The Glasgow Road that Vanished

Glasgow, once the Second City of the great British Empire; now a city in flux and constant upheaval as it tries to reinvent itself.

Perhaps ‘reinvent’ isn’t quite the right word, but in trying to improve the look of the city and the lives of its inhabitants, Glasgow has at times turned its back on the past and destroyed its stone-built heritage. Too many architecturally stunning buildings have seen the wrecker’s ball to make room for motorways or high-rise flats – concrete cliffs with windows, as someone described them. No wonder seagulls love the place.

Parliamentary Road is but one example of a city that has lost its way, a city whose striving for betterment involves the adorning of blinkers and the turning of backs to its past. Often, there are no blinkers involved, and the city’s fine buildings have been knowingly demolished.

Parliamentary Road first appeared around the middle of the 19th century. One of the first major structures to be built on it was the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum, later to become the Glasgow Royal Lunatic Asylum. Gradually more buildings appeared along the length of the road, from the eastern end of Sauchiehall Street, at what is now the steps of the Concert Hall, all the way to the Monklands Canal basin at Townhead, now sitting under a spaghetti junction of motorways and flyovers.

It was a major road in Glasgow, lined with tenements and churches and businesses. It had a bus station … … oh, that was before Buchanan Bus Station, which took away part of Parliamentary Road. That was the problem, you see, every Tom, Dick and Harry was wanting to take a bit away from Parliamentary Road. So now there’s absolutely nothing left of it. Everything – the tenements, shops, pubs, churches … everything, was quite simply swept away and buried under either the Townhead Interchange and M8 motorway, that huge housing estate at Townhead, Buchanan Bus Station, and Buchanan Galleries and Concert Hall.

I mean, even the old toll house has gone. It was there in the early 19th century, sitting on Dobbies Loan on the banks of the St Enoch Burn, before Parliamentary Road was even imagined. And when the road was built it became part of it, sitting at 255 Parliamentary Road. Gone. Everything. The stone-built history of the whole area has quite simply been blitzed.

And to make way for what? Modernity, that’s what; high-rise flats and shopping malls where you can keep dry while shopping but have to think long and hard about what city you’re in. Because these malls all look the same, don’t they?

Parliamentary Road looked a bit like other Glasgow streets, but its individuality lay in its people, and the lives they lived. They stayed in the tenements; they drank in the pubs, shopped in the shops, and ran to catch buses in the Dundas Street Bus Station, whose remnants now lie under Buchanan Galleries.

This is a story about losses: the loss of the past, and a city that has lost its way.

