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Glasgow - A History & CelebrationSelected extracts and photosReturn to Book | Search for another Book | View all photos for Glasgow | Glasgow homepage |
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 Denderah, Portico of the Temple c1857 (ref. 1902) | Queen's Park took the lead in forming the Scottish Football Association in 1873. In the previous year Rangers was formed, and in 1887 a Catholic priest formed a club for underprivileged youngsters in the slums of the East End with the title of Celtic. Although there were about 40 football clubs in Glasgow by 1890 when the Scottish League was formed, it was dominated from the outset by Rangers and Celtic; to this day, these teams are virtually in a league of their own, with fans all over the world. Hampden also includes the Museum of Scottish Football, a Millennium project opened in 2000. It is said that the rapid growth of football as a popular sport was facilitated by Glasgow's excellent public transport system. Horse-buses started in 1845, and horse-trams were running as early as 1872. These enterprises passed under the control of the Corporation in 1894 (the first municipal transport system in the United Kingdom). The numerous drumlins (hillocks) on which Glasgow is built posed a problem for the horses, and this forced the Corporation to adopt electric traction. Following an experiment in 1897, the first permanent line was opened in 1901 to coincide with the International Exhibition at Kelvingrove. The flat-topped remained in service for over half a century, painted in different colours to denote the route. |  Add your own Memory Add to your Album |
 Glasgow, Science Centre 2005 (ref. G11721k) | Lancefield Quay, formerly the wharves and sheds of the Irish boats, has become a prestigious apartment block; it is appropriate that the 'Waverley' is still berthed there - residents of the penthouse flats can virtually look straight down her funnels. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Atlantic Quay 2005 (ref. G11718k) | It was already happening in the 1980s, when Royal Mail cleared the wharves on the south side of the river at Kingston and developed the largest mechanised letter office in the United Kingdom. In the mid 1990s, however, demand for this service outgrew the location, and so Royal Mail decamped to Springburn, erecting the Automated Processing Centre where once had stood the engine-sheds and locomotive yards at Cowlairs. By the end of the 1990s Springfield Quay had been transformed yet again, emerging as the foremost leisure and entertainment areas of the city, with an Odeon multiplex cinema and a score of restaurants, bars and sporting facilities. Farther west on the south bank the great Princes Dock was filled in and became the site for the Glasgow Garden Festival of 1988, exactly a century after Glasgow had hosted the first of its four great international exhibitions. The sole remnants of the great days of Clyde shipping today are the three derelict graving docks at Govan and the giant crane across the river. Symbolic of the cranes that easily hoisted entire locomotives on to ships to run the world's railways, the last remaining crane is not only a landmark (James Mackay) Atlantic Quay, near the city centre, is the location of many office blocks created in recent years. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Dragon Boat Race on the Clyde, Chinese New Year 2005 (ref. G11714k) | The slums of the Gorbals were cleared, and in their place in the 1960s arose enormous tower blocks; in recent years they have been demolished to make way for low-density housing of a more humane variety. The Gorbals was traditionally a district with a transitory population. The Irish of the 1840s gave way around the turn of the century to the Jews who fled the pogroms of eastern Europe. As they became more affluent, they moved out to Giffnock, Whitecraigs and Newton Mearns on the southern outskirts of the city. In the period after the Second World War their place was taken by Glasgow's burgeoning Asian community. Now they too have moved out, spreading all over the city. Glasgow has also had a substantial influx of Italians, Chinese and Poles, and latterly Kurds and other asylum seekers, and it is today a truly multi-ethnic society. (James Mackay) The Chinese community celebrate the Lunar New Year with a dragon boat race on the Clyde. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Renfield Street 1897 (ref. 39769A) | Glasgow also took a lead in other aspects of communications. In 1878 Alexander Graham Bell revisited his native land to demonstrate the telephone to the British Association meeting hosted by Lord Kelvin. A few months later the Medical Telephone Exchange was established for the medical profession, and in November 1879 the Scottish Telephone Exchange opened to serve the general public. The National Telephone Company was formed in 1881 and nationalised in 1912, when its operations were handed over to the Post Office. By the closing years of the century Glasgow had grown in power, prestige and wealth out of all recognition. The seal was set on its success by staging the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1888; Queen Victoria herself performed the opening ceremony and conferred a baronetcy on the Lord Provost, James King, the first holder of the office to be thus honoured. Five years later Glasgow was elevated to become the County of the City of Glasgow, and thereafter the Lord Provost became ex officio Her Majesty's Lord Lieutenant, entitled from 1912 onwards to the appellation of The Right Honourable. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Woodside Place 1897 (ref. 39762) | Glasgow boasts one of the world's finest municipal collections of art, now housed at Kelvingrove. The nucleus of this was formed by Archibald McLellan (1796-1854); he bequeathed it to the city together with the McLellan Galleries in Sauchiehall Street, where the collection was originally displayed. His generosity inspired other wealthy benefactors and led to the creation of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which opened in 1902. The greatest single benefactor, however, was Sir William Burrell, a shipping magnate, whose magpie propensities were rivalled only by William Randolph Hearst in America. This vast collection of the fine, applied and decorative arts was bequeathed to Glasgow in 1944, but it was not until 1983 that the Burrell Collection, in a modern state-of-the- art complex, was opened in Pollok Park. