A swell-looking babe... Langside, Battlefield Road, Red Road flats...

A swell looking babe...?

            I’ll begin this section with something which might interest collectors of the curious. Yesterday, that was Wednesday the 16^th July 2019, I wrote about Ludovic MacLellan Mann’s Earliest Glasgow; A Temple of the Moon. Then, around nine that evening, I was lazing about listening to some music when I noticed the moon low on the horizon, looking very odd. It's colour was of a strange orange shade, like a blood-stain which has been partially washed-out. I put it down to atmospheric light-refraction due to the moon being so low on the horizon, which also made it look larger than normal - a common optical illusion. But it also had an odd shaped shadow across it, unlike the usual line separating the light from the dark-side. It then occurred to me that, the night before, the moon had been close to full. I looked at it with a pair of binoculars. The line of the dark of the moon was irregular, far less sharp than it usually appears. This morning, I found out that I had been watching a partial eclipse... after I’d been writing of Glasgow as a centre on moon worship. Not only that, it had also been the 50^th anniversary of the first moon landings. Cosmic, man.

Did they or didn't they?

I don't know if it's art, but...

So far, we've been wandering the West End and City Centre. Let's step over the river, to Langside, to an art-deco building which is just off Battlefield Road at 15 Millbrae Road. These days, it is a Tesco Express, but it has been a number of things since it was built in 1937, such as a restaurant, a pub, and offices. It was originally designed as a divisional control station for Glasgow Corporation Lighting Department. The architect was Sam Bunton who played an important part in the post-war redevelopment of Glasgow, and who was the architect behind the infamous Red Road Housing scheme, recently demolished. Critics of the Red Road Scheme accused Bunton of pushing forward the estate as a vanity project. He was well-known as an advocate of high-rise housing and had designed similar multi-storey estates around the city. He was said, critically, of having a dream of ‘building a Manhattan-style skyscraper’ in Glasgow. If he had built them to the same quality as Manhattan skyscrapers, structurally as well as architecturally, they might still be standing. It was because of the height of his buildings, not only the highest in Glasgow but said to be the highest in Europe at the time, that the use of steel-frame-construction was used. This was one of the factors that led to the demolition of the buildings as steel construction had to be fire-proofed and the only way to do so at the time was with asbestos. Within 20 years of their construction it became widely known how dangerous asbestos was to the health of those working and living with it, but asbestos was integral to the structure of the flats and the internal asbestos could not be removed until the buildings were demolished. The asbestos which covered the exteriors of the flats was covered in metal cladding.

By the 1970s the Red Road Scheme was synonymous with crime. Objects were thrown from the roofs and, if they landed near you, you were lucky if it was only a brown paper bag filled with shit. Even a penny coin can do a lot of damage if it hits you after falling 30 stories. The flats were also subject to frequent burglaries. The flats weren’t just a problem for the residents. For non-residents who lived within sight of them - and they could be seen a long way off - there was something depressingly menacing about the ‘looming’ ambience of the blocks. Not only were they, on average, 25 storeys high but they were also 328 feet wide - almost 100 metres. In 1977, a fire started deliberately in an empty flat caused the death of a young boy and the evacuation of many residents who refused to return. In the 1980s, the scheme was a major crime-hot spot with frequent muggings, gang-fights, and drug-dealing. The flats had also become the favoured stepping off point for suicides. Now, as well as looking out for bags of shit dropping from the sky, you had to watch out for falling bodies too.

Is it a man, or a bag o' shite?

In the 1990s the flats were used to house refugees from the Kosovo war and, later, other refugees from conflicts in Africa, Asia and other parts of Europe. The estate made the news again when a number of the refugees said they had felt safer in the war-zones they had left than on the estate. The policy of housing refugees and asylum seekers in the flats continued into the next century when, in 2010, a family of three asylum seekers jumped to their deaths from one of the towers.

Red Road flats; an urban Utopia with a view.

I’ve often thought that the architects of such schemes as the Red Road flats and the Gorbals Hutchison E estates should be told they’ll have to live in them for ten years at least after completion. But unfortunately, these places are designed by people who never have to live in them and who know nothing of the needs, interests or expectations of the people who will have to live in them.

All of the Red Road flats had been demolished by 2015. I had a friend who lived in one of the flats. He said he liked living there. But then he seldom left the flats. He was a morphine addict and what he liked about it particularly was the view. From his flat on the 20^th floor he could see all the way from the Campsie Fells to Ben Lomond and the Arrochar Alps. He also liked living there as the flats were the only place for miles around from which he couldn't see the flats, much as Guy de Maupassant ate lunch at the restaurant of the Eiffel Tower everyday because, 'inside the restaurant was one of the few places where I could sit and not actually see the Tower!' My friend was also an amateur astronomer and the pride of his possessions, few as they were, was a telescope with which he viewed the night-sky and the distant hills - until it was stolen in a burglary on one of the rare occasions when he was out picking up his morphine.

Red Road flats looking up... or is it down?

