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Untitled Document
Pollokshaws Parish Church is located at 233 Shawbridge
Street, Pollokshaws, Glasgow. G43 1QN Telephone 0141-649-1879.
This Number should only be used during Meeting Times.
No meetings from early June to early September, and there are a few away days during the period of the meetings.
We are devoted to the history, Past, Present
and Future of the Pollokshaws area and have developed this web site
to allow you to peer into what has made Pollokshaws a great place to
live.
Much of the source material for this site is taken from the
book "Pollokshaws - Village & Burgh", 1600 to 1912 by Andrew
McCallum, 1925.
A comment in the Introduction of the book
"Bygone Pollokshaws Book II" written by
George Rountree, a former group member
gives a taste of the passion that the Heritage Group has for Pollokshaws.
"One of
my earliest memories is of at around the age of three, sitting on
the work-top with my feet in a basin of water, being washed before
going to bed in the dark of a winter evening. Quite clear is the
recollection of looking out past the side of the blind into the dim
gas-lit street, and seeing the many illuminated windows of the houses
in the building opposite. Domestic gaslight was at a lower level than
electric lighting, and at this time all windows had blinds of beige
paper or fabric. This meant that the silhouette of anyone working
at their sink or drainer was thrown onto the blind, making them visible
from outside. Frequent movements were to be seen of people busy with
one of the never-ending household chores like preparing a meal, washing
dishes, a man just in from work stropping an open razor then shaving
and washing himself, or a woman doing a washing and using a scrubbing
board. In those days domestic chores took up far more time than they
do today. A popular song of the period heard frequently on the wireless
was: ‘Just a song at twilight, When the lights are low, As the flickering
shadows, Softly come and go’.
These words from Love’s Old Sweet Song are indelibly imprinted in my memory.
They appeared to my very young perception to have been specially made up to
describe that vision for me. It was the first of many occasions when a piece
of music has become associated with an event or an experience".
The first picture gallery "A Walk in The Shaws" is
also take from this book. We have over six hundred
photographs in total plus other material that we intend displaying here
in the future.
Pollokshaws
Heritage Trail
To View a Map of the Pollokshaws Heritage Trail, which includes Place Markers
and Images along with associated Video Clips then just click on the image.
Grateful thanks to Mr Tim Cullen ICT Studios for providing this feature.
The Pollokshaws Heritage Group Members

We hope you enjoy taking a journey with us to take a look at
the history of the Pollokshaws area. Why not visit our Guest book
in the Contact Us page and
leave your comments
Take a look around "The Shaws" of today with
the use of this Google driven map system.
Zoom In or Out and change to Satellite or Hybrid view.
MEMORIES OF LIVING AT HOUSE NUMBER 3 IN THE MULTI STOREY FLAT AT
124 SHAWBRIDGE STREET FROM APRIL 1967 TO JULY 1996
In 1967 my wife Eva and I & two sons
Ross aged 8 and Colin 4 lived one stair up at 36 Haggs Road, in a room
and kitchen with a shared toilet on the half-landing. I drove buses for
the Corporation Transport Department from 1960 to 1974 on the routes
along Pollokshaws Road and Kilmarnock Road. This meant that I saw the
demolition of most of the old Shaws and the construction of the flats,
unaware that we would be living in one of them for twenty nine years.
Having applied for a Corporation
(council) house even before we were married in 1957, when our turn came
for an allocation it was for a house in 124. As I was working Eva went
along to the allocations which were done by ballot, and she drew a house
on the eleventh floor. She wanted one lower down and was able to
exchange it for the house on the second floor which I regarded with
mixed feelings. I was torn between getting as high up as possible
because of the view, and the convenience of being low down. Of the four
22 storey blocks between the River Cart and Riverford Road, 21 Riverbank
Street, 124 and 142 Shawbridge Street were opened for tenants two
months apart in that order. The first was Riverbank Street in February
1967, then 124 and 142 in April and June. I think the contractor then
was a company called BISON, and I can remember sitting in my new living
room in house 3 and watching the slabs being lifted up to top out 142.
The Riverford Road block was built two or three years later, and because
its foundations were to be higher than the one in Riverbank Street, to
keep the tops of the two blocks as near as possible at the same level
each floor was about six inches lower. Instead of the eight feet in
first three blocks, in Riverford Road they were seven and a half feet.