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the Royal Exchange 1897 (ref. 39798) | Originally built as a mansion for William Cunninghame of Lainshaw in 1778-80, it was remodelled in 1827-28 as the Royal Exchange, then became Stirling's Library in 1954; it is now the Gallery of Modern Art. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the People's Palace 2005 (ref. G11711k) | Originally built as a mansion for William Cunninghame of Lainshaw in 1778-80, it was remodelled in 1827-28 as the Royal Exchange, then became Stirling's Library in 1954; it is now the Gallery of Modern Art. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the Stock Exchange 1897 (ref. 39771) | Victorian Glasgow may have been a parvenu compared with Edinburgh, with its ancient history as Scotland's capital and its 18th-century reputation as the Athens of the North, but Glasgow's unparalleled prosperity in the second half of the 19th century created a wealthy class. Like the tobacco lords and cotton kings of earlier generations, they were lavish benefactors to the city, and the incredible range of fine buildings is the legacy of their munificence. The demand for their services led to the rise of many architects; some of them, like Alexander 'Greek' Thomson and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, achieved world status. Every style of architecture from the classical to the Gothic, from baroque to Scots Baronial, from Romanesque to Italianate, can be found in Glasgow. The city even went through a Venetian phase, represented to this day in John Honeyman's Ca' d'Oro (1872) and the Templeton Business Centre (formerly a carpet factory), which was modelled on the Doge's Palace (1888). | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, remains of the Flint Mill on the River Kelvin 2005 (ref. G11707k) | The textile mills, forges and foundries, and the vast array of factories of all kinds that sprang up in the 1830s, attracted many people from the surrounding countryside, who exchanged the traditional peasant life for that of the urban proletariat. The Highland clearances brought a fresh influx, and to this day there are more Gaelic speakers in Glasgow than in the Highlands and Islands. The potato famine of the Hungry Forties brought in vast numbers of people particularly from the south and west of Ireland, but even by 1841 (as the census returns of that year testify) the number of Glaswegians denoted by the letter 'I' as having been born in Ireland was relatively high, and certain districts, notably the Gorbals, were almost entirely Irish by that date. In that year the population of Glasgow was computed at 255,650, and for the first time it was claimed that Glasgow was now not only the largest city in Scotland, but second only to London itself. A decade later the population had risen to 329,096, and it was boasted that Glasgow was now the Second City of the Empire, a record it would hold for exactly a century. In 1846 Glasgow's relentless expansion (James Mackay) These remains are situated on the banks of the River Kelvin east of the Botanic Gardens. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Crookston Castle 1897 (ref. 39808) | THE MAIN EAST-WEST thoroughfare in Bearsden, one of Glasgow's northern suburbs, is named Roman Road, for it follows the line of a roadway constructed by the Romans in AD 142 along the south side of the Antonine Wall. This turf and stone rampart, with forts at two-mile intervals, served as the farthest frontier of the Roman Empire for barely half a century before it was abandoned and Roman Britain withdrew to Hadrian's Wall across the north of present-day England. Bearsden is proud of its antiquity, with Roman Avenue, Roman Drive and Roman Gardens for good measure. Between Roman Road and Roman Court lies the site of a Roman bath house, but the most tangible reminder of the Roman presence in this area is the fort which stands in the middle of the New Kilpatrick cemetery. Farther east, at Balcastle (from the Gaelic 'baile chaisteil', meaning 'castle town') are the remains of a Pictish fort. Because this shadowy Celtic people decorated their bodies with tattoos, the Romans dubbed them Picti ('the painted ones'). In the Q-Celtic language they called themselves Cruithne, but in the P-Celtic tongue this became Pruithne, and it is from this form that the word Britain is said to derive. It is from Q-Celtic or Goidelic that the Gaelic of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands is derived, whereas P-Celtic or Brythonic gives rise to Welsh, Cornish and Breton. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the Necropolis 1897 (ref. 39784) | Glasgow received its first charter from King William the Lion in about 1175, and for the first time it was designated by the Latin term civitas (city). A few years later the king granted Bishop Jocelin the right to hold an annual fair, a tradition that continues to this day, although by 1830 it had been transformed into a great festival for the working classes. The medieval fair was held at the upper end of the High Street (Townhead), but as the town began to spread southward, the fair moved to the north bank of the Clyde, near the Stockwell. After it ceased to be primarily a market for horses and cattle in 1818 it moved at the western end of what is now Glasgow Green, and was given over to a circus, menagerie and all the sideshows associated with such entertainment. