886 Springfield Rd. I had thought this little cottage, so incongruous among the tenement blocks, was worth recording, so I was pleased to find that it features in SCRAN:
"This was probably the last single-storeyed hand-loom weaver's cottage in the east end of Glasgow. Built in the late 18th or early 19th century, it probably owed its survival to its conversion into a shop. It probably originally contained two dwellings. It was of rubble construction, with a pantile roof, and apart from the insertion of shop windows, was little altered externally. The east end of Glasgow had a large population of hand-loom weavers until the 1820s and 1830s when power-loom factories supplanted them. Most of their houses appear to have been two-storeyed. Pantiles made from local clay were common in the area."
I think the newsagent’s shop was still open in 1976, though in a diminished state compared with the 1967 John Hume photo, but sadly the cottage and the adjoining block have since been cleared and replaced with new housing (which I must say seems a very decent modern interpretation of the traditional Glasgow tenement).
The rear of the weaver’s cottage, with Newlands School across the road. Nepus gables are normally placed centrally, and the asymmetrical position of this one, coupled with the lack of symmetry in the front roofline, suggest that the cottage would originally have been almost twice as long,. ‘Single-storeyed’ isn’t quite accurate, as it obviously had one-and-a-half storeys. The tileless condition of the rear roof and the general dilapidation imply that this charming little cottage did not have a great future.
Alas, I can offer no information about the next two shots, other than that they were taken on 12/2/74, probably somewhere (from the sequence on the film) between Tullis St and Bridgeton Cross. In the angle of Tullis St and Main St seems as likely as anywhere. I’m not even sure whether they are of one back-land building or of two very similar ones. In the first shot there appears to be a connection with the first-floor landing of the tenement by an elevated passageway, which I think ought to be visible in the second but isn’t. Not for habitation surely, despite the chimneys - communal wash-house/s?
1892 map of the area. Might be in there somewhere.
Generally careful when I started out on the project (March 1973), I was getting sloppy by this time (1976), disheartened by the seeming pointlessness of it all. The Internet was undreamt of in those days. Exhibition or publication would have been the only means of displaying the photos to an audience, and who would ever want to publish or exhibit that lot? Anyway, as a result I can’t say for sure what the next two photos show, but the east side of Bridgeton Main St seems likely. The White Hart? An off-licence between a Galbraith’s and MacMillan Bros. fireplaces? Ring a bell with any Old Brigtonians? January 1976
Floundering again. The flatiron shape of the tenement suggests the corner of Dalmarnock Rd and Old Dalmarnock Rd. The pub on the left, on the corner of, if I’m correct, Queen Mary St, is the Station Bar. ’1690’ is daubed on the tenement wall across from it, which narrows it down to somewhere in west-central Scotland. January 1976
Dalmarnock Rd? H. A. Crombie licensed grocer at no.93. January 1974
Dalmarnock Rd, east side at Ruby St, Congregational Church in the distance. January 1974
Dalmarnock Rd, Bridgeton Congregational Church, one of the very few old buildings left now in Dalmarnock Rd. The Zion Hall Pentecostal Church relocated here from Green St in the Calton. January 1976
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