By an odd coincidence – the more you look, the more you find – Bunton’s mother's name was Margaret Mann; no relation to Ludovic MacLellan Mann unfortunately... too much to ask, I suppose. His father was Samuel Bunton, an officer with the Ministry of Labour, and Sam was born in 1908. In the 1930s he specialised in art-deco design. After the war his work consisted largely of housing schemes for which he designed the sewers, services, and road layouts, as well as the buildings.

I know the Tesco art-deco building on Millbrae Road because I had a friend who lived in Shawlands and, when I used to visit, I took a bus to and from the stop outside the Victoria hospital at the foot of the hill. Bunton’s building is noticeable because it is one of the few buildings in that area not of the usual Victorian design. Millbrae Road is just to the left of the Langside monument as you walk down Battlefield Road. The name of the road and the monument commemorate the Battle of Langside, fought between Mary Queen of Scots and Regent Moray on 13^th May, 1568. It was the Queen’s final defeat in Scotland.

For anyone unfamiliar with Mary’s story, I’ll quickly outline it – it reads like a script for EastEnders.

Mary was the only surviving child of James V of Scotland. When her father died, she was only six days old – but she was Queen. She was brought up in France and her first language was French which is why a great many Scottish words have a French origin such as marmalade – when Mary was ill her French servants often took her a preserve, saying ‘Marie est malade’. The Scottish servants thought the nutritious preserve full of vitamins was called marmalade. This etymology is said to be apocryphal. If it isn’t true it should be true.

While Mary was in France, Scotland was ruled by regents. At the age of sixteen, she married the Dauphin of France, Francis, who was aged fourteen. He died two years later and Mary returned to Scotland. The cause of Francis’s death is uncertain. Many in France suspect he was poisoned. Four years later, Mary married her half-cousin, Lord Darnley, and they had a son named James - later James VI of Scotland, James I of England. Early the next year, Darnley was found murdered in his garden. The prime-suspect was the Earl of Bothwell, but he was acquitted and the following month he married Mary – after raping her.
A number of prominent people were unhappy about this situation and Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her son who was one-year-old, meaning, of course, that another series of regents would run the show until he was of age. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne she made a break for it, heading south of the border like all good outlaws, where she asked her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, for protection. But many English Catholics saw Mary as the legitimate heir to the English throne and, as such, she was a threat to Elizabeth. Mary was confined for over eighteen years and after being found guilty of a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, was beheaded.

It was when Mary had been forced to abdicate that Moray was made regent on behalf of his nephew, James (Mary's son, if you remember). Moray was Mary’s Protestant half-brother. Not everyone was happy with Mary’s abdication, including Protestant members of the nobility. They still saw her as the rightful Queen whose abdication had been extorted under threat of death. Mary had hoped to avoid battle with Moray and retired to the impregnable position of Dumbarton Castle. From there, she then made a circuitous route around Glasgow, gathering more troops, with the intention of returning to Dumbarton. But, on the way, Moray drew up his army near the village of Langside.

Mary’s army had taken up position of what is now the site of Langside College. Moray had the right wing of his army on the higher ground with the left wing at what is now Queen’s Park. There is a boating pond in the park which was a marsh at the time of the battle and it is where some of the bodies where buried, its clay being easily dug. For centuries the site was known as the Devil’s Kirkyard and when the pond was being built in the late 1800s the remains of soldiers and their weapons were found. There are a number of burial grounds in the area for those killed in the battle, including the Wellcroft Bowling Club nearby. The memorial as it stands today was built on the central site of the battle, where Moray’s troops were entrenched. Mary’s infantry, impetuously, it is said, charged up the hill. Never a good idea, especially as it was a scorching hot day. Mary’s vanguard was to be backed by cavalry but they were turned back by archers and the opposition cavalry. The vanguard was left on its own to fight it out. The Queen’s troops, though, were doing well and looked like they might win the day. Moray’s commander saw the danger, gathered unused troops to the left wing and attacked. The vanguard broke and flew, along with the rest of the Queen’s army. Not as many were killed as might have been because Moray said this was a civil war, Scot against Scot, and he called on his charging forces to 'save, not to slay'.

Many of the names of the streets nearby derive from those who led the forces on both sides: Darnley Road – from Henry Lord Darnley; Grange Road – named for Sir William Kirkcaldy’s country estate; Hamilton Avenue – after the Hamiltons who led the vanguard; Herries Road – after the 4^th Lord Herries’ wife; Killiegrew Road – after Sir Henry Killiegrew; Kirkcaldy Road – after Sir William Kirkcaldy; Moray Drive – after the Regent Moray; Morton Gardens  - after James Douglas, 4^th Earl of Morton; and Terregles Avenue – after Sir John Maxwell of Terregles.

Other than the fact that this battle was, in effect, a family squabble, there was one aspect of the battle in particular I find surprising. The total number of casualties involved was little over a hundred men. Only one of Moray's troops was killed. In retrospect, and considering that the outcome changed the course of Scottish, and English, history, it seems a relatively small price - unless you're one of the dead - in relation to the magnitude of the consequences. 

Charge!