House number 3, situated at the end
of the block, was ideally placed for seeing both ways up and down
Shawbridge Street. It was on two levels with the entry on the second
floor where there was a bathroom and a bedroom. The houses on our side
of the corridor had an inside flight of stair down to the first storey
where there was another bedroom, a kitchenette and a seemingly enormous
16 feet square living room. This apartment was directly under the
corridor so that you would be aware of possible visitors by their
footsteps before they rang the bell. Occupants of the houses on the
other side of the corridor went up to the third floor. This layout meant
that houses were accessed only on floors two, five, eight, eleven and
so on. We liked our house with the what were for us new facilities of
the kitchenette and bathroom. There were fourteen houses on each level,
the corridors of which were divided by the off-centre lift area and
stairs access, with eight houses on one side and six on the other. The
first two houses in each corridor, one on each side as it was entered,
were four apartments and all the others were threes. I have to say that
the neighbours in this part of the building were ideal.
The long verandas that ran along the
outside of the buildings on one side, two for every three floors which
seemed to be an unnecessary addition, were actually fire escapes. But
they were accessible by anyone who entered the building and could be
used by housebreakers. This happened occasionally and it was only partly
rectified years later when lockable doors were fitted. The south facing
living room window wall had a door and was set back from the front of
the building by about four feet. This gave a private veranda in which
tenants could sit out and enjoy the sun in good weather.
There were three areas, one on each
floor, for drying clothes within the building which had lockable doors.
The main one was opposite the lift entrance on every third floor up from
the second floor, but the other two were accessed from the staircase
landings of the floors above and below. But as they were secluded the
more so the higher up the building you went, fearing prowlers eventually
most women were too afraid to use them unless they were accompanied.
This meant that being used by the occupants of fourteen houses, pressure
on the one on the main floor was intense and some tenants had to
occasionally dry the clothes in the house, especially in winter.
Something that worried a few of the
tenants including me, was the fact that unlike all other multi storey
flats anywhere else, these buildings were flat faced like cigarette
cartons stood on end, and presented a broad face to the south west where
most storms came from. In particular, the two blocks at Riverbank
Street and 124 Shawbridge Street were almost in line with only a gap of
about 75 yards between them. Even with a moderate wind, in this area
young and old could be blown off their feet and rolled along the road,
so that when it was windy they had to
proceed by hold on to the railings at the back pavement edge. We
were concerned about the gales that were more often encountered then
than they are today. Would the buildings survive? When site officials
were questioned about this
the tenants were assured that they were calculated to be capable
of withstanding winds of up to 200 miles an hour!
Well, that was put partly to the test
during the early morning of the 15th of January 1968. The West of
Scotland was hit by a hurricane from the west when a wind speed of 112
miles an hour was recorded in Glasgow. A number of people living in the
older tenements around the city were killed when aged and unstable
chimney heads of stone were blown down and crashed through roofs. Slates
blown off roofs were lethal and caused a number of injuries. During the
massive repairs that were done subsequently, men working on the roofs
in Partick noticed that the worst of the damage seemed to be on a track
running north west to south east which indicated that a tornado had
passed along here.
In my job I was due to go out about
4.30am to start a shift at Newlands bus garage which stood where
Morrison’s superstore is today. The storm was at its height just then
and even in the house the noise was unbelievable, the building was
swaying and even at our low level ceiling light units moved around.
Indeed people living high up were terrified and said the building moved
about two feet at the highest level, and those with cars went down and
spent the rest of the night them. Some people lost valuable ornaments
which fell and were broken.
Because of the amount of debris being
blown about at ground level I wondered if it was safe to go out. As
well as lighter detritus, there were bricks, bushes and trees being
hurtled along the road. At the foot of the building I waited for a lull
then tried to leave to cross Shawbridge Street, but just then what
seemed to have been the most powerful blast came along. A lamp post of
the old rolled steel type stood in the gap between the buildings
mentioned above, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it being bent
to an incredible degree. After a time I risked going out to the middle
of the road only to be picked up and forced to run as fast as my legs
would carry me before reaching shelter at Riverford Road, and the rest
of the journey was done in stages like that. At least half the street
lights around the city were put out by the blast.
Eva always attended the UF Church in
Shawbridge Street on Sundays, and on another day there was a high wind
but at the time she was leaving the house it wasn’t strong enough to
make her stay at home. I usually made the lunch so that it was ready for
her return. The wind had increased in force but I was preoccupied by
working on a model making project, and was late in starting to make the
meal, and suddenly realised that she hadn’t returned. She came in in a
bit of a state about an hour after this, saying that when she and a
friend came out of the church the wind was so strong that they had to
hold on to the railing and move along the pavement in stages. Proceeding
down Shawbridge Street like this, when she got to the place where she
had to cross the road it was impossible. She and her friend had to work
their way round by Riverbank Street where her friend lived and wait for a
lull in the blast, then wait for a more extended period before she
could get across the road to 124 at Bengal Street.
