Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby Sunflower » Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:11 pm

Viceroy wrote
Fairley St., just round the corner from Copland RoadImage

This was a hammer shaft factory, built in 1892 [extended 1901] for Robert Burley & Sons, makers of hammer shafts and tool handles. As you can see this building is in a rather sorry state.

Here it is on the Alan Godfrey 1909 Govan map:
Image

And the http://maps.live.com bird's eye view - I've only just found this, it may be Microsoft but it's pretty amazing........
Image
Looks practically unchanged from the map. (Apart from the state of decay, obviously - wonder if the guys knew they were building for a 100 year stretch?)
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby Sunflower » Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:26 pm

And the signs are still kinda readable...
Image
"ROBERT BURLEY" - and could that be the start of SONS along behind the drainpipe?

... to the right...
Image
Hmm, two rows of lettering, tipped off by Viceroy that's got to be "HAMMER SHAFTS" on top and "TOOL HANDLES" in the bottom row.

...to the left...
Image
Two rows again, the top looks like WOOD near the beginning and NG at the end - maybe "WOOD TURNING"? Not very convinced by the spacing though. Apart from what looks like N below the render patch the bottom row looks like a lost cause. Any offers?
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby Peetabix » Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:33 pm

I think the top line of the last pic says 'wood bending'. That was after a play about in Photoshop. Nice series.
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby Sunflower » Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:47 pm

Robert Burley & Sons - who were they and where did they go? - Looking into who lived in Walmer Crescent (a mere hammer's throw away), in the Mitchell's Post Office Directories I found Robert Burley living at 5 Walmer Crescent from 1874 to 1885. The business entry then gave the trade address as 96 Great Wellingston Street (now Admiral Street).

The 1881 census has Robert Burley junior living there as well, both shown as Timber Merchants. Dad was 70 in 1881 (couldn't make out junior's age).

From 1886 to 1890 they were both at 3 Walmer Crescent, which is one of the main door ground-floor-and-basement giant flats. In 1891 they're in 8 Walmer Crescent, back in a one-level (but still sizeable) flat and in 1892 the business address changes to Fairley Street - " Foreign and home wood merchants, hammer and pick handle manufacturers". Tempting to fantasise that they might have had to economise on the rent while building the new works... The 1891 census shows them both as 'wood turners' which sounds considerably more downscale, Dad as 84 and Son as 37 - with a 1 year-old daughter intriguingly born in America.

In 1892/93 Son has disappeared from Walmer Crescent, and appeared at 5 Ibrox Terrace - wonder if he could peer out of his bedroom window to see what was going on at the works? In 1894/95 Dad has moved from Walmer Crescent as well, and they're both at Bellahouston Terrace.
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby viceroy » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:52 am

Nice piece of research Sunflower and you're obviously a lot more observant than me. To think I have walked past that building countless times – and took a picture as well – and never taken any notice of what remains of the signage. It would be interesting to know when Robert Burley ceased trading. Certainly the building has been unused for a long time. As far as I can remember it was already empty when I began working in the area in 1984, except for possibly the bit used by Regent Shopfitters and I don’t think they are in business anymore.

The Virtual Earth image is also a bit of a revelation. I never realised the yard at the back was so big. By the way, did you know that the large block of modern flats beside the building and extending as far as Copland Road is actually a conversion of what at one time was a meat processing plant belonging to Galloway the Butchers? The plant was still operating in the mid 1980’s but closed shortly afterwards. It was a pretty cheap and shoddy conversion in my opinion. I know for a fact that the flats have always been difficult to sell.

Bellahouston Terrace doesn’t show up on current Glasgow streetmaps. I wonder whether it’s an old name for the terraced houses along Bellahouston Drive, just up from the Sports Centre.
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby Sunflower » Tue Oct 21, 2008 12:58 am

To be honest I'd driven past there a million times, then the BURLEY bit caught my eye after I'd seem the name in the Walmer Crescent PO Directory entry. At first I thought it was because some more of the render had fallen off, but it looks pretty much the same at the time you took your pic so it must just have been that I was primed to notice it.

I was trying not to pick at the Bellahouston Terrace bit but now I can't resist. I'm wondering if it's the name for a tenement, like the next tenement along PRdW from Walmer Crescent was known as Kensington Terrace with its own numbering in the early 1900s.

