A flying visit to Glasgow

Although we had visited Glasgow on our last trip we didn't spend much time there and I didn't have many impressions from it.

This time we had two nights and a day and a half. We caught the train from Edinburgh and our hotel was very centrally located. So on our first afternoon we followed a self guided walking tour that I downloaded (a Frommers tour).

This took us into the eastern part of the city- the Merchant City, where the wealthy tobacco barons had built their mansions some centuries ago. A major source of Glasgow's wealth came from trans-Atlantic trade. Remnants of an older medieval past can also be found in this area.

We finished up at Glasgow Green, a large park established about 200 years ago and used for fairs, a place to wash and dry clothes and linen (e.g. by linen dyers in the past) and as green open space for the people of the East end. At one end of the green is the People's Palace, constructed as a place of learning and leisure for the overcrowded east. It had reading and recreation rooms, an art gallery and museum. A large Victorian conservatory was built at one end. Now it houses a social history museum and cafe.

Of particular Glaswegian interest were the displays about tenement housing and the 'steamies'. The latter were council run laundries which were used by a large proportion of the population who had no access to laundries in their own home. Women would go on a weekly basis with their dirty washing piled into baby prams along with their washboard and soap. Purchasing a ticket have them access to a cubicle with a boiler, sink, wringer and some form of dryer (or else you carted the wet wash, now much heavier, back to your home to dry on racks above your kitchen stove. You wore Wellington boots to the steamie because the floor was very wet. The whole place was hot and steamy (hence the name) but they were also a social centre for women who exchanged news, gossip etc. these steamies continued till the 1960s when they started to decline in number as more people used launderettes or moved into newer housing with their own laundry. I think the last steamie closed in the 1980s.

Tenement houses were one of the most common forms of housing in Glasgow. They were used by all social classes but varied in size and facilities according to your means. It was very common for a family to have one room and a kitchen. Beds were built into alcoves or closets (the latter banned after 1900) and a bed on casters (a hurley bed) often parked underneath during the day and pulled out for the children at night. Very poor families (and there were many) lived in 'single ends'. This was a one room tenement house with one bed alcove. All your living was done in the one room and there were many large families living in such housing. Glasgow's population had skyrocketed during the 19th and 20th centuries. Heavy industry like shipbuilding needed workers and there was an influx of migrants from the Highlands, Ireland, Italy and other countries. Overcrowding became a massive social problem. The post war solution, as in many other places, was the demolition of slum tenements and moving people further out from the city into high rise apartments. Unsurprisingly these have not been very successful and are now being demolished as well. On the other hand, from the point of view of many women struggling to keep themselves, their family and their house clean, these new flats must have seemed like heaven at first. They had their own bathroom and laundry.

On the second day we used the hop on, hop off bus to visit places further afield. We visited the Tenement House which had been lived in for 54 years by the same woman. She made no changes to it except for installing electricity in the 1960s so it gave a very good feel for what such houses were like.

We also visited the excellent Riverside Museum which looks at the history of transport. One of its highlights is a conveyor of model ships, beautifully made, with information about each ship appearing on a screen as it approaches. It also had two reconstructed 'streets' showing different kinds of transport and shopping from different periods- early 20th century and 1930-1980s.

Then up to the beautiful University of Glasgow begun in 1451 and located in the gorgeous Kelvingrove area along with the Art Gallery. Bus back to town and a long slow wander through the pedestrianised shopping mall areas. Lots of high end retailers in the area known as the Style Mile.

Glasgow has lots of theatres, concert halls and galleries and seems to be a vibrant cultural hub. Topographically very different from Edinburgh- flatter, broad streets in a grid pattern in the commercial area. It feels prosperous and comfortable but still has a gritty edge to it. Shipbuilding still happens but there is only 1 company now. There used to be 50. #


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