West Nile Street... Alfredo's...

Alfredo's, when I knew it.

Alfredo's pub on West Nile Street sits next door to Amalfi's restaurant. I once spent a very pleasant morning inside. I had just arrived in Glasgow by night-train from London and as I left the station I bumped into an old friend. It was just before eight in the morning and I assumed he was on his way to work but he wasn’t. He asked me if I wanted to go for a pint - they say you know a man’s character by the company he keeps. Well, although I hadn’t slept much on the train and I was feeling tired and dishevelled, I hadn’t seen my friend for a while and he was very good company so we went into Alfredo’s.

My favourite time to be in a pub is around 3 in the afternoon. At that time, during the week, the pubs are not busy. It’s best to find a pub that’s not empty either – somewhere neither full nor empty. It’s pleasant to sit and watch people come and go while having a drink with a friend. If your time is your own, is ours was, no one is in a rush and you have the whole day ahead of you. The drinking is leisurely and the conversation convivial. Alfredo’s is like that at eight in the morning.

The pub is deceptive from the front. The street-entrance and window looks no bigger than a newsagent’s but, when you walk past the front tables to the bar, the building opens up. That morning, there was about a dozen customers; a group of four who looked like they had been at it all night, a few old men having their first of the day and a couple of hardened drinkers, in for a steadier. We were joined by some students, looking very young, very innocent and with a nervous gleam in their eye as if this was a great adventure for them. They had their ID cards at the ready and they needed them. One of the hardened drinkers was an old acquaintance. He had a leathered and weathered face, lined by scars, lumps and bumps from numerous falls and fights. He was the same age as my friend but looked ten years older... at least. It was the kind of face that I imagine you’d like to photograph if you were a photographer. It spoke eloquently of his life. Strangely enough, there was a handsomeness to it, or rather, it was divinely-ugly, like the wood of gnarly and knotted old trees. It brought to mind the film-director John Huston and the Swiss-French writer Blaise Cendrars, whose faces, which were ugly in their youth, never looked better than when they were old.

John Huston

Blaise Cendrars

I caught up with my friend, talking of where we had been and what we had done. By the time we left it was early afternoon and I was ready for the sleep I’d missed the night before.

Alfredo’s sits at the base of a very typical – and typically non-descript – Victorian red-sandstone building, sturdy but unremarkable. Further down West Nile Street is a building by Alexander Thompson but enough has been said and written about Thompson for me to add anything here. At the corner of West Nile Street and West George Street is a Category B listed building designed by Frank Burnet and his assistant who became his partner, William James Boston. I mentioned Burnet’s work earlier. He designed St. George’s Mansions at Charing Cross. The building on West Nile Street was originally known as the Royal Exchange Assurance Building and was begun and completed in 1911 - 1913. The entrance is on 93 West George Street. The Royal Exchange Assurance Company was founded in 1720 and took its name from the Royal Exchange in London and lasted until 1968 when it merged with the Guardian Assurance Company which was then acquired by Axa of France in 1999. 

The former Royal Exchange Assurance Building at the corner of West Nile Street and West George Street,

Speaking of France, West Nile Street takes its name, like many British streets incorporating the name of the famous river, from the Battle of the Nile fought between the British Royal Navy and Napoleon’s Navy of the French Republic in 1798. The battle was the culmination of a three-month campaign across the Mediterranean. The British fleet was led by Nelson and decisively defeated the French. Napoleon had planned the invasion of Egypt as a first step towards invading India. Nelson trapped the French in a crossfire and only two damaged ships of the line and two frigates escaped from the total French force of 17 ships leaving the Royal Navy as the dominant force in the Mediterranean, a position they then held throughout the war. Bonaparte’s army was trapped in Egypt and other European countries which had vacillated in their support turned against France. Nelson became a national hero and the victory entered popular consciousness with numerous poems, plays, paintings, songs, public memorials (Cleopatra’s Needle in London is one) and the naming of streets commemorating the event. It is true to say, as it has been said, that this victory changed the course of history.

