
always suspected that Frank had painted it himself

Great Western Road. What once stood on this wall
(Update from @allan_tall "I mind the ad for Ecko Radios here")

Bank Street, Glasgow

Hyndland Road, beside another disused station,
which no longer stands, now "Station Park"

Kelvingrove Cafe, Argyle Street

Bilsland's Bakery, Anderston
(one time owner, Alexander Steven Bilsland became Baron Bilsland and director of Bank of Scotland)

Old Warehouses on James Watt Street Glasgow
(see here for info on warehouse fire on James Watt Street)

Warehouses on James Watt Street

Old tobacco warehouses on James Watt Street, Glasgow

A lane in the Trongate "Taurus Manufacturing"

A lane in the Trongate, Glasgow, beneath the
Britannia Panopticon where Stan Laurel performed

Theatre Review: Checkov's Three Sisters, Adapted by John Byrne. Tron Theatre, Glasgow

Theatre Review: Checkov's Three Sisters, Adapted by John Byrne. Tron Theatre, Glasgow

As I'm a big fan of Russian literature I'll be back at the Tron Theatre soon to see a version of Gogol's The Gamblers, but this week they are showing Anton Chekov's Three Sisters, adapted by Paisley born artist and playwright John Byrne.

He too clearly has an affection for Russian works, having previously written versions of Checkov's Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya. Although there are several sly references in this version to the play's Russian origins, Byrne's Three Sisters are stuck squarely in the provincial world of 1960's Dunoon. They are pining for London and this perfectly recreates the ennui and petty parochialism the original family felt when stuck 1000s of miles away from Moscow. The sisters and their ineffectual brother, played by Jonathon Watson, feel superior to the locals culturally and intellectually and struggle to find a role in life. With John Byrne you get the whole package, play and designs and it was nice to see his costume designs on the corridor walls at the interval.

John Byrne's costume designs

When I was a youth, in the 1980s, I only ever went to Dunoon to take part in demonstrations at the American Navy submarine base. A quiet seaside town, the British navy started a submarine base at Dunoon in the Second World War, but the town became a true garrison town when the Americans arrived in 1961. After 30 years they left and on a visit to Dunoon recently it did look rather like its best years were behind it. As a protester I always preferred a jaunt to Dunoon rather than Faslane, as the former demonstrations were held nearer the town and you could always get a wee go at the Shows. At Faslane it meant getting a lift up to the base in someone's Lada from the station at Helensburgh.

Another person who may have been nostalgic for old Dunoon is Sylvester McCoy. The seventh Doctor Who plays the doctor; in this as old family friend Dr MacGillivery. The actor was born in Dunoon in 1943 and seems to be having fun playing the eccentric character, even getting the chance to show off his spoon playing skills (see it here in "Time and the Rani").

Putting the play in this time and place works well, with a handy nearby supply of military characters, led by the ever watchable Andy Clark. The sisters play out their respective loves, frustrations and losses, their dreams of getting to the far off, remembered, cosmopolitan idyll slowly die. The red haired sisters played by Jessica Hardwick, Muireann Kelly and Sally Reid feel bonded (unlike Jessica Hardwick's distractingly strange ginger wig). I spent a wee while with Jonathon Watson on stage trying to guess which Scottish footballing character he was trying to be (Bertie Vogts I decided). His Wemyss Bay beau is played with gusto by Louise McCarthy and Stephen Clyde plays the damaged, unsettling and destructive sailor Maloney.

Many of the common themes of Russian literature of the time are played out here. People with aspirations for greater things tied down as bureaucrats away from influence, the upper classes trying to find their role in a changing world and the querulous and demanding lower orders refusing to accept their place in the world. It's all that misery that keeps me coming back to Russian literature.

The play runs for another week in Glasgow before transferring to Edinburgh.

#review

Review : Mrs Barbour's Daughters, A Play A Pie and A Pint, Oran Mor.

Theatre Review : Mrs Barbour's Daughters, A Play A Pie and A Pint, Oran Mor. Oct 2014

I'm only after writing about Glasgow's radical past last week, when one of the people I was reading about, Mary Barbour, is remembered in a play at Oran Mor's A Play, A Pie and a Pint series a few days later.

In "Mrs Barbour's Daughters" by A J Taudevin (which is on in Glasgow this week before transferring to the Traverse in Edinburgh) an 87 year old woman is facing eviction from her crumbling tenement. Libby McArthur plays her carer niece and whilst they talk about the present day and worries of the Bedroom Tax, Mary, played by Anna Hepburn is overwhelmed with memories from her early family life. With a clever bit of direction they easily flit back and forwards through the decades as Mary remembers her more politically minded sister, played by Gail Watson (who plays Katie Morag's mum on cbeebies, and showed her singing prowess previously in Oran Mor's "A Bottle of Wine and Patsy Cline").

It is easy to see the modern day comparisons, with Mary Barbour getting woman politically motivated in the rent strikes of the 1915 and modern day women becoming a force for change in the mass meetings of the Women for Indy campaign recently. Mary in the play feels that she was taken for granted and missed out on a life, whilst her mother and sister were off campaigning and living theirs, but she still has a stubborn glint in her eye.

The whole play is lifted by two musical moments. Once when Gail Watson raises the spirits with a rendition of "John MacLean's March" and then in a rousing finale that brought a wee tear to my eye. Libby McArthur also does a standout turn as she becomes Mary Barbour, delivering a speech urging us to fight (she looked uncannily like her I thought). It was a clever way of portraying a time just beyond living memory.

The only issue I had with the play was that it felt incredibly positive and optimistic at the end, which just isn't something that sits comfortably with a Glaswegian like me.

Like a couple of my great-great-great grandparents, Mary Barbour was the daughter of a weaver from Kilbarchan. She became politically active during WW1 when she led the rent strike campaigns in Govan. In 1920 she stood as the Labour candidate in Fairfield ward and became one of Glasgow's first woman Councillors, where she continued her campaigns. If you want to find out more about Mary Barbour and the campaign to get a lasting memorial to her in Glasgow look here at RememberMaryBarbour.
My reflections on Glasgow's other neglected radicals is here.