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.
@thisismyglasgow The outward opening fire exits that are ubiquitous in buildings nowadays are a sad reminder of how the Glen disaster shaped our urban environment.
In a similar way, I think I read somewhere that it was after the Eliot Junction disaster (28/12/1906) - in which my great-grandfather died - that railway station layouts tended to have the cafe/bar opening into the ticket area rather than the platform, to remove the temptation to over-socialise at stops.
@AllyD Yes, much of our safety today is built on lives lost in the past. The thing that always strikes me the most is how often the disasters were caused or were made much worse by the prioritisation of profit over life. In the case of the Glen Cinema Disaster prioritising stopping people sneaking in over people being able to escape in the event of a fire, or in the case you mentioned, having the cafe on the platform to encourage people to spend as much as possible before boarding their train.
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.