The Gorbals. Part of Glasgow, but once a little village on the banks of
the River Clyde. Oh how times change.
As far as change is concerned, it would be hard to imagine anywhere in
Glasgow, or indeed all of Scotland, that has seen more change than The
Gorbals.
And while I’m at it, why do we say ‘The Gorbals’? We don’t just say ‘Gorbals’.
We also say ‘The Calton’; we don’t say ‘Calton’. What is it with that
little ‘the’ word. I mean, we don’t say ‘The Partick’ or ‘The Maryhill’
or ‘The Springburn’. Can anyone shed any light on this anomaly?
When Glasgow enveloped the Gorbals in the mid 19th century in the way
that big cities do, i.e. took it over, some changes were made. That
little quaint village had to go. In its place would be street upon
street with row upon row of tenements. For Glasgow was good at building
tenements. At least for a while.
But with time and man’s desire for improvement, it was found that these
tenements were no longer up to scratch. I mean, for goodness sake; not
only did they not have indoor toilets … and I remember those days! …
they did not have water in their ain hoose! In some Gorbals tenements
residents had to leave the cosy confines of their tenement flat and get
water from a sink on an external landing. Not good in Winter. Or any
time.
But it wasn’t just that. The Gorbals grew in size in direct proportion
to the growth of Scotland’s Industrial Revolution. More machines meant
more work, although not just as much work as before The Machines came,
and more people arrived in The Gorbals to feed the revolution.
They came from all over to live and work; Jewish folk escaping
persecution in Poland and Russia; Christians from Ireland fleeing from a
catastrophic potato famine that saw around a million of their countrymen
die of hunger; and Scottish Highlanders fleeing a free kirk that didn’t
allow them to drink on the Sabbath, not to mention the small matter of
being evicted from their land during The Clearances.
All these different folk flocked to The Gorbals to find work. But in the
end there were too many people and not enough work. Too many people and
not enough housing.
And so the existing tenements of the Gorbals became overcrowded slums.
Sigh. Such is life.
By the 1950s something had to be done. Unemployment and overcrowding saw
an increase in tension and resentment towards the different groups of
people; incomers all.
So The Gorbals was raised to the ground; demolished; obliterated…
whatever you want to call it. It’s very hard to make this clear, but
when I say the whole of The Gorbals, that is exactly what I mean.
Everything was got rid of. It almost seemed that the city of Glasgow was
using overcrowded slum housing as an excuse for blanket demolition!
Absolutely everything had to go. Even the architectural good stuff.
Well, almost. A few old structures managed to cling on for dear life.
But in general, what had been The Gorbals was flattened.
In its place came modern housing, housing with indoor toilets, running
water and heating; housing that reached for the sky and shook in a wind.
The rise of the High Rises.
For residents of The Gorbals who had endured slum housing most of their
life, these new multi-storey flats were the bees knees. At least for a
while. For soon social isolation set in. It’s hard to keep a close eye
on your children when you’re living in the sky. And besides, jeely
pieces do not always travel well when thrown from a twenty-storey flat!
But it got worse. These new concrete monstrosities began to show signs
of damp and mould growth. It became unhealthy to live there.
So everything was demolished again. Not all in a oney; but in bits and
bobs. During the late 20th century and early 21st century these new
all-singing all-dancing brutalist monsters were demolished. They were
mostly blown up with explosives, but not without risk to spectators keen
to see their damp-ridden flat raised to the ground. In 1993, during
demolition of buildings in Area C at Queen Elizabeth Square – housing
designed by Sir Basil Spence – a woman was killed by debris blown out of
a building in a controlled explosion that clearly went badly wrong.
And so they rebuilt The Gorbals. Never has an area seen so much change.
What is The Gorbals of today like? Well, nothing like it used to. Not
much in the way of pubs on street corners, shops in tenements, or
chinwags with your neighbour through their ground-floor window. The
tenements have gone, and with them the community spirit in an area once
vibrant with life and not tainted by that modern disease we call
Progress.
Gorbals On the streets where we lived
Another look back at the old Gorbals
High Rise and Fall, Glasgow, Gorbals documentary 1993
Documentary about Queen Elizabeth Square, Sir Basil Spence's block of
Brutalist style flats built to replace the Gorbal's tenements in Glasgow
during the 1960's. His vision was based on architect Le Corbusier's
ideas and aspired to transforming the Gorbals in to a Modernist
Utopia.The film is the life and times of one building told by some of
the people involved in it's history. The block was dynamited in 1993
amidst controversy and the death of a spectator. It is mentioned is
Pevsner's Notable Buildings of Britain. This film was shown on BBC
Scotland's Ex-S strand in 1993. Produced by May Miller and directed by
Conrad Blakemore. This film is posted for educational and research
purposes only and is copyright of BBC Scotland. Archive material
courtesy of the Scottish Film Archive and the film's contributors.
