SECTION VI - SHETTLESTON - TODAY AND TOMORROW

SHETTLESTON SPORTS CENTRE, ELVAN STREET

145) Shettleston Sports Centre, Elvan Street - 1987.

Opened about 1924 as a public wash-house, baths and swimming pond.  The public wash-house was converted to a sports hall in 1981 and re-opened as a sports centre in the same year.  Now provides such facilities as laundrette, public baths, gymnasium, swimming pond and in the sports centre caters for indoor football and hockey, net-ball, badminton and table tennis.

The photograph above shows the private housing development of Tollcross Court in Dalveen Street and a glimpse of a renovated tenement in Shettleston Road.

146) Shettleston Library, Wellshot Road - 1987.  Opened about 1924 and at present (1988) undergoing extensive internal re-construction and conversion into an open plan type library.

147) Shettleston Hall, Wellshot Road - 1987.  Opened about 1924 as a public hall for Shettleston and Tollcross. Closed for a period about 1979 and after major re-construction re-opened in 1981 as Shettleston Hall. (Gutted by fire, 2008 - Ed. Note)

SHETTLESTON FREE CHURCH, WELLSHOT ROAD

148) Shettleston Free Church, Wellshot Road - 1987.

When the Free Church of Scotland and the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland joined together in 1900 to form the United Free Church of Scotland, a minority of members of the Free Church opposed the union.  In Shettleston a group of such members formed the Shettleston Free Church and built this church in Wellshot Road which was opened in 1909.

149) St. Barnabas' Roman Catholic Church, Darleith Street - 1988.

A new parish to cater for Roman Catholics in central Shettleston and Greenfield was inaugurated in 1950, as a daughter church of St. Paul's.

For a period services were held in the converted old Premier Picture House in Shettleston Road until a new church was built around the corner in Darlieth Street.  This new church was dedicated with Pontifical High Mass on 16 September 1962.

SHETTLESTON AND TOLLCROSS COMMUNITY CENTRE

Opened originally about 1924 as the Shettleston Miners' Welfare and for many years was a popular venue for many local events such as Flower Shows, Dances and Wedding Receptions.

In 1959 it became a Community Education Centre and as such provides a meeting place for pensioners' clubs, pre-school groups, and such activities as Keep Fit classes, Dance Clases, Karate Club and a Camera Club.

150) Shettleston and Tollcross Community Centre - 1987.

151) Shettleston Health Centre, Old Shettleston Road - 1987.

SHETTLESTON HEALTH CENTRE

The centre was opened on 1st Mat 1985 and is a two-storey building providing community health care for a population of about 25,000 in the Shetleston area.  It provides general practitioner facilities, Dentistry, Community Nursing, Chiropody, Physiotherapy, X-Ray, Pharmacy and a comprehensive range of supporting clinical services.

152) Shettleston Health Centre, Reception Area - 1988.

MCKINLAY'S

A former engineering works which has been imaginatively converted into a building housing an entertainment centre and a sports and leisure centre.  The Place, as the public section of McKinlay's has been christened, opened in October 1986 and operates seven days and nights weekly, with full programmes of live music, dances, discotheques for adults and children and roller skating sessions for various age groups.  Next door the Sports and Leisure Centre, opened in February 1987, has snooker and pool tables, a fully equipped Powersport gymnasium, sunbeds, jacuzzis, whirlpool baths and a sauna.  The sports hall can be used for five-a-side football, keep-fit or aerobic sessions.

153) McKinlay's, 40 Annick Street - 1988.

154) McKinlay's Sports and Leisure Centre - Gymnasium - 1988.

155) Annick Street Industrial Estate - 1987.

Built by the Scottish Development Agency as part of the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal Scheme to provide new factory premises for small business enterprises. It contains 55 factory units employing between 250 and 300 people. The GEAR scheme had as its objective the general regeneration of the East End of the city and was reasonably successful in the provision of new and renovated housing and some general environmental landscaping of the area. The scheme was less successful in the provision of jobs for an area subject to considerable job loss due to the contraction of the traditional heavy industries at one time concentrated in this area.

156) Loch Laidon Court - 1987.  A joint sheltered housing development between Shettleston  Housing Association and Beild Housing Association, opened in 1981.  It provides accommodation for 35 elderly residents in single or double flats, with a common room, a fully equipped kitchen, and a hairdressing salon.  It has two guest rooms for friends staying overnight and a resident warden service.

