Vinegar Tom wrote:Thanks Brian. I always thought that the gap site opposite Dumbarton Road / Balmoral Terrace had to be a bomb site. Hopefully I have been proved wrong, unless they erected buildings there before the war?
As far as I'm aware it has always been a gap site apart from a cleansing depot which stood at the corner of Esk St/Dumbarton Road. I have read that there were allotments along there at one point and that the land wasn't suitable for building on.
Here's a pic from the 1950's from the opposite end of the Balmoral Terrace Tenements looking east, showing the gap site fenced off and what looks like allotments
Yoker looking East by
Brian Kelly Mobile, on Flickr
The bomb sites along that stretch of road were at Dumbarton Road / Yetholm St, and Dyke Road / Dumbarton Road and a littler further east between 2 sandstone tenement blocks.
The first bombs dropped over Glasgow came at 10:15am on 19th July 1940, when four 250kg high explosive bombs fell at the eastern end of Langholm Street/Blawarthill Street - killing 4 people. Surprisingly given the closeness of Yoker to Clydebank and the industry in the area only 40 people were killed in Yoker during the various bombing raids over the city, although many properties sustained damage. The bonded warehouses at Yoker distillery suffered from incendiary bombing which saw the loss of over £1m worth of whisky going up in flames (thats 1940's prices btw!!!)
Below is an aerial photograph from the early 30's overlooking Yarrows shows it as a gap site.
Blawarthill aerial photo by
Brian Kelly Mobile, on Flickr
This picture can be dated 1930 - 1935 as the plots of the houses in Blawarthill estate (Lesmuir Drive / Kinneller Drive etc are only being laid out, this was one of the new estates built by the corporation after the 1926 expansion of the city which included Yoker moving from the control of Renfrew Burgh to Glasgow - it also shows the Blawarthill Farm which was situated at the top of Grey Street (Now Plean Street) - Mr Grey was the last occupier of the farm.
Note the only one side of Blawarthill street had tenements - in the 1930's a row of tenements similar to those on Langholm street was built along the north of Drysdale St / Blawarthill Street and continued down round to Dumbarton Road, one block survives to this day (just behind the present pic of Blawarthill Terrace)
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Here's a pic of the Blawarthill Terrace Gap site in 1925 - from the Virtual Mitchell - it was known at that time as Yoker Road.
Blawarthill gap by
Brian Kelly Mobile, on Flickr