THE present public washing-house is situated on the northern confines of the Green, and towards the upper portion of it. It is not now the place of consequence and profit that it used to be in the days of our forefathers. In bygone times, almost all the washing and bleaching operations of the inhabitants were performed on the Green; and as the washing-house was used by all who could afford to pay the very moderate dues which were charged, the place was the constant resort of scores of professional old washerwomen and buxom servant girls, and is still remembered as the scene of extraordinary bustle, activity, and amusement, especially when any humorous Paul Pry of the male sex intruded upon the fair operatives of the tub. So far back as McUre's time (1736) the Green appears to have been in all its glory as a grand washing and bleaching establishment. He says:- "It hath all the summer time betwixt two and three hundred women bleaching of linen cloth, and washing linen cloths of all kinds in the river Clyde; and in the midst of this inclosure there is an useful well for cleansing the cloths after they are washed in the river." The old washing-house stood much lower down the Green than the present one, being situated a little way to the north of the spot now occupied by Nelson's Monument. In its hey-day, about the beginning of the present century, the revenue amounted to no less than œ600 per annum. The introduction of water to the city by pipes, however, about 1807, which enabled the citizens to perform their washing operations in houses of their own, and further, the growing practice of sending clothes to the country to be purified, have vastly lessened the importance of the public establishment on the Green, the use of which is now generally confined to the inhabitants of the eastern district of the city. The revenue of the washing-house for the year ending 30th September, 1850, amounted to only œ90. In bygone times the doings on the Green were of so much interest as to stir the muse of Wilson, the Laureate of the Clyde, who thus descants on the subject in flowing numbers:-

"Here barefoot beauties lightly trip along;

Their snowy labours all the verdure throng:

The linen some with rosy fingers rub,

And the white foam o'erflows the smoking tub:

Her polished feet another nimbly plies.*

Their bright approach impurity refines;

At every touch the linen brighter shines,

Whether they bathe it in the crystal wave,

Or on the stream the whitening surges lave,

Or from the painted can the fountain pour,

Softly descending in a shining shower;

Till, as it lies, its fair transparent hue

Shows like a lily dipt in morning dew."

* Ray, in his Itinerary, 1661, says:- "Their (the Scotch) way of washing linen is to tuck up their coats, and tread them with the feet in a tub."