I did know that the scuzzy looking flats next door were some kind of conversion, but not that it was a meat processing plant - I briefly knew someone who lived there (renting) - I don't think she would have been surprised, she didn't stay long........
Peetabix wrote:I think the top line of the last pic says 'wood bending'. That was after a play about in Photoshop. Nice series.

Wow, that fits :D , nice work, and so quick I didn't notice you!
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby Sunflower » Tue Oct 21, 2008 10:50 pm

OK, found Bellahouston Terrace - appears on its own (given as 'Bellahouston Terrace, Paisley Road' in the front index to the missing map page) when the Burleys lived there. The numbering suggests it's a tenement with main door and stair door flats. By 1914/15 it's listed in PRdW on the north side between Park Road (now Merrick Gardens) and Whitefield Road (where Edmiston Raod joins now). Sort of opposite The Swallow.

In 1914/15 Son Burley has moved to Dalkeith Avenue, Dumbreck - gone up in the world?. Dad would have been -er- 107. By 1924 the business entry is still the same, but Son Burley doesn't appear (he'd have been -um- 70, maybe he'd retired to the seaside).

The business entry stays in until 1969/70 (1973/74 has got it listed in Fairley St, but no entry in the names section, and it's gone from Fairley St in 1975/76 which is the last volume (who knew these things existed so recently??)

In the 1932/33 directory the business entry has the extra bit 'est 1839' - Dad would have been in his late 20s then.

One particularly nice thing - in 1934 the entry says 'Foreign and home wood merchants, hammer and pick handle manufacturers, saw millers, timber importers and wood benders - gold star Peetabix :D 8)

And don't you just love it that a business making pick handles was run by a couple of guys called Burley? (I'm already going)
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby viceroy » Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:16 pm

Sunflower wrote:OK, found Bellahouston Terrace - appears on its own (given as 'Bellahouston Terrace, Paisley Road' in the front index to the missing map page) when the Burleys lived there. The numbering suggests it's a tenement with main door and stair door flats. By 1914/15 it's listed in PRdW on the north side between Park Road (now Merrick Gardens) and Whitefield Road (where Edmiston Raod joins now). Sort of opposite The Swallow.


This must be the rather grand white sandstone tenement which still stands directly opposite the Swallow Hotel. As far as I know the grassy area at the gushet of PRW / Edmiston Drive remained unbuilt on until the sheltered housing complex appeared some years back.
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby graeme1 » Mon Oct 24, 2011 5:42 pm

With regard to Robert Burley and sons, I think this building may have belonged to the father of the famous Scottish war correspondent of the Victorian era, Bennet Burleigh, his father was a master carpenter.

Bennet Graham Burley (He changed his name to Burleigh after the American Civil War) was born in 1839 in Greenock, near Glasgow, Scotland, to Robert Burley and Christian Seath, he was to be one of x brothers and x sisters. His parents were local people, and his father was a retired soldier and joiner who later widened his horizons and became the owner of a wood products company in Glasgow, as well as a general importer and exporter, a job which would have involved foreign travel. Robert Burley was also a trustee of Glasgow’s Mechanics Institution, and largely responsible for opening, in 1840, after a decades hard work, the Greenock Mechanics Library. At the opening, Mr. Robert Burley, who regularly attended the lectures of the Institution of Arts and Science some years prior to the founding of the Library, spoke of his pleasant connection with the Institution, and rejoiced that the labour and love of long gone-bye days had not been without fruit.

According to Bennet Burleighs own account, after he left school in Glasgow, he joined his fathers company as an apprentice joiner, and then spent some time, like many other young men in Greenock at the time as a seaman.

Bennet went to join up with the American civil war in the 1860's, and had many adventures, sentenced to death on several occasions, escaped prison, hence the name change. He had a daughter, in fact a few kids born in the usa in the 1870s i think, i know the first was in lord darnleys cottage around glasgow cathedral. I also know he had a brother.

When Burleigh eventually returned from America, a family story goes, that he asked his father if he was still “bothered with wood”, and upon the affirmative, he presented him with some American hickory, which brought about a revolution in the handle and walking stick industry.