SHETTLESTON HOUSING ASSOCIATION

The tenements lining Shettleston Road were built between 1860 and 1905. In the early 1970’s the owners and tenants who lived in these tenements were still living in Victorian conditions. Most of the tenements were 4 storeys — often with shops on the ground floor.  Typically there were 3 flats on each landing — two 2-apartments (“room and kitchen”) and one 1-apartment (the “single end”). In many cases the three flats shared an outside toilet. Few of the houses had hot water. Even in the 1970’s some closes were lit by gas. Large families were brought up in these tiny houses.

Some houses had better amenities a row of houses built by Beardmore’s to house workers from the Parkhead Forge had internal bathrooms. But some were worse — an older two-storey tenement with the shared toilet in the back court or a tenement where 6 households shared one toilet.

In the 1960’s the local authority’s solution to the problem had been to bulldoze the tenements and move people to the large post-war council schemes on the outskirts of the city.

This broke up existing communities and took people away from the areas where they had strong family ties. In Shettleston this process began in the early 1970’s when approximately 450 houses were lost through demolition.

However, at this time housing pressure groups, community groups and residents challenged the concept of demolition and dispersal, as well as the use of multi-storey buildings. Gradually policy changed from demolition to renovation. The 1974 Housing Act, which introduced Housing Association Grant, allowed a breakthrough by Housing Associations in Housing Action Areas for Improvement.

In Shettleston, the Housing Association was formed in 1976 following local public interest in improving housing conditions in the area. A Management Committee was formed by concerned residents.

From the start, the Management Committee have received strong support from Glasgow District Council and the Housing Corporation.

The Association now has some 400 members all Shettleston people — who elect their Management Committee at their Annual General Meeting. The Committee are volunteers and each puts hundreds of hours of their own time into the work of the Association.

The Committee presently has 15 members 11 Shettleston Housing Association tenants, 2 owner-occupiers and 2 Glasgow District Council tenants. It is the Management Committee’s job to determine the policies of the Association.

157) Houses at Shettleston Road, Annick Street corner prior to renovation - 1985.

The Committee employ staff to carry out these policies. The first staff members of the Association were appointed in 1977 and there are now 14 staff members working on the various aspects of the Association’s work — Development, Housing Management, Maintenance and Finance and Administration.

The Association’s central aim is to provide good quality housing in the Shettleston area. The reason for its establishment and its main priority over the last 10 years has been the rehabilitation of the sub-tolerable tenement flats. This is an extremely complex task and the skills and experience to undertake it well can only be built up over a period of time. Each scheme involves detailed discussions with residents and provides a different mix of Housing Association houses, owner-occupiers, private houses for let and shops — with all the work co-ordinated by the Association. This includes bringing together finance) both public and private) from a wide variety of sources.

As the Association’s expertise and confidence grew, other subsidiary aims were introduced. The first of these was the transformation of the house sizes available in Shettleston. Before the Association began work, there were no 2-bedroomed houses in the Housing Action Areas for Improvement. This meant that those young families who could left the area to find adequately sized houses. Because of this, in the late 1970’s, Shettleston had a disproportionately high number of elderly households. Recognising this, the Association developed housing suitable for the elderly on the ground and particularly on the first floor of tenements. But it also set out to provide larger houses so that families could continue to live in the community they knew. Now some 45% of tenement flats within the Housing Action areas have 2 bedrooms or more.

However, even with this transformation of house size within the tenements it has not been possible to provide sufficient family houses in the tenements. Partly to meet the need for larger houses for rent and partly to “fill in” the gaps caused by earlier demolition, the Association aims to provide housing through new build within the area. This is to complement the housing types which are being produced through the rehabilitation programme.

Initially, the major pressure on the Association was to provide good quality housing for those living in quite unacceptable housing conditions in the area. More recently, the Association has been able to consider meeting the special needs of the wider community. The Association has given lengthy consideration to the needs of those who require either a specially designed house or a degree of support to sustain a tenancy. As well as amenity housing for the elderly, the Association has developed small scale schemes, integrated within the community, for single people and young single people leaving institutions. In its next scheme the Association will be providing wheelchair housing and a small number of houses for mentally handicapped people.

The improvement of the communal backcourt areas has been seen as essential. More work needs to be carried out to provide environmental improvements to shop fronts, and, particularly, the streets between rehabilitated property. The Association has a “pilot” streetscape scheme underway at present and would wish to extend this type of scheme, as appropriate, throughout the area.

158) Houses at Shettleston Road, Annick Street after renovation - 1987.

