Known to the postman as Salisbury Place but christened by the locals as soon as they went up as the “White Hooses” this Mountblow council estate was built, if memory serves right round about 1970/71. It was a near twin of a slightly earlier Clydebank development which appeared in the area bordered by Second Avenue and First Terrace.
Former Spar store, the only shop on the estateBoth estates were built on steep slopes leading up from one main road, with a network of fenced and stepped pedestrian walkways linking the buildings.
All the Mountblow buildings were of one story with housing for four families, two upstairs and two down, with two utility rooms on the ground floor for washing and drying clothes, storage etc.
Utility room not yet torchedThe houses on the foot of the hill in Mountblow are essentially bungalows with a garage for cars underneath (I seem to remember the Clydebank scheme still had one story buildings with a garage but I may be wrong).
BungalowsThey were simple, flat roofed, rectangular brick boxes, pebble dashed with white chips, on a terraced hillside with all the livingrooms commanding views of the Clyde valley.
Kitchen and livingroomFrom the train north from Dalmuir station they were and still are a notable feature on the landscape, framing as they do the unusual late 1930’s Art Decco Sports Pavilillion, more of which on my ever popular thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11379For years one of my best friends lived in the estate, a place which always felt safe to visit and a great urban playground for kids with it’s labyrinth leading to a set of football pictches. Families on the council house waiting list saw it as a desirable place to move into. Meanwhile in Clydebank the Second Avenue scheme ominounsly became notorious as a set of condensation traps with leaky roofs and an architectural feature, the garages, which seemed to be an vandel and arsonist magnet (ironic considering the fate of the housing which previously stood there in the Blitz).
It took a long time, undoubtebly for a generation or so the Mountblow scheme worked as a place to bring up a family in decent housing, however by the start of this century it was a different story as the structures shared the fate of thier Clydebank predecessors. People couldn’t wait to leave, indeed were desperate to do so, beseiged at night by the obligatory drunk teen boys, every garage now burnt out and abandoned, flat roofs leaking beyond repair.
Slowly everyone who could left or were re-housed by the council, but not all. If you wander round the place now you’ll see the entire stock is waiting in a frozen state of decrepid anticipation for the (official) demolishion teams to move in. However one or two isolated tennents reamain in what must feel like a bizarre ghost settlement, surrounded by burnt out, boarded up trash filled allyways.
A location finder was impressed enough by the scheme’s 1970’s look to suggest it as a setting to the producers of the movie NEDS, an often unintentionally hilarious stab at allagory. The Hooses appears in two very short scenes, including one where our porky anti-hero appears with what can only be described as “chib haunds”, after he has ingeniously taped both appendages entierly to a pair of blades. No doubt writer/director Peter Mullan hoped this would stand out as an iconic moment of gang violence in the cinema in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE kinda way. As it is I spent the scene wondering how John managed to get out of his house without the use of his hands, his chib haunds.
NedsSpeaking of neds, my sister lived on the estate for a few years, the wrong years, she hated it. As I was walking home late from her place one night some pissed up kids tried an inept attempt to ambush (and presumably rob) me. Years of playing on the scheme meant I knew my way through the Labyrinth better than they did and I laughed in the turds faces as I dodged the Buckie bottles they chucked at me in their frustration as I walked away.
Salisbury Court, or the White Hooses as we say. Will it be there much longer? This Clydebank Post article from February this year says, “who knows?”
http://www.clydebankpost.co.uk/news/aro ... y-reality/ Nedlandia