The Hidden Glasgow Forums

Been having look at long-distance travel to and from Glasgow before the age of the railways. Just a few years before the arrival of fast efficient rail travel and the “penny post” travelling any distance was pretty primitive using stage-coaches that required frequent changes of horses. It was also e...

Was prompted by the recent “building within a building” topic to have a deeper look into the history of the Merchant Steeple, where the old tower is enveloped within the former Fish Market in the Briggait. Didn't know how the steeple got to be there until I found this fascinating old thread on HG. G...

Completed some new drawings of Peter Ellis's Liverpool buildings. Sent prints down to the author of the new book, who is Secretary of the Liverpool History Society. I reckon there could be an exhibition here somewhere, looking at the very old / very modern buildings of Glasgow, Liverpool and New Yor...

The industrial / archaeological history of Glasgow is so fascinating! You couldn't see anything like the bits and pieces scattered around Linn Park in most UK cities. Still find it weird that the civil engineer at docplus.co.uk, quoted by BTJustice about the alleged “pipe bridge” got back to me priv...

I was so delighted with yesterday's satisfactory confirmation of shale oil distillation in Linn Park that I went out this morning for a walk along the riverbank for a bit of “shale spotting”. Even after last night's deluge there is lots of the stuff visible above the water level of the fast flowing ...

Case closed. Well done lads, great investigation. :D I'm not so sure! The civil engineer who runs the tdocplus.co.uk website quoted by BTJustice, (with his profile at http://rgtr.tdocplus.co.uk/ ), contacted me out of the blue by email yesterday. He seems to have changed his mind after reading my w...

Some of the opinions about Glasgow being ahead of the game in the development of modern commercial architecture, featured at http://www.scotcities.com/warehouses.htm have been quoted in a new book about Liverpool buildings. The book “In the Footsteps of Peter Ellis” http://www.liverpoolhistorysociet...

If you could post an exact location I would like to visit myself Cheers cell. The location is 55.8026 -4.2644 I didn't contact any official organisation because in my experience they don't appreciate amateurs “meddling” in their expert fields and upsetting accepted wisdom. If the mysterious structu...

I used a telephone box to show one of my granddaughters how to put lots of parallel lines in place with set squares. She loves drawing and was surprisingly quite interested! The finished article is an isometric view of a K6 telephone box with all the golden bits restored to their former glory. Desig...

Cheers guys! Great find and a great bit of digging to get the info! You should bring it to the attention of this site http://www.scottishshale.co.uk/index.html as they don’t seem to have any record of this and I’m sure they would be very intrested in the remains of the retort, there can’t be many of...

Glasgow's south side had its own petrochemical industry back in the 1860's based on the abundance of oil bearing black shale which can still be found lying on the banks of the White Cart Water in Linn Park. http://www.scotcities.com/cathcart/netherlee_retort.jpg I discovered this strange structure o...

Methinks you’ve been watching far too much BBC Four, Crusty! Although we’ve been very much into discussing trivial details, I don’t suppose you and I ever meet up on the “What colour socks are you wearing today” thread? With a lack of facts, it’s always going to be a matter of conjecture as regards ...

Great to get some answers to some of these questions, just by thinking about it from a different angle. Edward, I have to agree with you that the construction of St Vincent Street Church and commercial buildings like Egyptian Halls and the Bucks Head Building would have required considerable structu...

Thanks for your input guys. I’ve been doing another wee bit of research. Got no satisfactory answers just another set of questions! Egg Man, I agree that “world-renowned” may be an exaggeration, but the Herald obituary to Thomson on 23rd March 1875 (which I have reproduced in my web page) relates th...

I ‘ve been doing a bit of research about the origins of the Sixty Steps story and the alleged involvement of Alexander Greek Thomson. I thought it might fill an information gap in my Thomson web page. http://www.scotcities.com/greekthomson.htm The more I looked into it, the more questions without lo...