FARMS AND HOUSES

In earlier days there were many farms, both large and small, in the Tollcross area and the village was surrounded by open fields. Probably because of its distance from the ever approaching city of Glasgow, this situation continued to within living memory. However, their number declined as industry, commerce and a growing population made their own demands upon the land and it was gradually taken up for works, housing, schools, railways and all the concomitants of suburban life in a large city.

There are some farm names which will be recognised because of their continued association with specific areas, for example Braidfauld, and others because they had a certain celebrity status like Egypt. Others, such as Spittal's and Hamilton's are now fading memories.

Tollcross has continued to retain much of its late 19th century appearance with its mixture of tenements and earlier architecture, but one of the most significant changes to have taken place is the large number of new houses to have been built around the old village. The old farmland now supports a large crop of houses.

After incorporation into Glasgow, some of the first housing to be built by the municipal authorities was the gray tenements of Dunira St and Easterhill Pl in the late 1920s. Easterhill Pl was built upon a cornfield which belonging to Spittal's farm.

Braidfauld St led to the farm of that name. The farm buildings are now covered by the housing scheme built on the east side of the street in 1966/67. The scheme west of Braidfauld St, was largely built in the 1930s on that farm's land.

Running north from Tollcross Rd is Dalness St. This was previously known as Calton St, passing as it did through Tollcross's Calton. The latter is a Celtic word meaning "wood on the hill". The street used to lead to a bridge over Tollcross Burn.

Off Dalness St is what used to be the farmhouse of Egypt farm, shown in Plate 9. It is said that the farm was given this unusual name by its new owner who had returned from Egypt where he had served in the British Army. Egypt was a dairy farm, with sheep and cattle grazing beside the burn. There had been an orchard on the site and when the farm was later acquired by the Gordon family, there were still apple and pear trees growing.

The structure shown in Plate 10 was originally the farm building of the Spittal family, who were significant landowners in Tollcross in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They also owned the sand quarry at Amulree St (then Springfield Rd.). The yard had stables for between 40 to 50 horses.

Over the years, occupation of the building has changed on several occasions. At one time it housed Tollcross Police Station and later, "Bernardini's Cafe." Findlay & McGeechan Ltd occupied the building and yards from 1951 until about 1984. Currently, most of the site is used by Hewden Tool Hire. In addition, the building provides the premises for the Tollcross Medical Centre and a firm of solicitors.

In more recent times, larger scale house building has not been the undertaking solely of local government. In 1979 the first inner city private houses to be built within Glasgow were started at the junction of Corbett St and Easterhill St. An extensive private estate, Fullarton Park, has been built on the site (farmland prior to 1913) of the old British Steel Tollcross Works in the 1980s. Miller Homes have leveled the railway embankments on either side of Braidfauld St and are building there.

Tollcross Housing Association have been active in the restoration of older properties throughout the area and have also engaged in new construction. An example of this is the "Potteries" which were built on the site of Govancroft Potteries and opened in 1992.