Remembering Townhead tenements before the motorway

Today in All Our Yesterdays, we feature more stories from the city’s past, as told by the people who lived it.

Margaret Nicol, who grew up in Cathcart and now lives in Crookston, can still remember her mother’s happy face when the ‘electricity man’ emptied the meter and there was money left over.

“He’d take what was owed, and any extra cash, he’d give to my mum,” she recalls, with a smile. “It was like winning the lottery.”

Tricia Melly was brought up in a close in Townhead in the 1940s.

“It was very similar to the one described in Tuesday’s Glasgow Times,” she says. “We lived in a room and kitchen - mum dad, me and my two wee sisters - just off Parliamentary Road.

“Parly Road was a thriving thoroughfare, with shops of every description - butchers, bakers, chemists, fruit shops and, of course, a pub at every street corner.”

Tricia recalls three cinemas nearby - the Carlton and Casino on Castle Street and the Grafton on Parly Road.

She adds: “ I loved winter time, when all the shop windows were lit, especially the St Rollox Co-op where the latest fashions were on display in their drapery and shoe departments.

“We could never have imagined this bustling, lively area being totally wiped out by developers in the sixties, but it was. I’m so glad I have such vivid, happy memories of a time when we were ‘aw Jock Tamson’s Bairns.’”