Commemorative stone on Mavisbank Gardens in Glasgow marking the commissioning and construction of the Cessnock Dock, later renamed the Prince's Dock, on the south bank of the Clyde. With 35 acres of water, it was the largest dock on the upper Clyde and it cost almost £1,000,000 build and equip. It closed in the 1970s and in the 1980s, it was filled in. In 1988, it formed the site for the Glasgow Garden Festival.
Yet another old Glasgow building which looks like it could soon be lost. On the corner of Wallace Street and Centre Street in Tradeston, it was damaged by fire earlier today. This isn't a listed building, and it's not of historic importance, but none-the-less it's part of the city's heritage and it was one I always admired whenever I passed it.
An old Fire Point (FP) style fire hydrant cover on Old Rutherglen Road in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. It seems that this cover has somehow survived the wholesale destruction of the Gorbals in the 1960s, and the more recent round of redevelopments from the 1990s onwards.
Once a common sight on British streets, in some places such FP covers were used as the basis for a kid's game where if you noticed someone was standing on one, you got to give them a Free Punch (FP). When these covers were replaced with modern ones embossed with FH, for Fire Hydrant, the game was quickly changed to Free Hit! I've no idea if this game was ever played in Glasgow.
Kilmardinny House in Bearsden on the outskirts of Glasgow. Dating from the late 1700s, this Georgian mansion has been owned by a variety of Glasgow merchants, including William Brown of Kilmardinny, the Dean of Guild for the city. Brown purchased the house in the 1830s using compensation he received as a slave-owner following the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1838.
Browm sold in Kilmardinny in 1844, and shortly after lost much of his wealth when the railway bubble of the 1840s, in which he'd heavily invested, finally burst in the 1850s.
Jordanvale House on Dumbarton Road in the Whiteinch area of Glasgow. One of the oldest buildings in the local area, it dates back to at least the 1830s. It's now used as the presbytery of the neighbouring Saint Paul's Church. The only other surviving building of a similar age in Whiteinch is the nearby Inchbank House.
The remains of wooden mud punts on the banks of the Clyde at the Newshot Island Boat Graveyard. For more than a century, starting in the early 1800s, these floating platforms received mud and other debris dredged up from the bed to the Clyde to help keep the navigation ways passable and transported it elsewhere to be dumped. At one time, the fleet of these vessels numbered in the hundreds, but this is all that are now left of them.
An old clay pipe I found on one of my recent trips to the Clyde Estuary (top photo). Comparisons to one recovered from beside the Forth and Clyde Canal last year, which dates from the mid-1800s (lower photos), suggests it was made between 1720 and 1750, but I'm no expert on the subject.
Ghost sign for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children on Old Dumbarton Road in Glasgow. The city's first dedicated children's hospital, it originally opened in 1882 in Garnethill. In 1914, it moved to new premises in Yorkhill in the West End of Glasgow where it remained until it was replaced by the new Royal Hospital for Children on Govan Road in 2015.
The remains of one of four sailing schooners abandoned at the Newshot Island Boat Graveyard on the Clyde at Erskine after a fire at the Kingston Dock in Glasgow in 1914.
The hull of a diving bell barge at Newshot Island on the Clyde near Erskine. Built in 1852, it's one of two such vessels built to help deepen the Clyde so large ships could travel right into the heart of the city.
The diving bell was lowered to the seabed via a cut-out the stern, allowing workers to dig out areas which were too hard to be cleared by steam dredgers. Abandoned at Newshot Island at the start of the 20th Century, it's the oldest surviving diving bell vessel in the world.
A stone tramway on South Woodside Road leading down and under the 1890s Great Western Road Bridge over the river Kelvin in Glasgow. They're designed to make it easier for horses to pull carts up steep hills paved with cobbles.
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.