The rather wonderful Scots Baronial style former Peter Brough District Nursing Home on Oakshaw Street in Paisley. Built in 1897, it was designed by T G Abercrombie.
Peter Brough was a successful Paisley draper who died in 1883. Built with a bequest he left behind, the home aimed to employ people who would devote their time to 'visitings, consolling and comforting of afflicted christians, and reading to them the bible.'
Reminders of the Renfrewshire Witch Trials. On the left is a well on Queen Street in Paisley which is all that's left of the Gallow Green where six people, including two boys aged just 14 and 11, were reportedly hung for being witches in 1697. On the right is the memorial at Maxwellian Cross marking the places where their remains were buried after their bodies were burned. This was the last mass exection of people for witchcraft in western Europe.
I ran into this cute little guy on the base of an arch above a side entrance to the Gothic Revival Coats Memorial Church in Paisley. I love it when I stumble across architectural details like this.
The former Thomas Coats Memorial Baptist Church in Paisley. I've often see the distinctive crown top of this building off in the distance when passing Paisley on the M8, but only got to see it up close for the first time last week, and it was well worth the visit. It was designed in a Gothic revival style by H.J. Blanc and was built in 1894.
Absolutely love this grotesque on the former Coats Memorial Church in Paisley. Built in 1894, it was designed in a Gothic Revival style by H.J. Blanc and it's covered in some fantastic Gothic-inspired sculptures and carvings. It's now used as an events venue.
West End Cross in Paisley. Built in 1886, this is a beautifully designed gushet building. For anyone wondering about the name of the pub on the ground floor, there's an A missing from it, which potentially changes it quite substantially!
I always find 'ghost' buildings rather interesting, but this one on Queen Street in Paisley is a particularly intriguing as it comes complete with mantelpieces still surrounding the places where fires once burned to keep long-gone rooms warm and cozy.
As it's his 265th birthday, I thought I'd take the opportunity to re-post this photo of F.W. Pomeroy's beautiful 1895 statue of the great man from Fountain Gardens in Paisley. If you choose to partake, enjoy your haggis, neeps and tatties!
Memorials to the 71 people who died in the Glen Cinema Disaster in Paisley on Hogmanay 1929. 69 of the dead were children who had been attending a matinee film show.
The disaster started when a fire in a film cannister caused smoke to fill the auditorium. Panicked, the audience, mostly children, headed for the emergency exists.
Some beautiful decorative tiling at the entrance to the former Paisley Provident Cooperative Society building on Causewayside Street in Paisley. It was built in 1907 and was designed by Robert B Miller.
The Ploughboy of the Western World: F.W. Pomeroy's beautiful 1895 sculpture of Robert Burns in Fountain Gardens in Paisley. Pomeroy was a leading member of the New Sculpture Movement of the late 1800s, which aimed to portray figures in a more naturalistic way, in contrast to the prevailing neoclassical way. This, I think, is a fine example of this approach to sculpture.
Rattle/Little Mother by Rachel Lowther and Kerry Stewart in Dunn Square in Paisley. This statue is part of the memorial to the 71 people killed, 69 of whom were children, in the 1929 Glen Cinema Disaster.
During a packed matinee show at the Glen Cinema in Paisley on the 31st of December 1929, a cannister of film started to smoke, causing panic in the auditorium.
The audience, almost entirely children, headed for the emergency exits, but when the first of them got there, they found the doors opened inwards. With the pressure of those following behind them, this meant they could not be opened and many were crushed to death as more and more people pushed in from behind as they desperately tried to get out.
As a result of this tragedy, cinema capacity was limited, more fire exits were required, and most crucially, fire exit doors had to be made to open outwards by simply pressing on a bar, and not inwards. These are the type of fire exit doors we now see all around us today.
Another of the wonderfully colourful inflatable monsters at this weekend's Paisley Hallowe'en Festival, with the historic Paisley Abbey in the background.
I've been posting a lot of great Glasgow tenement buildings recently, so just for a bit of variety, here's a really nice example from Glen Street in Paisley. It was built around 1900 in a Free Style.
Walruses, dolphinfish, herons and cherubs holding crocodiles: This is the uniquely fabulous and bizarre Grand Central Fountain in Paisley. Dating from 1868, it was made for the industrialist Thomas Coats by the famous Sun Foundry based in Port Dundas in Glasgow. It was beautifully restored in the 2010s, and as far as I know there isn't another fountain like it anywhere else in the world.
Usually my dog does her best to ignore whatever I'm photographing, but every now and then she gets as captivated as I do. In this case, I think it was the walruses that did it!
For those who don't know, this is the Sun Foundry's 1868 Grand Fountain in Paisley. I'll post some proper pictures of it tomorrow.
The castle-like former Anchor Mills in Paisley. This is the last surviving mill building in a town who's history is intricatelly entwined with the fabric industry. It was Woodhouse and Morley and was built in 1886.