Another event of an alarming nature
occurred on 27th of December 1979. Asleep in the upper bedroom, around
4am I was awakened by a loud groaning, grating sound and the bed moved.
It seemed that it was the building that moved. It had swayed back and
forward once along its length just for an instant. Eva awakened too and
said with a loud gasp ‘whatwasthat’. In an effort to reassure her, half
kidding but wholly in earnest I said ‘Ach it’s only an earthquake, go
back to sleep’. Next morning it was headline news that there had been a
‘quake’ in Western Scotland centred somewhere around Dalbeatty. My
sister lived in New York at the time, and she and her husband were
listening to the morning news on the radio about reports of a ‘quake’
coming in. They were used to hearing this from the parts of the word
usually affected, but they said they couldn’t believe it when Scotland
was mentioned.
Late one Friday evening I was taking a
bath when there was a shattering explosion somewhere in the building
followed by loud screams. Afraid that the block might be collapsing I
scrambled out and went to investigate. The water supply for the building
was pumped up in two stages to tanks, one at mid height and the other
near the top by a powerful machine in what was known as the pump room at
ground level. The pump had developed a fault which had caused it
to blow up with tremendous force that blew the double leaf heavy
doors yards away, just missing a group of children that were playing
there. It was a warm summer evening during the school holidays otherwise
they would have been in bed.
Each building had a caretaker, who
was later given the swankier name of concierge and an external office.
At that time they lived in house 14, but as time passed there were
changes and they lived elsewhere, even outside the Shaws. Tenants took a
turn weekly to wash their corridor and the floor at the lift, and the
caretaker, or ‘cairy’ as he came to be called, was supposed to do all 22
flights of stairs, something that came to be done only intermittently.
His main task was to look after the rubbish bins, of which there were
six. One was placed under the rubbish shaft, and it was essential that
he checked it frequently so that it didn’t overflow and block up the
system, which did happen from time to time. There was a sliding flap
that could be pushed over to hold anything that came down the shaft
during the change-over. He was the first point of contact by tenants
with complaints, and was also charged with keeping the surroundings
outside the building clean.
Rubbish was disposed of by a chute
next to the door that led out to the stairs which quickly became a
source of contention because tenants had to learn how to use it
sensibly. The shaft from the very top floor down which the refuse fell
wasn’t suitable for perishable items as some of it contaminated the
walls which caused a bad smell. The horizontal flap-type access door in
which the rubbish was placed before it was tipped up to let it fall down
to the bin on the ground floor was quite small, about 1ft by 2ft, and
thoughtless tenants above had to learn not to try to cram in items that
were obviously too big, and carry them down to ground level where a bin
was always left convenient to receive them. One example of thoughtless
use of the chute was when Tommy, the first caretaker, complained that as
he was changing bins on one occasion someone poured a pot of soup down
the shaft!
There was a shortage of storage space
in our house which became chronic. There were three compartments in the
kitchenette, two of which had doors and shelves for storing kitchen
utensils and food, but the middle one was open. It had a 2k heating
element low down and a rack above presumably to dry clothes that nobody
used. There were two cupboards not much larger than those in the kitchen
in the landing at the foot of our stairs, while the upper bedroom had
an opening between three and four feet square with no fittings. The
first improvement I made was to have a cupboard made under the kitchen
sink to hold cleaning materials and basins and buckets. Then looking at
the open compartment in the upper bedroom I thought it could be made
into a two-rack wardrobe, which I made myself fitting it with sliding
doors. A shelf was installed above at a height of six feet, also with
doors, in which luggage cases were stored, with the clothes rails fitted
underneath.
These two operations made a big
difference but didn’t solve the storage problem. After a long time has
passed I realised that there was a space under the stairs that was
totally enclosed, which if a plasterboard panel in the kitchen was
removed would provide room for more of the clutter. This too was
successful and I was able to fit a framed door. Then I noticed that
there was a similar vacant space above the stairs which, when the
staircase was being decorated, cause a problem with reaching the highest
point. I thought that if sections of plasterboard on both sides of the
wall between bedroom and staircase were removed, it would give access to
this large empty space. The first thing to do was to fix a false
ceiling well clear of head height above the stairs. Then the wall panels
were removed which revealed the large empty usable space. When fitted
with louvre doors in the bedroom and shelving, it proved to be ideal
because it held all the rest of the clutter. Now we could walk freely
round the house without tripping over things.