Battle of the Nile; Tomas Whitcombe 1799

And speaking of the Nile, when Nelson defeated Napoleon's Navy the source of the Nile was still unknown and remained unknown for a number of decades. More than a few famous names tried to discover the source – Sir Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, Florence and Samuel Baker, James Grant, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. Journeying through unmapped territory, they discovered lake Tanganyika and lake Victoria, navigated the upper Nile and the Congo and suffered flesh-eating ulcers, malaria, attacks by natives and, out of an arguments that developed between Burton and Speke, Speke shot himself.

Sir Richard Burton

And while we’re speaking of that which we’re speaking, let’s speak of navigation. A number of methods of navigation have been employed over the millennia, most famously, of course, navigation by the stars, particularly the north star, fixed, as it appeared to be, in the firmament while the other stars circumnavigated around it. But anyone who has read the chronicles of the old navigators, particularly the Portuguese, will have noticed another form of navigation regularly employed, that of scent. The records of the travels of the great age of discovery are minutely detailed in particular scents noted at particular zones. All areas of the oceans, it seemed, had distinctive perfumes which informed the experienced mariner of where he was in relation to land and distance yet to be travelled. In the animal world there are other forms of navigation such as the bat’s sonar pulse, also known as echolocation, which infallibly informs them of obstacles in their path to be avoided despite the speed of their manoeuvrings. Jacques Cousteau was the first to suggest, in 1953, that porpoises had some sort of sonar ability to judge by their manoeuvrability. Dolphins, killer whales and sperm whales also have a form of sonar navigation. Compared to the sophisticated echolocation of bats and dolphins, oilbirds, a nocturnal fruit-eating bird, and some species of swifts have a crude form of echolocation. There is also evidence that blinded rats – laboratory rats, of course, blinded for the purpose of the experiment, or perhaps just for entertainment - can use echolocation to navigate through mazes. Blind people also use a form of echolocation to determine their environment, most commonly by tapping their canes, but also by snapping their fingers and, in some instances, making a clicking sound with their tongues. In certain individuals who have become particularly adept at this form of navigation, studies have discovered an activation of the primary visual cortex not normally present in sighted individuals. This mechanism of brain change, which is a region remapping phenomenon, is known as neuroplasticity – something Philip K. Dick almost certainly experienced after numerous minor strokes (see the entry on the Burrell and Borge Mogenosn’s chair). Radio navigation was also devised for finding direction to a radio source pulse, and the OMEGA Navigation System, operated by the United States and six partner countries, became the first global radio navigation system for aircraft. Then came radar navigation where the navigator can take distances and angular bearings to charted objects and use these to establish arcs of position and lines of position on a chart. Satellite navigation systems provide positioning with global coverage. A Global Navigational Satellite System allows small electronic receivers to determine their longitude, latitude, and altitude to within a few metres using time signals transmitted along a line of sight by radio from satellites. Receivers on the ground with a fixed position can also be used to calculate the precise time as a reference for scientific experiments. Research on magnetoreception has focused on the directional information that can be extracted from the Earth`s geomagnetic field. The field varies predictably across the surface of the globe, meaning that it also provides a potential source of positional information. This ability to use positional information derived from the Earth's geomagnetic field is known to be important in long distance migrations of a number of birds. The Pied flycatcher is one example of a migratory bird which potentially uses this information to change direction to avoid ecological barriers. Despite numerous efforts at detection and speculation on various navigational methods, a number of animals and birds still manage to find their way accurately over great distances by means unknown.

'Are you sure this is the way?'

'Aye. Ah can smell the chips!'

I bring this up because my friend – the one I had a drink with in Alfredo’s - had a method of navigation which I once thought unique but which I have since discovered is used by a number of people of my acquaintance. He could navigate his way around Glasgow by pubs. He was as infallible as a homing pigeon, and speaking of homing pigeons, there is at present a great deal of debate and argument – as only things of this sort can be argued about – that homing pigeons find their way home through their sense of smell. I’ll leave that to the experts to ponder.