Also in census details burleieghs age is never correct and his first wife died in june 1885 perhaps this is why the kid was with brother? Bennet himself was in Soudan in 1885 reporting on the liberation of Soudan from the Mahdi, then returned and . He stood in Lanarkshire and Glasgow constituencies—in 1885 as Liberal-Labour candidate,
Bennet was in Scotland at this time "On 28th September 1885, a poster advertises that, Bennet Burleigh War Correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" was to give a presentation in Dundee's Kinnaird Hall on the war in Soudan, "
I am not sure, but i think perhaps the coincidences are too strong for this not to be the same family.
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby graeme1 » Mon Oct 24, 2011 5:58 pm

A photo of the building at 17 Fairley Street in better days

http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/searc ... d=SC604669
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby Sunflower » Thu Oct 27, 2011 5:01 pm

Wow graeme1! That sent me on a wild Google ride, thank you. Didn't some people have extraordinary lives in the olden times? (Are you the poster on a WW1 forum with essentially the same info?)

It is the same family - here click is chapter and verse from the Glasgow Herald on the occasion of the wood-turning business's centenary, hickory story and all. The account also says Robert Burley (Bennet's father) came up with the idea for a 'submarine gun' (proto-torpedo), and is referenced in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Must read it again.

The account of the founding of the Greenock Mechanics' Library is pretty stunnng too - 'ordinary working men' wanting to improve themselves...

I wonder if there's any demand for a wood-turning museum and cultural centre as a regeneration catalyst for Ibrox? Nice, if somewhat decayed, building for just right for it, complete with courtyard for the obligatory caff.
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby graeme1 » Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:27 pm

Thanks Sunflower, I have been going through the census details, and it does appear this is the same family, Robert Junior being 9 in the 1861 census
1861 census.
Name: Robert Burley
Age: 34
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1827
Relationship: Head
Spouse's name : Christian Burley
Gender: Male
Where born: Bo'ness, Linlithgowshire
Registration Number: 644/9
Registration district: Tradeston
Civil parish: Glasgow Govan
County: Lanarkshire
Address: 31 Morrison St
Occupation: Pickaxe Hammer Lander employing 5 Men & 2 boys manif
ED: 72
Household schedule number: 3
Line: 10
Roll: CSSCT1861_111
Household Members: Name Age
Robert Burley 34
Christian Burley 48
Agnes Burley 18
Christina Binley 12
Robert Burley 9
James S Burley 6

Bennet, the war correspondent would have been 21 and left home at the time, his daughter Chrissie, was born in New York but would have been about 15 come the 1891 census, however with their mother being called christine aswell I am sure one of the Grand kids was named after her. So there you go, a real interesting find, I never new my family used to be so well to do ) Thanks for the article its really good, and confirms a few family myths, it is not me on the world war 1 forum, but i should look in to it. thanks
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby graeme1 » Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:29 pm

That is me on World War forum, it was so long ago I forgot. 3 of bennets sons died in WW1
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby dogface » Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:38 pm

viceroy wrote:By the way, did you know that the large block of modern flats beside the building and extending as far as Copland Road is actually a conversion of what at one time was a meat processing plant belonging to Galloway the Butchers? The plant was still operating in the mid 1980’s but closed shortly afterwards. It was a pretty cheap and shoddy conversion in my opinion. I know for a fact that the flats have always been difficult to sell.


Sunflower wrote:I did know that the scuzzy looking flats next door were some kind of conversion, but not that it was a meat processing plant - I briefly knew someone who lived there (renting) - I don't think she would have been surprised, she didn't stay long........!


Sorry to bring up an old(er) thread with questions not even related to the main topic ( :oops: ) but I've PM'd these two posters anyway and thought some other people might have some opinions / info aswell! :) Just wondered why those ex-factory flats on fairley street are so unpopular cos was thinking about moving there and don't want any nasty surprises? ::): ::):

Also, I don't really trust my own judgement anymore :) - went to look at somewhere near Elderpark street, thought it was dead nice! Came home and googled the area and found out there was a murder there earlier this year and a serious assault not too long before that... hmm... don't fancy taking the wee dog out at night there until I've got my street smartness up a wee bit!!

Also, just wondered, we passed an amazing old derelict school in the govan area driving around - whereabouts is it specifically? Want to go back with a camera... hope someone knows the one I mean!!

Thanks in advance!

ETA - is Copland Court still going as a halfway house? :)
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Re: Victorian era industrial buildings still standing

Postby The Egg Man » Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:01 pm

dogface wrote: .............

Sorry to bring up an old(er) thread with questions not even related to the main topic ( :oops: ) .............


Speaking purely for me, a relative newcomer, I welcome people resurrecting older threads I've missed. There's just soooooooooooooo much on HG it's impossible to take it all in.
I hear the people sing.
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