The most recent addition to the series of subsidiary aims pursued by the Association is in the area of community development. The regeneration of Shettleston has been led by housing investment. The Association is currently co-ordinating plans to provide, along with the Com­munity Council and other local groups, a major Community Hall and Resource 

Centre for Shettleston. An empty local hail (the old CWS hall) will be brought back into use to provide a large hail (to hold 300 comfortably), 5 community meeting rooms of varying sizes and the Association’s offices. The Association has also been involved in the establishment of Shettleston Community Business, which will attempt, on a small scale, to provide increased employment opportunities in the Shettleston area.

Although the Association’s central aim has remained unchanged, the addition of this series of subsidiary aims means that it now has a pivotal role in the continued 159. Kitchen renovation 1987. regeneration of the Shettleston area.

This role involves consultation with a whole series of public bodies and private companies about their plans in Shettleston and gives a real element of community involvement in the process.

In 1976, there were well over 1 ,200 sub-tolerable houses in Shettleston. There are now fewer than 200. The Association has been far and away the most successful improver of living conditions, but many others have contributed: Glasgow District Council through its Homesteading scheme; owner-occupiers and private landlords participating in Association co-ordinated schemes; and private developers rehabilitating property for sale. After 11 years, the end of the rehabilitation programme is in sight in this area.

The Association’s activities over these 11 years have transformed Shettleston from an area living under the threat of demolition, with dereliction, extremely low house prices and a general lack of confidence. It is now a housing area in relatively high demand particularly for housing to rent, but also for housing for sale. There is no doubt that the regeneration of Glasgow’s East End through the GEAR project has been based on housing-led investment — and that Associations have played a leading role in this.

However, despite the progress made, the East End remains an area where income levels are low, unemployment is high and those in work are often in part-time or short-time work. The majority of Housing Association tenants in Shettleston have a weekly household income of less than £75 per week.

The work of the Association has generated further investment in the area. Private developers have provided good quality housing for sale in areas which have become ~‘marketable” because of the Association’s work. The Association believes that the variety of house size, type and tenure which has been introduced in the area has been a key feature of the renewal activity. This has involved a series of partnerships, with each partner providing a special expertise. The expertise of the Association has been to provide good quality housing for rent in the Shettleston area and to co-ordinate a series of owner-occupation initiatives in tenement buildings.

The Association’s task in the coming years will be to ensure that the rehabilitation programme is completed; that the gap sites are filled with good quality housing by the Association or by other public bodies or private developers (or by partnership between these various bodies); that the Association’s housing stock is managed and maintained to a high standard in a way that involves the tenants directly and that the skills which the volunteers and staff have brought to improving housing in the area are used in various ways to regenerate further to regenerate the Shettleston area.

159) Kitchen renovation - 1987.

FERNAN STREET COMPLEX

160) Fernan Street Complex - 1988.

This Complex is the first of its kind built by Strathclyde Regional Council Social Work Department. People with disabilities have been actively involved in planning the work of the Complex, and will continue to do so when the Complex is officially opened in autumn 1988. The Complex will offer a range of services to adults with a disability, including a Day Centre, Residential Hostel, information and equipment provision services. It is hoped that the Complex will provide a focus for the development of services to the disabled throughout the central and eastern areas of Glasgow.

161) Fernan Street Complex: Dining area - 1988.

162) Shettleston looking northwest from multi-storey flats, Balbeggie Street - 1987.

163) Shettleston looking northwards from multi-storey flats, Balbeggie Street - 1987.

THE FORGE, PARKHEAD

164) William Beardmore & Co. Ltd, Parkhead Forge Works - 1950.

It may seem strange to include this photograph of the Parkhead Forge Works in a book mainly about Shettleston, but in the early 19th century the western boundary of the then Shettleston Parish ran north­wards through “Janefield and the westmost houses at Parkhead”, thus including the area on which the Parkhead Forge was built. The forge also for over 100 years was a centre of employment for several generations of Shettleston men and women.

165) The Forge, Parkhead.

The photograph below depicts a model of the new shopping centre development being built on the site of the old Beardmore’s Parkhead Forge Steelworks.

This development will consist of the largest super-store in Scotland, comprising of 125,000 sq. ft. and let to Gateway Superstores. In addition there will be other retail shop units grouped round a covered mall, a food court, kiosk concessions, restaurants, a multi-screen cinema, a petrol filling-station and near-by parking spaces for 1750 cars. This new shopping centre is due to open in the autumn of 1988.

There is no doubt that this development will in the future exert as great an influence on the local environment and on the social habits of the inhabitants of a wide area including Shettleston as did William Beardmore’s Forge Works in the past.