Clydebank Blitz - when Hyndland was also bombed

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Postby Ronnie » Thu Sep 09, 2004 9:47 am

deebers wrote:::):

:)! You guys are thorough!


Yeah, we'll do anything for a pretty avatar! ::):
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Postby caine » Thu Sep 09, 2004 11:12 am

if thats not the begining s of an internet stalker i dont know what is. :wink:
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Postby deebers » Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:05 pm

Umm, thanks! :oops:

Thanks Red Kola - I'll need to show that to my ma!
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Postby Closet Classicist » Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:21 pm

There is a book available on the Clydebank Blitz:

"The Clydebank Blitz" by I M M MacPhail
Published by Clydebank District Libraries and Museums Dept,1974
Reprinted by Cordfall Ltd, Glasgow, Tel 0141 332 4640
ISBN 0 85279 0619
Detailed account of the Clydebank Blitz, mostly referring to Clydebank.

I've browsed through it before. Horrifying reading of course.

My parents live in Cardross, just down from the Seminary and there are some good Blitz stories from there. The original conservatory on their house was destroyed by the force of the blast that took out the church at the east end of the village hence why only the church tower stands today. After one of the day time raids a bomber flew low over the village and dropped its unused bombs on a farm house just to the west of the village. The farmer and his men were digging a ditch nearby and apparently made eye contact with the bomber pilot as the plane was that low! There is now an unusal white painted modern farm house on the north side of the road heading out the village towards Helensburgh which was built to replace the ruin.

Apparently some people from Clydebank approached the Imperial War Museum about having the book stocked in their bookshop. The museum said no. It had enough books on the London Blitz already and other parts of the UK don't count.

Cheers

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Postby Closet Classicist » Thu Sep 09, 2004 4:29 pm

The end walls of tenements with fireplaces in them are no sure indication of bomb damage, subsidence or other disasters. The building regulations in Glasgow insisted that the people building less than a full block had to leave the end unfinished, with fireplaces and chimney flues, so that whoever completed the block could join on seamlessly ... otherwise you'd have two "ends" butting each other half-way along a block.
You can check this by looking at a block that's obviously been built in different styles ... there is no gap between them, or a double layer of chimneys.


Interesting Ronnie that explains a lot. I had always wondered why tenements and terraces just ended like that. I always thought it was either because tenements had been removed through subsidence or bomb damage. A eminently sensible strategy though. Wonder why the practice stopped. Probably because Lloyd George's budget of 1909 -10 killed tenement construction stone dead.

More urban myths to do with the Blitz: someone once told me that the German consulate in Park Circus was destroyed by a stray german bomb during the war. Why to go Hitler! Due to terms of war agreements we, as in the British, had to rebuild it as like. Which is why you can't tell that it happened. Does anyone know if there is any truth to that?

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Postby Schiehallion » Thu Sep 09, 2004 10:22 pm

In addition to the Clydebank area, Greenock was pretty badly hit too with 280 dead and over 1000 homes destroyed. The city centre didn't escape either. Two areas bombed were the junction of Ingram St and Queen St and the north-east corner of George Square. Both these areas have a noticeable lack of Victorian buildings.

Radnor Park Clydebank after the blitz
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Radnor Street Clydebank
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Scotstoun
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Scotstoun
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Clydebank
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Clydebank
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Glasgow Tram
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Postby deebers » Thu Sep 09, 2004 11:07 pm

Wow - that's pretty heavy duty. They really ruined Clydebank - didn't they?

And whose decision was it to build business parks and factories in their place?
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Postby Closet Classicist » Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:08 am

Yeah what worse is that given all that destruction and loss of community / townscape someone, other than the Germans, decided after the war to demolish the amazing Singer factory with its enormous clock tower and replace it with the anonymous business park. Depressing. This could have, and should have been Clydebank's equivalent to Manchester and Bradford's mills and a real spur to regeneration and local identity. Don't have a photo but will seek one out. However this is the relevant page on Clydebank's website

http://www.welcometoclydebank.org.uk/hi ... gers.shtml

Interestingly enough the Germans haven't been quite so casual with their industrial heritage. The AEG factory in Berlin is still intact though no longer in use as a factory. Its has instead been converted in a peicemeal fashion into galleries, workshops, and lofts. It still sits in its original cobbled courtyards with rail and tram lines intact and other haulage equipment preserved in an unsentimental fashion. Looks great.

