The Hidden Glasgow Forums

retired tiger wrote:

footbowler wrote:Im interested in bowling clubs and there used to be a Glasgow club called Drysdale Recreation.

I could never find out any info about them, but the last couple of posts might have solved it for me. As there is now a bowling club called Yarrow Recreation that used to be called Weirs something or other, and hence the now modern Yarrows.

Does anyone know any history of this?

The Drysdale bowling club, (and tennis courts) were up in Jordanhill, near Helensburgh Drive. I think they had originally been owned by Yarrows. They might have become Weirs for a while after Drysdales shut down.

Thanks fo the info retired tiger. Any idea the exact location of Drysdale Bowling Club? What is it now?

I have looked on the current day maps and the current Yarrow Recreation Bowling Club is located just off Helensburgh Drive, so it is more than likely that one.

Yarrow Recreational Club

http://members.lycos.co.uk/yarrowrecreationclub/history.html

[quote="Doc Lightning"]Aye, it's a good site. You get very low quality films free, which have "PREVIEW COPY" or sometinhg like that in big yellow letters on the screen. I found it hard to make out what I was watching. But worth a look anyway. If you want better quality you need to pay.[/quote]

This is my first post. Just getting used to the site : fantastic material and opinions.

I paid to get one of the British Pathe films at the higher resolution. I think it was 512 kb/s from memory, and it came as a Windows media file. The improvement in quality over the free download seemed fairly small to me, and certainly not worth the £29 cost for a 2 min running time. However, it did show some great footage of the King and Queen emerging from the lift at the top of the tower, walking over to the balcony, and then views over the exhibition.

There was some pretty nice Empire Exhibition related artwork on the 1938 edition of the official Glasgow Corporation Transport guide book.
Strangely enough the inside text only mentions the exhibition once or twice, and no photos,



(That is one grubby book )

Found this while googling: http://www.wigtown-heritage.org/rex_cinema.htm, seems the Lyons tea house pavillion went to Wigtown after the exhibition as the new facade of a cinema. Unfortunately demolished in the 1960's.

Nice find Crusty - we didn't know about that cinema!

As a thank you, I've finally got around to scanning the rather nice Empire Exhibition map and guide I came across a while ago....

nodrog

Nice one Gordon! Glad to be of help

Fantastic gordon!

So we know what happened to quite a few of the buildings, but what happened to the most spectacular one of them all... The tower itself?

Just skimmed over some of the stuff there, will have another look when I have more time, and two things I noted were: 'ceilidh' being spelt 'ceileidh' - was this an old spelling or a mistake? Secondly, the sports stadium thing, did they have some sort of tournament there? If so, does anyone know who won? I see Aberdeen were to be playing Chelsea, I'd be interested in that result!

Very interesting guide though. Thanks for scanning.

Gaelic was (and still is) a predominately spoken language and very infrequently written (very few native Gaelic speakers could read or write in their native language at that time as it was not taught in schools, and its use discouraged).

The language's spellings were modernised and simplified fairly recently so the spelling in the brochure would be an old spelling.

tommytank wrote:Fantastic gordon!

So we know what happened to quite a few of the buildings, but what happened to the most spectacular one of them all... The tower itself?

I think the Tait Tower was dismantled for scrap. Although quite a spectacular design concept it was made of a fairly basic construction of steel frame and cladding. I understand it was always intended to be temporary.

Also i read somewhere that with the possibility of an imminent war looming it would have acted as a navigational aid to the Luftwaffe.

Empire Exhibition bonanza today!! I finally got around to scanning a wee book of REAL photographs

Bumper day!

Wow, love the aerial photo...ace!!