I first discovered my friend’s talent when I was lost one miserable morning. I had been in the Garage the night before – a nightclub on Sauchiehall Street, for the uninitiated. I woke the next morning with no idea where I was. For a moment I thought I was dead. If it wasn’t for the fact that I felt as if a cat had shit in my mouth, I might even have imagined that I was in heaven as there was an ethereal glow about everything. The glow was from the early morning sunlight being filtered through thin white curtains and reflected off white walls. Even the bare floorboards of the room I was in had been painted white. The only thing which wasn’t white was the fingernails on the hand that reached around my waist. The fingernails were long and black. I had no idea who was behind me and for a few minutes I was afraid to look. But, when I finally turned, I got a surprise. The face that squinted back at me was pretty, despite the fact that her hair was tangled and dishevelled from sleep and that she was still wearing make-up that had been smudged in places by the pillow. When I asked her how I’d got there she told me she’d met me outside the Garage. I told her I must have been very drunk. She said I was, but I could still talk coherently and wasn’t falling abut all over the place – it’s a talent I have. I had promised a relative from Germany that I would take them to the Burrell that day so I had to leave. I never did find out the name of the girl with the black nails If she ever reads this, which I doubt, I’d like to thank her for looking after me.

Once outside I had no idea where I was or how to get home, nor could I see a street name. What I did see was a pay-phone at the corner - this was in the mid-90s before I had a mobile. I phoned my friend and he asked me if I could see a pub anywhere. I stepped out of the phone-box and, just discernible in the distance, I could make out a pub. Land ho! I told him its name and he gave me directions to get home.

I have another friend who provided his own map for a relative. I’ve mentioned him already. He was the one who sat with me in the University café telling me of his madness and his suspicions concerning the general public. He handed me a sheet of paper one day.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘A map,’ he said.

‘A map of where?’

‘Here.’

He had drawn a map of Glasgow. It bore no resemblance to Glasgow.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘Who’s it for?’ I wondered.

‘My cousin,’ he said. ‘He’s coming to visit. He wanted directions from the station.’

I told him the only person who’d be able to find their way with the map was himself.

He looked confused. ‘Why?’ he wondered.

‘Look at it,’ I said.

The map was mostly blank except for areas of interest to him - where he lived, where he shopped, pubs he knew, a health-centre he attended for his medication, my flat and those of a few other people he visited. The map followed the routes he took, ignoring main roads and major landmarks. He was in the habit of avoiding certain areas because he believed they had a malign influence over him due to some ethereal residue of their previous history, as though the areas, over the centuries, had developed a personality due to events which had taken place there. For instance, Blythswood Square had been a favourite haunt of prostitutes. Whenever he passed by or even near the area he felt his head about to explode with images of a sexual nature – a violent sexual nature. He feared that if he spent too much time in Blythswood Square he might lose his mind completely and, at best, resort to the services of a prostitute. At worst, he worried he might become a modern-day Jack the Ripper. (He also wondered if particular rooms in particular buildings might have the same influence. If you lived in the room of a former pickpocket might you suddenly find your hand wandering on a crowded train or bus?) His map was designed to avoid such eventualities.

‘I think you’d better meet your cousin at the station,’ I told him.

I once had a map of an island, an island of the mind. It had been drawn by the Mercator of madmen. He had been a patient in the same ward at Gartnavel as my friend. The man endlessly drew maps of imaginary islands, detailed to every contour, road, river, and field demarcation. These schizo-maps had a compelling beauty about them as well as a strange fascination. They had every detail that an actual terrain might present. For a man familiar with maps he might even imagine himself walking these islands, tasting the sea-spray on his lips and feeling himself buffeted by the coastal winds. I wonder what happened to the man who drew it? He might very well still be there, still drawing his endless succession of maps of imaginary islands. I wished I had collected more of the maps. It would have been a great delight to have put on an exhibition of them in some gallery.

Native habitat and wildlife... animals an' at, know...

