ONCE famed as the home to a spectacular Winter Gardens Springburn Park was one of the city’s gems.

Now residents say it has fallen into disrepair and is a testament to the historical neglect of the area.

Some of the land and the now derelict Winter Gardens were gifted to the people of Springburn by the wealth industrialist Reid family. James Reid’s statue gazes out from a plinth over the park but some are glad the man did not live to see the current state of the park.

“Most Sundays, when it was sunny you would come up here and it would be teeming with people. When I got married and I stayed at the other side of the park, I would take my kids here all the time. I wouldn’t bring them here now,” said Mary Connolly, who was born and raised in North Glasgow and now lives in Bishopbriggs.

On a grey Saturday, Mary pointed to the statue of James Reid and asked: “What would he think, if he could see it now?

“How come the kids that live here now don’t get the same that I got and my kids got?”

Mary highlighted the abandoned rose garden in the park now overgrown and unkept, the rusted and abandoned Winter Gardens, the once-beautiful rockery now littered with beer cans and rubbish and overgrown grass, some of which visibly predates lockdown.

“People used to get their wedding photos taken there,” laughs John Devlin, at the mention of the rockery.

John has been campaigning for the reopening of Littlehill Golf Course and said that Springburn is being left behind once again as golf clubs in other parts of the city open their doors.

“We’re not getting a fair crack of the whip, Knightswood and Lethamhill are open. That facility has been neglected for many, many years. I know there’s a pandemic on and upheaval but it just seems to me that Littlehill always bears the brunt of it.”

A spokesman for Glasgow Life said the organisation had to “review and prioritise” which facilities would reopen.

He added that the health and safety of workers was their top priority but warned that the provision of leisure facilities was “very unlikely to return to anything like its normal service provision in the near future”.

A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: “We have continued to maintain Springburn Park in line with available resources during the Covid-19 emergency.

“Garden areas within the park have been tended to regularly in recent weeks, the summer flower beds have been planted and the general grass areas of the park have been cut with a further cut planned for the coming week.

“We have created wildflower meadows within the park and we are looking at other measures to improve the bio-diversity of the open space.

“Park bins are also emptied every day and there is a daily litter pick, although it should go without saying that if everyone binned their rubbish it would a great assistance to the park service.

“However, we are following national guidance on what are appropriate measures to deal with an acute health crisis and there is no question that the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted services.

“In these circumstances, we have temporarily suspended maintenance of the rockery and also the shrub beds, but if government guidance allows, we hope to resume work on these areas of the park in early August.

“We fully recognise how much the local community value Springburn Park and we will continue to work with a range of partners to ensure the offering within the park is of the highest standard possible."