Cyber Seance 13

[Moonwatcher]

Cyber Séance 13. Apr 10 2005

The Tenement
Part One

The Hill overlooking the old city was the epitomy of Glasgow’s ‘Green Place’. Being the highest point on the landscape, it provided a splendid backdrop for the medieval Cathedral at it’s feet, and a stark contrast to the shamble of cobbled streets, alleyways, courtyards and dwellings of the Townhead. Garngad Hill, with it’s Millburn and Rosemount Estates surrounded by gardens and orchards, deserved better than destiny had in store for it. As the 1800s rolled out, Glasgow would expand rapidly to become one of the major industrial centres of the world. Shipbuilding, iron and steel production, textile manufacturing, chemical processing, railway engineering - heavy industry of every kind. For the children of the Industrial Revolution, Glasgow was the place to be. Surrounding villages would eventually be swallowed up as the city boundary elbowed it’s way out in all directions, with places like Gorbals and Govan eventually succumbing to the expansion. But before all that, those on the Millburn Estate, enjoying the pleasant environment and view over the River Clyde, little realised what was coming their way. Even when Telford’s canal, gouged out all the way from Monkland in the east, skirted around the southern foot of the Hill on it’s way west, even then, it was slow to dawn on them that their idyllic existence was under threat.

As the Hill came under siege in the first half of the 19th century, from the factories, mills, workshops and general businesses springing up around it, residents, their world shattered by the noise, smoke, smell and chaos of the transformation, started leaving. Selling up, they moved westward to where affluent houses were being built by those accumulating wealth through the labours of others. The grass of Garngad Hill turned brown, the orchards failed to produce fruit, trees died. Saruman himself would have approved as the plantations were ripped up, the ground stripped down to the bare soil. Building began. Factories and mills need workers, workers need somewhere to live. As immigrant workers flooded into the area; Irish fleeing famine; Highlanders, victims of clearances; Italians… From Garngad Hill’s once green land rose hastily constructed three and four storey blocks of sandstone flats. The Glasgow Tenements had arrived. Their design, distinctive to the city, would serve a purpose and endure long after the mills and factories had gone. This is the story of one of those tenements.

This is the story of 168 Millburn Street, Garngad, Glasgow.

Not all tenements in nineteenth century Glasgow were of the same design, construction or standard. The carefully built, red sandstone, middle class tenements, with their bay windows, landscaped surroundings and large rooms, were a far cry from their frantically and cheaply built white/yellow sandstone cousins like 168. That’s not to say that all white sandstone tenements were bad. Some, as in the Dennistoun area to the south of Garngad rivalled their red counterparts and exist to this day, having been renovated and modernised to become very desirable properties. But for 168, there would be no attractive bay windows, front gardens, tiled closes, high corniced ceilings, or indoor toilet facilites. 168 was not built to please, impress, admire or...last. It’s purpose was to provide shelter for as many working families as possible in an area as small as possible, until the need for housing subsided or resources became available to build better.

Two main streets ran up over and across Garngad Hill from west to east – The first, known simply as ‘Garngadhill’, ran from Castle Street in Townhead. Millburn Street started at what would become known as Alexandra Parade north of Dennistoun, crossing over the ‘White Brig’ of the Monkland Canal before beginning it’s climb to the top of the Hill. After running across the Hill, the two streets joined in a ‘Y’ junction, a ‘gushet’, at the eastern end of the plateau where Millburn Street surrendered it’s name and Garngadhill began it’s final descent down to Blochairn.