Loch Lomond

            Since 1948, a Field Research Station had been established on the shores of Loch Lomond by the Zoology Department of the University of Glasgow. The loch is the largest body of freshwater in Britain. The fertility of any body of natural water – whether salt or fresh – depends on the interaction of certain factors; the amount of energy gained by the body of water from solar radiation; the physical and chemical characteristics of the water itself, notably its content in solution of certain nutrient salts; and the nature of the substratum on which the body of water lies, and its configuration. All these factors are affected by the topographical setting, not only by the landforms which surround the waters but also by the underwater continuations of these forms. There are certain characteristics of the numerous sea locks and freshwater lochs which surround Glasgow making them the particular environment they are for plants and animals.

Clyde Sea Area

            The body of sea water which has long been known as the Clyde Sea Area is separated from the Atlantic on the west by the long protecting arm of the Kintyre peninsula and on the south by the shallower waters of the submarine plateau which stretches from the Mull of Kintyre to south Ayrshire. The northern landward part of the Clyde Sea Area consists, beside the Clyde estuary itself, of long narrow fiords, cutting deep into a land mass which is largely highland in character. These fiords, the sea lochs, run northwards from the Firth of Clyde and are generally regarded as submerged land valleys, over deepened by ice erosion. As a result of the glacial origin, these sea lochs share certain features. They are usually U-shaped in cross-section, having the greatest depth where the valley is narrowest. There may be several distinct deep basins in each loch separated by bars of shallow water and similar shallow bars occur at the mouths of the lochs. This typical depth restriction of the mouths is of significance in relation to the valleys not submerged to form sea lochs but where the great freshwater lochs of the region have formed - Loch Eck, Loch Lomond and Loch Awe. A rise of sea-level by thirty feet would covert Loch Eck and Loch Lomond to sea lochs. It is estimated that if the ice covering Antarctica were to melt, sea levels would rise by 230 feet. But, if that ever happens, we’ll have a lot more on our minds than losing our lochs. The deep lock basins of Loch Lomond and Loch Eck lie far below present Mean Sea Level. Much of the northern part of Loch Lomond has water depths of over 525 feet and one extensive depression which reaches 620 feet. The tallest of the Red Road flats was 292 feet. The tallest structure in Glasgow, and Scotland, is the Glasgow Tower on the south side of the Clyde at the Science Museum which, including its antenna, is 417 feet. The sea lochs share the same characteristic of a deep basin contained within a shoaling bar making them, in a sense, a natural harbour.

            The greatest part of the basic pasturage in the sea lochs is one species of planktonic diatom – Skeletonema costatum. Like all green plants, to live, grow and multiply, it requires light, water, carbon dioxide and certain mineral salts in solution, such as phosphates, nitrates and silicates. The numbers of diatoms vary greatly through the season. In the sea lochs surrounding Glasgow the greatest numbers occur in late March or early April. The pasturage provided by the planktonic diatoms is primarily grazed by the animals of the plankton of which the most important are only a few millimetres in length. The most important of these is Calanus finmarchicus. These provide the main food for Herring and Mackerel, and for the young of many other fishes, such as the largest true fish in European waters, the Basking Shark, one of only three plankton eating shark species.

            Not only fish which feed directly on the Calanus benefit from the plankton production of the surface waters of the sea, all fish and other animals living on the sea bed are provided with food by the dead or dying planktonic organisms sinking down to them. The factors affecting plankton production in the sea lochs are essentially similar to those of the fresh water locks like Loch Lomond, but the productivity of fresh water lochs vary  enormously due to physical and chemical factors. For instance, the fresh water lochs, because of their shape, receive less sunlight for the plants of the plankton. Also, the depths of the lochs in the deeper areas results in lower temperatures while the water, flowing as it does into Loch Lomond through metamorphic rocks largely covered with peat, has a different chemical nature low in nutrient salts. The fishes which are found in Loch Lomond include Sea and Brown Trout, Pike, Perch, Loach, Roach and Flounder. If you are interested in fish, perhaps the most interesting fish in Lock Lomond is the Powan, sometimes called the Freshwater Herring. The Powan is found elsewhere only in Loch Eck. Incidentally, the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association has been in existence since 1860.