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] You’d never know to look at it today, but The foot path behind me that runs through a pretty big housing estate in the town head area marks the course of what used to be one of Glasgow’s major roads. One end of that road used to be here. And the other end was more or less right here under all this fly over malarkey [Applause] today. There’s nothing left of it. nothing left of the road itself or the tenementss that lined it. Tenementss containing shops and pubs, nor the churches or the other businesses that once lined the road. Absolutely everything was swept away. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Although a pretty major affair in the city of Glasgow. Parliamentary Road actually had quite a short life. that isn’t shown in Peter Fleming’s map of 1807, just a few years before the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum, later to become the Royal Glasgow Lunatic Asylum, was built. By the first ordinance survey plan of 1857, Parliamentary Road running as straight as a Roman road is well established. Although the section between Dolby’s loan and Glee Street would not be developed until the 1860s. In that 1807 map, you can see a building. This was a tall house sitting where Parliamentary Road would eventually be where this Enoch burn crosses Doby’s lawn. Although that building is not actually marked as a tall house in Fleming’s map, we can be pretty certain that that’s what it was by using the National Library of Scotland’s side byside maps, which allow us to pinpoint the exact position of various buildings or features. We know, for example, that the old toll house survived for a long time and was incorporated into the newly created Parliamentary Road. And we also know that it became number 255 Parliamentary Road. If we then place Flaming’s 1807 map on the left of our side by side view and an ordering survey map of around the middle of the 20th century on our right, you can see that that rectangular building lines up pretty well with number 255 Parliamentary Road and is indeed the old Toll House. In 1967, John R. Hume took some photos of it and here it is just a few decades before it was raised to the ground along with everything else in Parliamentary Road. In many videos I’ve talked a lot about the destruction of much of old Glasgow and the quite unnecessary loss of many architecturally stunning buildings. But in many parts of Glasgow, it wasn’t just buildings that were swept away. Whole districts like the Gorbles were raised to the ground and replaced with modern highrises that effectively wiped out whole communities. The March of Progress hasn’t always been kind to Glasgow. The loss of Parliamentary Road is just another example of Glasgow’s attitude to the past and that it’s best just to tear it down and forget it was ever there. [Music] [Music] We can use this same side byside map view to pinpoint exactly where certain buildings in Parliamentary Road were located. And we do so simply by using Google Street View in conjunction with those sidebyside map images. Quite a few photos were taken in the 1930s and 1960s. So, let’s look at some of them and I’ll show you exactly where the scene that was captured used to be. So, let’s kick things off with the exact location of that old tall house at 255 Parliamentary Road. It used to be right there. although you’d never know it today. And I suppose it’s an Enoch’s burden must be there somewhere as well, way under the ground. Probably the biggest and most impressive building on Parliamentary Road was the Glasgow Royal Lunatic Asylum. It existed before Parliamentary Road was created, being built between 1810 and 1814. Here it is in 1827 before Parliamentary Road was properly put in place. And here it is in 1880, by which time the asylum had relocated to Gatville, and this building became the city’s poor house. We have a different angle of the building and gate house in this photo of around 1900, just a decade before it was demolished. Zooming in on a map of 1857, we can see various sections of the poor house. Most of the named sections in the main crucifform building were for females along with surgeon’s rooms, chaplain’s room, and so on. But where exactly did the asylum and poor house actually sit in the Glasgow of today? Well, once again, we’ll use sidebyside maps. On the left is the same 1857 map, and on the right is one dating to just after the middle of the 20th century. We can see that the gate house of the poor house became number 322 Parliamentary Road. and that by this later map, the main poor house building has gone. If we then swap maps around and include Google satellite view, we can see that the gate house used to be more or less right there and the avenue leading to the asylum. So, I ran up that way. That’s the course of Parliamentary Road there, just at right angles to it. So that’s the procedure for pinpointing where bits of Parliamentary Road actually were in the modern Glasgow of today. There was also a bus station on Parliamentary Road and although part of the old road sits under a corner of Banan Bus station, it’s not the same bus station and not in the same place. It was called Dundas Street Bus Station. Here it is around the 1960s, not far from today’s bus station, but now buried below the BAN galleries and concert hall. The PH shown right beside the bus station was a pub at 82 Dunda Street. Very handy for a small refreshment before or after getting a bus. Does anyone remember it? I’m sure it went under a variety of names over the years, but at one time it was Bar 82 owned by a Matthew Reed. The bus station sneaks into shot in this photo of 1967 and in this one of 1963. We can also see the Nip the bar in the background at 414 to 418 Parliamentary Road. and a closer peak in that same year. Again, we can see the PH or public house at that address in our 1960s map. Just another handy pub when you’re getting on or off a bus. And here we see a lot of stressed commuters getting off a bus right at the Dundas Street bus station in 1963. I must get to my work. Must get to my work. Some things never change. There were other pubs like Pa Makans at 194 Parliamentary Road captured here sometime around the first quarter of the 20th century. Its ghost now buried under the grass of Townhead’s housing scheme right by the tree monument to Charles Mintosh who was born not far away. There were other pubs like the Lemon Tree at numbers 394 to 400s and the Forrasher Bar at number 420 both shown here in 1963. The latter not far from the Dundas Street bus station and a second bus station in the area in Kellerman Street. Both seen in this 1960s map with a fair sprinkling of phs to slake a thirsty traveler’s drift. And of course there were shops in parliamentary road. Every tenement had shops at ground level. Here we see the cow layers co-op at numbers 194 to 210 in 1962. The location of that block of tenementss was again where the tree monument to Charles Ren Macintosh stands today. Or maybe it doesn’t. I’m not convinced that that monument still stands. And here we have Henry Healey’s shop number 237. In Henry Healey’s shops, they patted butter quite a lot. The shop’s location is buried under housing scheme grass, and the gentle sounds of butter being pattied can no longer be heard in the area. At number 61, there was another shop, Lindsay’s Grocerers, seen here around 1935. And here’s a closeup of the staff. a largely seriousl looking bunch of youngsters who were no doubt wondering why they had to pose for photos when there was butter that needed padding. There were other buildings in Parliament Road that weren’t shops or pubs. The city manure depot sat at 234 Parliamentary Road opposite the Grafton picture house which itself sat just along from the old toll house. It was here that all the collected manure from all the horses in the city was stored prior to being pattied and shaped and formed and baked into pies and brides for the works canteen. digest. One presumes that it was sold to farmers as fertilizer and spread around fields. The railway offices were at numbers 310 to 316, which was just beside the gate house and driveway leading to the old asylum and poor house. The site now under houses on St. Mongo’s Avenue. You can see them on the right of this photo taken by John R. Hume in 1968. The gateway on the left is the entrance to the asylum and poor house. And the curving building number 318 is a remaining part of the poor house, clearly not destroyed when the main complex was demolished around 1910. We can actually see some detail in that curving building in our 1857 map like a waiting hall, boardroom and such like. I am inclined to think that the railway offic’s building was also part of the original asylum or poor house. The architectural style is similar to the curving building with arched windows. And there is a definite shape outline of footprint similarity when comparing the 1857 map with the 1960s map. If I fade from one to the other, you’ll see what I mean. But whatever, all the buildings have now gone. End of story. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] But the big question is why on earth did such a main road crowned with all manner of stuff disappear? I suppose it’s all down to that ugly word regeneration. the construction of housing in the 1960s, construction of the M8 motorway and town head interchange in the 60s and 70s, a new bus station in the 1970s, and the bean galleries and concert hall in the 1990s gradually saw Parliamentary Road wiped off the face of the earth. Was it worth it? Did having an indoor toilet mean we had to destroy everything in sight? Really? Of course, you do have to wonder what on earth possessed us to turn this into that. I’m Eddie Burns. Take care. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music]