It's a rather sad fact, but of all the buildings shown on John McArthur's 1778 map of Glasgow, only a handful remain today. Survivors include Glasgow Cathedral, Provand's Lordship - the oldest house in Glasgow, St Andrew's in the Square church, St Andrew's by-the-Green church, the Tron Steeple in the Trongate, Tolbooth Steeple at The Cross, Briggait Steeple (we must have been good at building steeples in the old days!), and that's probably about it.
Most of the old city of Glasgow has gone, been demolished and swept away in any number of events in the city's past, often in a blinkered blanket manner where one goal was to be achieved with no thought whatsoever to the city's heritage or appearance.
Glasgow has probably been a victim of its own success as Second City of the great British Empire. During the Industrial Revolution the city grew to become a veritable hive of industry, a powerhouse that attracted men and women from the Scottish Highlands and Ireland who arrived to find work. Most probably did find work, but the big problem was that Glasgow did not have the facilities to house them. A pretty good demonstration of the alarming state of affairs can be seen in statistics from that period: the population grew from 77,385 in 1801 to 395,503 in 1861, a quite astonishing rise. There simply wasn't enough houses.
The result was many people packed into areas that were not built to contain them, overcrowding and insanitary conditions. Something had to be done.
Glasgow, under the City Improvement Trust, decided just to knock much of the city down, first in the 1870s then in the 1890s, and build better and more housing.
But it wasn't just housing. The arrival of the railways in the nineteenth century also saw huge areas of the city torn down to make way for passenger and goods stations and depots, as well as the railway lines themselves.
The result of all this demolition is, as I've said, that there is precious little actually left of old Glasgow. Even as late as the 1950s and 60s we were knocking down some of the finest architectural and historical structures without a second thought. And you do have to wonder at an unspoken policy that has been passed down from Victorian times where demolition seems to be the preferred option over good general maintenance and renovation.
For like it or not, this architectural vandalism of the city of Glasgow continues to this day, and even as I type some of the finest buildings and interiors in the country are being left to allow time and the elements to knock them down for us. Apathy and neglect are what is really destroying Glasgow's architectural heritage. Will we ever learn?
24 июн 2023