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Postby yoker brian » Fri Sep 10, 2004 1:10 pm

Found this link via the welcometoclydebank website

It gives details of a "Land Mine" in Dudley Drive in Hynland

http://www.hyndl.demon.co.uk/hyndland/dact/7landmine.htm
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Postby red_kola » Fri Sep 10, 2004 1:50 pm

yoker brian wrote:Found this link via the welcometoclydebank website

It gives details of a "Land Mine" in Dudley Drive in Hynland

http://www.hyndl.demon.co.uk/hyndland/dact/7landmine.htm


:)! ::): ::): ::):

How do you spell recursive??? :wink:
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Postby yoker brian » Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:44 pm

oops!!

I hate a smartass! ::): :P
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Postby john-g » Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:09 pm

Wow,

Image

Although the plans for the new tenements were passed in April 1948, the building was not completed until 1954.

The new design matches the old in general terms, using similar building materials, and more or less the same layout of windows, except that the stair windows, while still facing the street, are mid-way between floors. While this new pattern rather interrupts the original, perhaps it provides a quiet reminder of the tragedy which struck in 1941.


I'd always thought tenement construction ceased in the thirties, and even then deco tenements are rare as hen's teeth. I've noticed quite a large estate at Anniesland and a couple in Carntyne, engulfed by the sprawling suburbia the city started mushrooming at this time. I'm talking "proper" tenements here, not the brick render crap thrown up by the council.

In fact this should be a Hidden Glasgow project, examples of rare/unique tenement designs!

Also,

Anything not built before 1910 was never finished as a change in the law virtually eradicated the prospective building of tenements.


Probably because Lloyd George's budget of 1909 -10 killed tenement construction stone dead.


What law/budget was this?

More to the point why the hell was it passed?

I'd always thought tenement construction stopped because we couldn't afford to build in stone anymore? Also the city lost its self belief and started apeing design developments from England? And a mistaken belief that density equalled slums?

Tenements are the single greatest thing about Glasgow, the day we stopped building them Glasgow stopped being great, the day we started bulldozing them (insanely), we became a disaster zone.
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Postby red_kola » Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:21 pm

john wrote:What law/budget was this?

More to the point why the hell was it passed?


From what I understand (and the sources always seem to mention it only in passing, never in much detail), when the Liberals finally got their Finance Bill passed in 1910 it included for the first time, a tax on the sale of land. This simply made it uneconomic to buy the land, build and then sell the tenements. Whether this was a double-whammy with tax on both ends of the transaction, I do not know.

Although in Glasgow the street layouts were often quite meticulously planned, the actual tenements were mostly built singularly or in small lots by individual builders with the profits being used to fund the next project; think of it as the 'Property Ladder' of its day.

With the impact of this Act and then the First World War, economic confidence was so low that it took quite some time for entrepreneurs to return to house building. By the time they did, fashions had changed and people wanted garden cottages or terraces like you find in Mosspark, Knightswood, Kelvindale.

The tenement never really came back into fashion until the 70s; although some were built in the intervening years, none approached the scale or grandeur of those found in Hyndland or Hillhead. It is really only in the last 30 years that these buildings have begun again to be appreciated for the architecural marvels that they are.
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Postby Ronnie » Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:54 pm

The full story of the tenements is in -

Frank Worsdall
The Glasgow Tenement: A Way of Life
(Chambers 1979; Richard Drew 1989; Chambers 1991)

The Mitchell has it.
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Postby red_kola » Fri Sep 10, 2004 10:12 pm

Ronnie wrote:The full story of the tenements is in -

Frank Worsdall
The Glasgow Tenement: A Way of Life
(Chambers 1979; Richard Drew 1989; Chambers 1991)

The Mitchell has it.

Thanks Ronnie. I was lucky to find a copy in Wigtown a few month ago :D
Like I said, it is low on detail on this specific point:
But this was the end - Lloyd George's Finance Act of 1910 signalled the cessation of private tenement-building, since it made it quite uneconomical.

Very helpful :roll:. How about telling us why.
I'd also recommend Glasgow - The Forming of the City. A wealth of information and a far better read... Get your copy through the link on the front page and this site gets a cut as well!
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