This access cover in Kelvingrove Park has long been a bit of a puzzle for me. Situated near the Park Drive entrance, you can just make out that it's a Fire Point (FP) cover made by Thomas Leadbetter and Co. Based on Gordon Street, with a works on Garnkirk Street, this Glasgow company was a plumbers, lead merchant and brass foundry, which, amongst other things made brass values for fire points (what we'd now call a fire hydrant) in the 1860s.
However, looking back at old maps as far back as the 1850s (when the park was first created) I cannot find any obvious reason why there was a fire point, or even water pipes, at this location in the park. However, it seems to been there for over 150 years, so presumably it had a logical purpose at some point in its history.
Gothic style townhouses dating from the 1870s on Westbourne Gardens in the West End of Glasgow. In the 1880s, the left hand one was home to Hugh Tennent, of the Tennent's Brewery on Duke Street who, in 1885, created Tennent's Lager, one of the first Pilsner-style lagers to be brewed in the UK.
All that remains of Duke Street Prison on the East End of Glasgow. Originally opened in 1798, it finally closed in 1957 and was demolished shortly afterwards. It was an early example of the Separate System introduced in the early 19th Century which was based around keeping prisoners in solitary confinement.
In 1882, Duke Street became a women's prison when male prisoners were moved to the newly built Barlinnie Prison. It was here that many Scottish suffragettes were imprisoned during their campaign for equal voting rights. When the prison was being demolished, a cast-iron umbrella stand painted in the suffragette colours which was rescued and is now housed in the Glasgow Women's Library in Bridgeton.
New flats filling in a gap between old sandstone tenements on Peel Street in the Partick area of Glasgow. The gap was created when a German parachute mine exploded at 11:25pm on 13th of March 1941, killing 50 people and destroying much of the street. As with other similar sites in the city, there's nothing to mark its history.
The remains of the 16th or 17th Century Campbell Colquhoun Burial Ground on Linkwood Crescent in the Drumchapel area of Glasgow. This is an odd little remnant of a past which is now long gone and consists of a three-sided enclosure featuring various carved details and two heraldic shields. It's one of the few remains of Garscadden House, which was built in the 1700s by the Colquhouns of Garscadden and Killermont.
Purchased by the Glasgow Corporation in 1938, it was used to house evacuees in World War II. It was destroyed by fire in 1959, but its gardens were incorporates into Garscadden Burn Park.
The entrance to the Forth and Clyde Canal at Bowling. Designed by James Smeaton, this was the world's first sea-to-sea canal designed to shorten navigation times. Work began on it in 1768, but it wasn't finished until 1790. To mark its opening, a barrel of water was carried from the Firth of Forth and was emptied into the Firth of Clyde.
Memorial in the former Institute of Engineers and Shipbuilders on Elmbank Crescent in Glasgow for the engineers of the Titanic, who all died when it sank after striking an iceberg on 15th of April 1912.
The former Glasgow Protestant Institute for Orphaned and Destitute Girls on Westland Drive in the Whiteinch area of Glasgow. The institute was founded in 1825, but it wasn't until 1891 that this purpose-built home was constructed for it. It was designed by the rather wonderfully named Stewart Henbest Capper in a 17th Century Scottish style.
Separate side-by-side bells for Visitors and Servants at the entrance to a 1870s Townhouse on Athole Gardens in West End of Glasgow. The fact that even the door bells are more ornate for the visitors than the servants says something about the times these buildings were built in.
Post Office Telegraph access cover in the Dawsholm Park area of Glasgow. The Post Office inland telegraph system began in 1870, and finally came to an end more than a century later in 1982. I've no idea how old this access cover, but my feeling is that its quite early (later ones tended to be made with concrete) and may have originall contained wooden 'cobbles' in the gaps between the metal.
Gasholders No. 1 and No. 2 at the Provan Gasworks in the northeast of Glasgow. Built for the Glasgow Corporation in 1903 by Barrowfield Iron Works Limited, they're the largest gasholders ever built in Scotland. They're also some of the only ones to survive to this day.
@thisismyglasgow Following up on your post, I was looking for records of that former ironworks and found this PostOffice Directory page, whose firms and sites encapsulate a whole lot of #GlasgowHistory
Built in the 1870s for the City of Glasgow Union Railway and designed by John Fowler and James F. Blair, Saint Enoch Station was once the grandest station in Glasgow. It was closed in 1966 and then demolished in the 1970s. This clock, which hung inside, is pretty much the only part of it which remains.
After the station was demolished, the clock was purchased by the businessman Raymond Gullies, who donated it to Cumbernauld when the new town celebrated its 21st birthday in 1977, where it was erected on a public walkway and featured in the 1980s film Gregory's Girl. In the 2000s, it was moved into the new Antonine Shopping Centre when Cumbernauld town centre was redeveloped.
In recent years, there have been calls both to return it to Glasgow for installation in Queen Street Station, and to have it re-installed in a more public space in Cumbernauld. However, for the moment it remains in the Antonine Shopping Centre in a closed off section where it can only be viewed by request, which is a sad state of affairs for such a grand public clock.
In the days before mobile phones, if you were meeting someone for a date, you had to arrange a time and place in advance, and then hope they turned up. This corner between Argyle Street and Union Street, close to Central Station, was one popular location for such meetings, in part, because it was an easily recognisable landmark to meet at. It also used to have a large clock, so you could easily know whether or not your date was late.
Unfortunately, not all such meetings went according to plan, and on a Friday and Saturday night it was not uncommon to see people waiting forlornly here for someone who would never turn up. In Glasgow parlance, this was known as giving someone a dizzy, hence the corner's nickname.
@thisismyglasgow#glasgowhistory#dizzycorner I always thought dizzy corner was the BHS corner of at Sauchiehall Street-Renfield Street. Maybe there was more than one? I’m not admitting it happened to me. BTW the spot is very near what was The White Elephant, a great disco in the senenties. Latterly a cleared gap site after a fire, not sure if redevelopment has started, it’s been a while since I passed it.
This memorial in Glasgow's Necropolis marks the re-burial site of the remains of Glasgow University professors and their families which were originally interred in the nearby Blackfriars Churchyard.
This church once stood on the eastern side of the High Street and could trace its origins back to 1246. In 1573, it became a possession of Glasgow University, which, at that time, was also based on High Street.
When the University moved to its current Gilmorehill site in the West End of the city in the 1870s, the church and its churchyard (as well as the neighbouring old college buildings) was cleared to be replaced by the College Goods Station and Railway Yard.
At this time, the remains from the graveyard were moved to the Necropolis after a record was made of all the legible gravestones. This record is now housed in Glasgow's Mitchell Library.
Greenbank House in Clarkston, near Glasgow. Possibly designed by Allan Dreghorn, this house was built in 1764 for Robert Allason. Allason had started his working life as a baker's apprentice in the Gorbals, but when on to become one of the Glasgow Virginia merchants who made fortunes from trading tobacco and slaves.
Allason used this money to buy Flenders Farm, which his grandfather had worked as a tenant farmer, and used the land, and his wealth, to build Greenbank House. Allason's time at Greenbank was brief as his business suffered greatly in the American War of Independence and he had to give the house up when he was made insolvent in 1784.
The southern facade of the Gallery of Modern Art in Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow. Much of this visible exterior of this building is part of the 1820s extensions added by the architect David Hume. However, hidden within is the Palladian-style Cunninghame Mansion, built in 1778 for for the tobacco and sugar merchant William Cunninghame of Lainshaw when this location was on the western edge of the city.