The next improvement was again in the
kitchenette. When the open clothes drying space between the two
cupboards was measured it was found that the cooker fitted it, so the
transfer was effected. There was still pressure on storage space here,
so I made four front-face-angled wall cabinets with frosted glass
sliding doors which were fitted at just above head height over the
dining table and sink. This took care of all that was still lying around
in the kitchenette. The angled lower fronts were necessary to reduce
the possibility of bumping your head. Other less important changes were
made in the fabric of the house. Of the electricity cupboard on the top
landing, only the lower section of it had an opening door. The
compartment was built up to the
ceiling with the top half sealed, and when this was opened up and
fitted with a couple of shelves and a door, it held many other small
items.
Two storage heaters that ran off the
then cheaper off-peak electricity supply had been installed but I was
wary of the cost of using them. The larger of the two, rated at 3kw, was
in the living room and the smaller one, on the top landing standing
under the electricity cupboard, was 1˝kw. During our first week in the
house I conducted a test on a cold night by leaving the large one
switched on
overnight with doors and windows closed and the thermostat set at
65°. In the morning after eight hours it still had not reached that
setting, which meant that it had consumed 24 units without getting the
temperature up to a reasonable level. Of course it was never used again.
There was a two bar 2kw radiator heater fixed in the end outer wall of
the living room which we made do with thereafter.
The water supply and drain pipes were
enclosed in a pipe chase that ran all the way from the top of the
building down next to the windows through kitchens and bathrooms. In the
late 1980s a persistent water leak developed that took about a year to
detect its source. It was evidently somewhere high up in the building,
and the slow intermittent trickle subsequently caused a large
multi-coloured area of mould to grow around our pipe chase at the
ceiling, especially in the bathroom. The plumber was summoned many times
but could not find the leak, which I suspected was due to the supply
being in use during the day which probably caused it to be less
detectable. Even when inspectors called, during the day of course, they
found a slight dampness all the way up the pipe chase but no sign of any
serious leak. Eventually I took photographs of the mould and sent it in
to the housing department to convince those in charge that there really
was leak, which resulted in a proper examination; the source was found
and the leak fixed.
An alarming feature present in the
early days affected the toilet pan. Sometimes the water trap was found
to be almost empty, which of course caused the smell of sewage to be
noticeable, and there were splashes in the floor and around the pan
itself. We could not understand what was causing this until one day when
sitting on the throne there was a loud suction noise then a surge that
cause a wetting. The contractor’s men were still present to deal with
any problems, but at first they could not account for it. Until one day I
spoke to an older more knowledgeable man who said it was cause by a
number of toilets directly above being flushed at the same time so that a
large volume going down the pipe caused suction and backflow. He said
it was happening to others living low down and measures were in hand to
fix it. There were eight houses above us whose sewage ran down the pipe
in the chase. But the pipes from the adjacent houses ran through the
wall into this pipe, making a total of sixteen toilets some of which
might have been flushing at the same time.
In the coldest weather, in calm
conditions the houses were relatively wind and watertight, but if there
was a wind blowing they were anything but. The windows were metal framed
and those that opened originally had no sealing. They were draughty
until the 1980s, when the council sent a team round all the blocks to
treat them with a mastic sealant. It was applied to one thoroughly
cleaned face of the frame then other one was treated with detergent,
wash-up liquid the men said, to stop the sealant sticking to it. They
were left open for about an hour to allow the sealant to partly set
before being closed and locked top and bottom for the final hardening.
This was effective for a few years, then as the sealant continued to
harden it became brittle and cracked and started to fall off.
Condensation was a cold weather
problem with all windows which gathered on the sills and had to be
mopped up regularly. It was worst in the living room because the inside
sill there was narrow and sloped down. Of the three window sections here
the outer two could be opened, but when shut tight there was enough of a
gap to at the bottom to allow the water to seep away. But the center
one didn’t open, and in the coldest dampest conditions it ran down and
dripped off on to the carpet constantly along its full length. I bought a
section of plastic with a ‘J’ section and fixed it at a slopping angle
below the ledge to act as a gutter. This allowed the condensate to run
down into a pint size ice cream carton suspended there. On one occasion
conditions were so bad that the carton had to be emptied twice in one
day.