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Like any town or city there will be old and new not far away from each other. Rich and poor districts existing side by side, expanding or contracting over the years and decades with boom or bust economies and changing lifestyles/ technology having an influence. No other bus ride I've taken over the last ten years however showed this change so completely.
Same place, same spot, just turning around to face the city centre district.
Bridge Street demolition. I've known about Clyde Street and the River Clyde waterfront for several years now but crossing Glasgow Bridge on the 38 bus was an altogether different experience...... as that was even worse. Maybe many UK city centres look like this now... I don't know.. I don't get around as much as I used to... but I was pretty shocked at the change. Laurieston i.e. Bridge Street and Eglinton Street were never upmarket places but they look fairly desperate now.
Bridge Street has been closed for many months now and the buses get diverted around it. Loads of rubbish and squalor in plain sight yet still many small businesses surviving here.
Tradeston, Glasgow's original trading estate district does not have much of a resident local population being a warehouse/ cash and carry/incoming entrepreneur network of streets but I'd imagine you could work here and if successful, as the owner, live in upmarket areas further out.
It's probably very quiet and deserted at night once the workforce departs, hence the extreme levels of graffiti... but I've never seen it as bad as this before.
You could say it's an area in transition at the moment. Given the massive Barclays Bank complex is really close to here the eventual plan is maybe to gentrify this district, knocking down the older stuff and rebuilding with office towers and completely modern infrastructure.... but that could take years.
Meanwhile it looks like this....
As the 38 bus to Woodfarm trundled slowly along Eglinton Street I was amazed at the decline.
Not sure if this row of shops is closed for good or only temporarily but it does look unused. Looking at Google street map cameras for summer 2024 some were still open then.... and not as much graffiti on the shutters.
Confession time. When I left school in the early 1970s I got a job down here as a young apprentice so I've witnessed three different sets of housing stock rise and fall in this area. Tradeston/ Gorbals. One early memory was working in a tenement street, houses built late 1800s early 1900s, the housing stock of the 1930s razor kings of old Glasgow, when up and coming hard guys would carry open razors for fighting in the streets as depicted in the 1935 tabloid best seller No Mean City. Only thing I caught in that old tenement though was fleas, dozens of them hungry for a meal, as we were renovating an empty block of flats, recently vacated. As this was a fairly regular occurrence then in the old tenements and the building trade my gaffer had a quick solution to the problem. " Buy Keating's flea powder Son. That will kill them fast." That night on the way home I bought a packet and sprinkled it between my bed sheets, intrigued by the illustrations of all kinds of dead bugs meeting their end after coming into contact at the merest whiff of the powder. It could have been DDT or arsenic for all I knew back then as I'd never had bugs before that point but it did the trick. Now, with google and curious to find out I looked it up.
https://www.terahertz.co.uk/tk-instruments/history
Not thought about this product for 40 years. Glad to find out it was only a plant extract after sprinkling it inside my bed on several occasions. Now they build satellites for space exploration. I got fleas on five different occasions so I was a repeat buyer of the stuff. It didn't happen often but it was just one occupational hazard back then of working in old buildings. But I much preferred that to working indoors in an office. My gaffer lived out past Hamilton so he used to drop me at bus stops wherever we were working that day and I made my own way back to Nitshill from there. Once from East Kilbride, Several times from Wishaw, Motherwell, Kirkintilloch, Airdrie etc. It sometimes took me 2 hours or more to get home at night. In the winter months a long cold slog in the dark. I had to carry a torch just to see bus stops and street names. A tough education of working life yet I enjoyed it. Exploring different towns and cities has been a lifelong passion for me. Always on a tight budget though. Later in my early 20s it gave me the confidence to start exploring London on my own, the biggest urban prize of all in the UK. I did that in my spare time over five years. Not every district... just the most interesting parts.