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the Cathedral and the Necropolis 1890 (ref. G11001x) | By the beginning of the 17th century the centre of Glasgow had shifted south, to the foot of the High Street where it joined the Saltmarket. Glasgow was never a walled town, but it had four gates at the points of the compass to control traffic. These gates were known as ports and were called the Stable Green Port (north), the Gallowgate Port (east), Brig Port (south) and Trongate Port (west). Rather confusingly, the streets were called gates (often spelled gait or yet). East and west of the Cross were the Trongate and the Gallowgate, still the principal thoroughfares leading to Argyle Street and the Edinburgh Road respectively. The Briggait or Bridgegate linked the north end of the bridge to the Saltmarket (originally called the Waulcergait (street of the wool- scourers), while the Drygate ran east from the cathedral and terminated on the west bank of the Molendinar. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Green, playground of the East End 2004 (ref. G11703k) | By the beginning of the 17th century the centre of Glasgow had shifted south, to the foot of the High Street where it joined the Saltmarket. Glasgow was never a walled town, but it had four gates at the points of the compass to control traffic. These gates were known as ports and were called the Stable Green Port (north), the Gallowgate Port (east), Brig Port (south) and Trongate Port (west). Rather confusingly, the streets were called gates (often spelled gait or yet). East and west of the Cross were the Trongate and the Gallowgate, still the principal thoroughfares leading to Argyle Street and the Edinburgh Road respectively. The Briggait or Bridgegate linked the north end of the bridge to the Saltmarket (originally called the Waulcergait (street of the wool- scourers), while the Drygate ran east from the cathedral and terminated on the west bank of the Molendinar. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the Broomielaw 1897 (ref. 39801) | Scotland's first university, founded in 1411. Turnbull became bishop in 1447 and continued till 1454. The university really put Glasgow on the map, although it had a hard struggle to get fully established. Classes (confined to the arts faculty) were originally conducted in the cathedral crypt, but within two years had moved to a separate building on the east side of the High Street. Over the centuries this developed into a splendid structure with twin quadrangles. With the phenomenal commercial and industrial expansion of Glasgow in the 19th century this site became too cramped, so in 1870 the university sold the land for a railway goods yard (hence College Goods Station, now demolished to make way for luxury flats). | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Argyle Street 1897 (ref. 39765) | THE ACT OF UNION in 1707 was bitterly reviled at the time, and even for many years afterwards - Robert Burns echoed popular sentiment when he dismissed the Scottish commissioners with the lines: 'We're bought and sold for English gold, Such a parcel o' rogues in a nation!' But Glasgow was very quick to benefit from the opening of trade with the American colonies. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Buchanan Street 1897 (ref. 39767) | Thus Glasgow ended up with four railway termini but not a single through line, and to this day passengers have to walk or take a shuttle bus between Central and Queen Street. Buchanan Street Station was the poor relation of the termini, little more than a large wooden shed painted red-brown. It was demolished in 1966, and lines to the north thereafter operated out of Queen Street; its site is now occupied by the Royal Concert Hall. St Enoch Station was another victim of rationalisation and retrenchment, and its lines were transferred to Central. The grand edifice was gutted and used as a car-park before its demolition in 1977 to make way for the St Enoch Centre constructed in 1981-89, a vast shopping complex which looks more like a railway station than the building it replaced. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross 1897 (ref. 39768) | Glasgow began its westward expansion in the late 1830s, when fine terraces were laid out along Sauchiehall Street to Charing Cross and beyond. A similar development ran northwards along Woodlands Road. Unlike the 18th-century grid plan, the expansion of the 1830s and 1840s tended to follow contours and natural features, and the great terraces were fronted by gardens surrounded by railings. The occupiers of the dwellings had access to these 'pleasure gardens' screened by trees. By contrast, Argyle Street, belonging to a previous generation of building, had no green spaces at all, and the solitary tree that towered over the tenements of Sandyford is believed to have begun as a tiny seedling which a boy brought back from a jaunt into the countryside. Blythswood Square, lying to the south of Sauchiehall Street, was the first of the city squares laid out as a formal garden. George Square in the city centre, on the other hand, was originally no more than a pasture for the cows that provided fresh milk for the city dwellers, but by the 1850s it was almost entirely paved over and became the location for statues of the great and good. Originally George Square had terraces of dwelling houses on all four sides, but they were demolished from 1869 onwards and their place taken by the great public buildings occupied by the Bank of Scotland, the General Post Office, the Merchants House and the City Chambers (completed in 1890), one of the most lavish municipal buildings to be found anywhere in the United Kingdom. Ironically, the only vestige of the original late Georgian houses is to be found on the north side of the square, where the terrace of 1807 was converted at the end of the century to become the North British Hotel (now renamed the Copthorne) fronting Queen Street Station. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, the Sir Walter Scott Monument 1897 (ref. 39760v) | The statues include this monument to Sir Walter Scott, who stands atop a tall Doric column; it was erected in 1837, less than five years after his death, and was the first memorial to him anywhere. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
 Glasgow, Municipal Buildings 1897 (ref. 39761) | The statues include this monument to Sir Walter Scott, who stands atop a tall Doric column; it was erected in 1837, less than five years after his death, and was the first memorial to him anywhere. | Add your own MemoryAdd to your Album |