168 was one of a handful of ‘closes’ on the very last tenement block at the eastern end of Millburn Street, just before the gushet. When originally built it would have appeared quite impressive with it’s bright, fresh cream sandstone reflecting the light. It’s entrance close, sandwiched between neighbouring closes of 162 along to the left and 172 to the right, was not a ‘wally’ close. That is to say it didn’t enjoy the status of having it’s close walls lined with shiny ceramic tiles with flowery motifs, popular with the ‘better’ closes. There was no central, vertigo inducing, stairwell with ornate bannister and sunlight gathering cupola on the roof. Instead, it’s painted walls appeared drab by comparison. Like a dark tunnel, the close ran from the front of the building to the rear, straight through the ground level. It also wound up the stairs to the upper levels. The whole close would echo to the sound of footsteps when someone entered, walked across the stone surface and up the stairs. The sounds of children playing and shouting in the close could be deafening and chasing them out was a regular part of the daily routine. Doors on either side as you walked through, gave access to the ground floor flats. Two flats, on either side of the ground close, faced out onto the street, another two looked out on to the backcourt, containing the drying area and middens.
In many tenements, particularly those in a main thoroughfare, the front two flats would be replaced shops with a large shop window frontage and separate entrance. In fact, 172 had one such shop.

One Six Eight had a lockable toilet cubicle, containing only a simple wc, located to the rear of the ground close. There were no inside toilets in any of the flats. Each tenant on the ground floor had a key for the toilet and were responsible for it’s cleanliness. Some applied this duty more conscientiously than others. The close mouth was the meeting place for residents and locals. On sunny, or even just dry, days folk would sit on the entrance step and attempt to catch what little sun might be available, gossip, or simply watch the world go by. Children would play on the front step and close mouth, or chalk squares on the pavement in front and play hopscotch type games. Football was popular on the cobbled street. Ground floor residents would take turns at washing the close and keeping it clean. The Close was 168’s face to the world and, be it ever so humble, an element of pride existed. Lighting of the close was achieved by gas light, as was streetlighting outside. Each evening, as daylight faded, the ‘Leerie’ would do his rounds, turning on the gas valve of each overhead outlet before reaching up with a long pole with a small pilot flame on the end, to touch and ignite the delicate gas mantle of the close gaslamp fixed to the wall. As he made his way up the stair, he’d stop at each landing, repeating the process. It was tiring on the legs and experienced Leeries knew how to pace themselves; keeping to the outer wall of the landings, taking the longest way round to rest the legs before climbing the next flight. Coalmen used the same technique.

One Six Eight was a three storey tenement. The stone stairs to the rear of the close led you up in a spiral to a small intermediate landing where the first floor toilet was located and a landing window that looked out over the ‘backcoort’. Following the stair round, keeping to the left on the stairs to avoid the narrowing centre part of the spiral, brought you to the first main landing. Standing at the top of the stairs you were presented with four doors, two on the wall directly facing you, a gas light situated above and between them, and two to either side. The two to the side were one room flats, the notorious ‘single end’, and faced out, through their solitary window, on to the same backcourt, middens and the backs of adjacent tenements on Garngadhill. The two middle flats were two-roomed ‘room and kitchens’. Like those on the ground close, the folk on each landing were responsible for their own flight of stairs and toilet. Some form of rota system was generally agreed. ‘It’s mah turn eh the sterrs!’ being a common expression.

For administrative and official purposes the flats on landings were numbered clockwise; landing level first then flat – 1/1; 1/2; 1/3; 1/4. But life in a tenement close wasn’t about numbers. It was about people. Good, bad, ordinary people. 168 Millburn Street was typical. It was not one of the ‘better’ tenements, but neither was it the worst. By the early 1870s people were settling into 168’s room and kitchens and single ends. Children explored the backcoorts while mothers and wives got to grips with tenement living. By the Spring of 1881 fourteen flats housed over sixty people, with two empty flats to spare. Eighteen children and infants, most bare footed, ran bawling through the close and up and down the stairs. Women would call on them to be quiet while attending to babies, cooking meals, washing clothes and keeping the fire going for hot water. Fathers would appear at the end of shifts expecting a meal on the table and a hot bath in a galvanised tub in front of the fire. Outside, horsedrawn carts would clatter over the cobbles.

Continued next week.

Bob.

[AndrewP]

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