So in September 1979, just over forty-four years ago, aged eighteen, I began my new life as a student at the Glasgow School of Art. That alone would have been enough to fill me with a sense of achievement and the realisation of a special, personal dream. At the same time, I moved into a flat in an old tenement building, in the West End of Glasgow. For many reasons this was no ordinary situation. First of all, although I was successful in gaining a place of study at the GSA, I did not at that time have a place in any student residential accomodation. I was not awarded a place there until a few weeks after the term started, by which time alternative arrangements had been found. I learned that student accomodation was in short supply and there were, certainly at that time, a number of students who were actually homeless each year. Early in the summer holiday, my older brother and I searched in vain all over the city, to find a flat for ourselves and two friends. Our parents were both quite rightly very anxious about this situation and decided to make a positive intervention, by buying a flat that would adequately suit our requirements and a good bit more! Our father justified the expence by argueing that his business activities at that time were expanding thus requiring an increasing amount of time away from home and visiting the city. He was quite presuasive, although in reality he could not bare the idea of either of us being in the awful position of not pursuing a chosen career for want of a place to stay. But who would have thought that I would have stretched out that stay for such a long time, close on four decades from late teenage to late fifties. That old flat was to be my home and place of work for my whole time in Glasgow, it was a place of welcome to the various generations of family and friends. It therefore rang with the sound fun and laughter, and was filled with many happy memories. It is exactly seven years ago (today), on 29th November, that the old place was sold. The end of one era and beginning of another.
Many people unfamiliar to the concept of a "tenement" somehow imediately equate it as a by-word for "slum". Oh, how wrong they are! First of all, residential accomodation in condominiums or tenements have existed for a very long time. In fact the Romans were the first to develop such habitation as a practical form of construction for urban areas and the system was further developed throughout Europe from mediaeval times to the present in many variations. The feudal system of law and land division in Scotland was almost tailor made for the development of tenement flats, in buildings of more than one story. By the late 18th century there was also a comparatively limited development of terraced houses similar in form and style as those in the cities of England, this was particularly true, for example, in Edinburgh's New Town development. Glasgow went a different route and embraced the tenement form to cater for all sectors of its community. Those building and developing the city took tenement design and construction which was to become instantly recognisable as uniquely Glasgwegian. There was a huge variety and quality spread throughout the city. The tenement became the backdrop of the city, housing the majority of its people and reinforcing the strong character and identity of those citizens. Some of the tenement flats were well appointed and housed the wealthier residents, other tenement flats were badly appointed and housed poorer residents and many were mixed together. The architectural effect of lots of stone facaded streets, undulating up and down the city's drumlin topography, was a clearly defined urban grain. That was Glasgow's distinguising mark as truly fine European city, despite the soot stained stones caused by over a century of industrial and domestic chimney coal smoke. An architect friend of our family who had earlier shown me round the city contended a very good argument that the blackened buildings would have begun to get cleaner, after the Clean Air Act simply by the huge reduction in atmospheric polution. He believed sandblasting was an over-abrasive method of stone cleaning, which destoyed the top patina of the polished ashlar surface. Glasgow was a city built of a local, soft type of sandstone which had resulted in elaborately carved masonry and beautiful buildings. which created an outstanding nineteenth century set piece of urban architecture. No matter how it came to be, it was a remarkable place.
The tenement flat that my parents selected and bought was enormous, it was really a family sized home and effectively an extension to our home in Stornoway. I was fascinated by this old flat and began to study as much as possible about its history, design and layout. One the first Glasgow books I purchased was the definitive reference on social, historical and architectural housing in Glasgow, "The Tenement A Way of Life" by the late Frank Worsdall. This essential reading for anyone with an interest in this very specialised subject had then just recently been published. Our flat was what is known as a nine apartment on the second or top floor and attic, of a three story blond sandstone tenement building, constructed around 1841. It was spread over two floors, six rooms, kitchen and bathroom forming the top floor and three large rooms of varied sizes forming the attic. Three of the four rooms that looked over the tree lined street interconnected. The largest of these had been the original dining room, always the most formal and embellished of nineteenth century or Victorian public or entertaining rooms. This room had the customary black marble fireplace, with Doric ordered pillasters, the joinery was bold, there were high skirtings and broad Scottish Pine floor boards, with a dark stained border. A wire still protruded from the centre of the floor, a reminder of bell pull that was once located under the dining table to compliment the ones on each side of the fire. There were two cupboards or presses flanking the fireplace and walk-in cupboard or linen store on the wall opposite the windows. These twin windows, with their tall six-over-six, slim astricled case and sash functions, were fitted with folding shutters, all the wood was gesso primed and dark stained to represent mahogany. Apparently Victorians felt pine was rather vulgar for use in formal rooms and of course mahogany was much more expensive than desired for fixtures like shutters, which would also have been covered with layers of draped curtains. Crowning the room and surrounding the ceiling was a richly modelled classically detailed cornice and central ceiling rose. The free standing acanthus leaves and bud and dart in this multi layered cornice required twenty litres of paint for a single covering. The floor to ceiling height measured more than fourteen feet and the curtain drop was twelve feet. At the opposite end of the long hall or "lobby", was the other principle public room, the drawing room. Close to the eight foot tall front door. this room would have had similar decorative features to the wider and much grander dining room. However, some time after the Second World War, someone had a DIY fit and pulled off the bold joinery mouldings on the doors and shutters, in a desperate desire to flush every surface! Fortunately they could not reach the soffets above each of the twin windows in this room. I spent ages over the years trying source the right shape of mouldings. I decovered each had been originally cut to a subtly different gauge. Indicating that there may have been different individual joiners working together when the place was originally constructed. Sadly in the same fit of modernisation the corresponding white Carrara marble fire place had been taken out and an inappropriate clumsy tiled fire place set in to replace it. I wanted to replace that lump of a fire place the moment I saw it. My detective skills set about to source one for re-instating. I found two slendid contempary 1840s classic marble fireplaces, one white the other black. I bought them both from a dealer whose husband was a tutor at the Art School, I am sure she kindly gave me a good deal! I then offered the fine black one with it's free standing doric coloums, to my neighbour downstairs for her to install in the former dining room in the flat below. From the hall in our flat, a door opened on a tight helix stair leading to a bright and spacious attic. My father got the smallest of the three rooms converted into big square bathroom, flanked by two combed attic rooms the L-shaped one was a large bedroom, the other a light-filled studio. From the attic the sound of the clock in the University spire could be heard as it chimed the time each quarter of the hour. The original address of our flat was 2-Up, Number 2 Hillhead Place, on Bank Street, Burgh of Hillhead near Glasgow, Lanarkshire. Located on west side of Bank Street, in Hillhead near Great Western Road and Gibson Street, this was indeed the very hub of Glasgow's West End. It was a wonderful and integrated community with people of international backgrounds sharing a beautiful district, there to live, work and study. I had certainly found a multi-cultured place to call home and it was everything I had hoped it would be. A most suitable place for a young art student to call home.
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Sitting room, former dining room
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Dining room, former parlour
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