Remembering Thomson
The Scottish Architect, Alexander “Greek” Thomson was born on 9th April 1817 inEndrick Cottage in the village of Balfron, around 15 miles north of Glasgow. He wasthe son of bookkeeper John Thomson and his second wife Elizabeth Cooper. Sadly,John died in 1824 and by the following year, Elizabeth moved to the outskirts ofGlasgow with her…
The Dennistoun Saracen Fountain
The Saracen Fountain, so named because it was cast by Walter Macfarlane & Co at the Saracen Works in Possilpark, has stood in its current site in Dennistoun, in the east end of Glasgow for the last 110 years. According to the Macfarlane Castings Catalogue, this cast iron spray fountain is model no. 130 and…
Witchcraft in Neilston
There are rumours about the practice of Witchcraft in Neilston during the 16th and 17th century, but there seems to be scant documentary evidence to confirm any exact details. The Presbytery records1 from 1650 mention that a “witch or witches” were apprehended in Neilston, but these individuals were not named and their stories never told.…
The end of the road for the O2 ABC
On 15th June 2018, the former music venue known as the O2 ABC was fatally damaged following an outbreak of fire, which started at the Mackintosh Building of The Glasgow School of Art. The school had already suffered a devastating fire on 23rd May 2014, and the second fire occurred during building work being carried…
The ‘Witches’ of Glasgow
References to Witches in and around Glasgow were sometimes hidden in plain sight. There was a stretch of road in the Calton, just south of Dennistoun in the east end of Glasgow named “Witch Lane”. Although the stretch of road still exists, it is no longer known as this. Instead, it has become the northerly…
Walton: The other ‘Glasgow boy’
Scottish Architect and Designer George Henry Walton, the youngest of twelve children, was born on 3rd June 1867 to Jackson Walton and his wife, Eliza Ann Nicholson. The Walton family settled near Glasgow by 1860 at Glanderston House on the south periphery of Barrhead, where several of their children were born. It was an old…
The Mermother of Greenock
An untitled mural which is located on the gable end of a tenement at 61 Nicolson Street in the west end of Greenock is almost nearing completion. The street artist known as Smug, aka Sam Bates, hails from Nowra in New South Wales and has lived and worked in Scotland for close to 20 years.…
The Port “Skelpies”
A new sculpture called ‘The Shipbuilders of Port Glasgow” designed and built by Artist John McKenna is almost complete in Coronation Park in Port Glasgow. It sits in-between the lighthouses at what was known as Devil’s Point off Fore Street (not far from Malcolm Robertson’s “Endeavour” Sculpture of 2012) and Ferguson’s Marine, the last remaining…
An Architectural Scandal
Madeleine Hamilton Smith was the eldest child of Architect James Smith and his wife Janet, daughter of the well-known Architect David Hamilton. She was born in Glasgow on 29th March 1835 and was alleged to have killed her lover Pierre Emile L’Angelier by arsenic poisoning, but her guilt was famously found to be “not proven”…
The Cheapside Street disaster
On 28th March 1960, one of the worst fires to occur during peace time happened at the bonded whisky warehouses of Arbuckle, Smith and Co. Ltd, situated between 76 to 118 Cheapside Street in the Anderson area of Glasgow. On the Monday evening of the 28th just after 7pm, the alarm was raised after smoke…
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The Archivist History Blog 