Another memory of working in that period, early 1970s, was working on the top floor of an old, mostly empty, 4 level tenement in the Gorbals, 10 below with snow everywhere. It was freezing in the empty rooms, several cracked/ broken windows so my gaffer noticed some thrown away furniture in the back court and sent me down to get it. We soon had a fire going in the living room fireplace which raised the temperature enough so that we could feel our fingers again, working with metal tools in our hands all day. At lunch, sitting round our fire, we read some of the 1950s newspapers from under the lino we'd saved, always more interesting than current news stories. Spread down by the tenants moving in for both insulation and to cover any bumps that might poke up into the lino. No central heating then, only coal fires and ice forming in the sink in hard winters. Minus ten was fairly common back then. One annoying habit my gaffer had though was going to a cheap transport cafe near the Gorbals if we were working in houses nearby. It was frequented back then by down and outs putting methylated spirits in their cups of breakfast tea so the strong smell of that often put me off my roll and sausage, even though it was good value. I don't imagine methylated spirit drinkers lived very long as that unhealthy practice seems to have died out nowadays.
An old electricity power station at St Andrew's Cross. I think it used to have tall chimneys decades ago, now long gone, but still a power hub in part of this building.
Old YMCA building. St Andrew's Cross. Glasgow. A detail.
Same YMCA building. Eglinton Toll/ St Andrew's Cross. In decades gone by this used to be a busy population hub and meeting place. A notable convergence. Not so much nowadays. This is looking towards Shawlands.
The Star Bar. Eglinton Toll. Exact same location but looking towards Tradeston/ Glasgow City Centre.
The old Plaza Ballroom. Now converted into flats with only the low red sandstone frontage retained.
Unusual box style apartments at Eglinton Toll... to be continued....
6 comments:
I had to use 'Lyclear' ointment for the first few summers in my new house here as I got fleas every summer. I'm pretty sure it was from the house move - soft furnishings like my 3 piece suite were covered with an old blanket for the move - one which was used on everyone's soft furnishings - I'm sure that's where they came from. Also permethrin spray each summer on the carpets and furnishings. Very embarrassing to buy - I told them I had a dog!
Like your employer's thinking to get some scrap wood from outside and start a fire in the fireplace of the house you were working in.
What you need is 'Cumbrian Rural Graffiti' up there. Always amusing. Mine and Richard's favourite was a set of traffic lights which had been graffiti'd out in the country. We always wanted the lights to be on red so we got the full sequence and were disappointed if we got straight through on green. The green light had a smiley face, the amber a :-| face and the red had a sad face. Always gave me hysterics.
Do you know about the Cochno Stone? I came across a photo of my grandfather’s from 1934 when this large stone area near Faifley was exposed. The cup and stone carvings are thought to be 5,000 years old. I think they have been uncovered since, but when inHelensburgh on holiday this year we tried to find them. Eventually we asked a passing gentleman who’d lived there all his life if he could direct us to them. There are only two small areas exposed now, but it’s interesting to explore them on Google.
Hi Carol. Luckily it was only fleas and one sprinkle overnight killed them. Would not have liked to bring home bed bugs or cockroaches but never seen any of them thank God, Scotland probably being too cold, especially back then with colder winters and not much central heating in ordinary houses. Bob. BSS.
Hi Anon, Yes I do know about it. Number 2 bus to Faifley terminus then a short walk to it. Not visited it for decades though. Also been to the chambered cairn on Craigmaddie Muir, Clochodrick Stone near Lochwinnoch and Cuff Hill's Rocking Stone but only in passing doing small hills. I used google maps for the next part of this urban walk. Very useful at times. Bob. BSS.
I love Glasgow, as you know, and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, but we’ve just come back from Manchester and it made me a wee bit ashamed of our city. Hardly any litter, fewer potholes, and far more imaginative new buildings.
Enjoyed your reminiscing!
Hi Anabel, I'm really proud of my city as well but that waterfront and Argyle Street just look grubby and down at heel. And I was really shocked at Bridge Street and Eglinton Street as I've not been along there for several years and it's really run down now but maybe it will be getting a makeover at some point. Trouble is it takes so long to do, years in fact, as several other old buildings around Bridge Street look to be crumbling as well. Also Glasgow City Centre, Holland Street, Cambridge Street, Cowcaddens, Sauchiehall Street, parts of Argyle Street, Charing Cross around the M8 are all undergoing major road works so the place just looks like a mini war zone at the moment. I've got another post on Tradeston next as I found some interesting new info on it before I can finally get to where I was going on my bus trip.
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