The animals found around the Clyde area reflect the topographical divisions into highland and lowland zones. Larger mammals such as Red Deer and Roe Deer are more common in the highland region, although Roe Deer are often seen around Glasgow, even at such a central location as the City Necropolis. Fallow Deer are an introduced species which occur in the Loch Lomond area, as are Japanese Sika Deer which can be found in Kintyre and elsewhere. Herds of feral goats can be found in the Loch Ard-Ben Lomond area and the Brown Hare is common all-around Glasgow. Also found are Otters, Stoat, Weasel and, of course, Fox. The Grey Squirrel has taken over from the Red and the closest area to Glasgow where you might see a Red Squirrel is Loch Katrine. Recordings of Pine Martin are rare but other mammals are common – Hedgehog, Mole, Common Shrew, Pipistrelle, Daubenton’s and Long-eared Bats, House Mouse, Short-tailed Vole, Bank Vole, Water Vole, Long-tailed Field Mouse and… rats, of both types, Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus. The bird varieties are too numerous to mention, as are the insects but three species of reptile occur in and around Glasgow – the Adder, the Common Lizard and the Slow-worm. Frogs and toads occur everywhere and all three species of newts occur and snails are abundant.

Head to head....

Biologists have, in recent decades, indulged in heated debated as to whether a new sub-species of nocturnal-hominoid has evolved in Glagow:

Kingdom: Animalia

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Family: Hominidae

Tribe: Hominini

Genus: Hom

Species: Homo Sapiens

Subspecies: Homo Sapiens Nocturnum

After detailed study, this sub-species has been found to sleep generally around six in the morning, awaking sometime around two in the afternoon, only to become fully active at twilight. They have large night-seeing eyes that blink at the harshness of daylight but see far and wide as the sun sets. Their natural habit would appear to be the pub where they frequent regularly with others of their kind and have developed a separate language. It is said they exist mostly on crisps, chips, pizza and kebab. They are generally lethargic but can become violent under stress. Their mating habits are not yet fully understood. I have requested funds for participant observation but none so far has been forthcoming. 

Nocturnal sub-species shocked by daylight and close relative found in United States.

St. Vincent's Street... drunk firemen and Kafka...

                      

           Number 200 St. Vincent’s Street.

This building was formerly known as the North British and Mercantile Insurance Building and was designed, again, by J.J. Burnet. It is an imposing building, more like a fortress than an office which, I am sure, is no coincidence, the insurance company implying that you will be safe in their hands, protected. The windows are small and rectangular, set back from the façade. I have never been in the building but I imagine not much light filters through. The front of the building has two figures above and on either side of the doorway. One – the one above - is called the Seafarer, the other is the Seafarer’s Wife. They were designed and executed by Mortimer, Wilson & Graham. These figures were not added until 1953. Wilson had trained under the sculptor Archibald Dawson and the figures are a portrait of Dawson and his wife Isa. Archibald Dawson had been responsible for the first phase of sculpture on the building which is a figure of St. Andrew, high and central on the façade. The building was completed in 1929 and underwent extensive internal remodelling in 1987. It was Burnet’s last design in Scotland.

            I remember the first time I noticed the building over twenty-five years ago. The sun was low and the building was lit by a side-light that shadowed the windows and made them appear like black holes. With the figures looming down imposingly it looked to me like the sort of insurance office Kafka might have worked in. The North British and Mercantile Insurance Company was founded in Edinburgh in 1809 and was originally founded as a fire insurance company. I wonder if they were the insurers Dr Pritchard, the human crocodile, tried to con after he set fire to his house in Berkeley Street when he murdered Elizabeth McGirn? In the 1860s the company had offices all over the world including Asia and Africa, specifically insuring members if the Civil Service at preferential rates. In 1901 it extended its business to include all marine risk, which explains the seafarer and his wife on the façade. The first major fire in the company’s history occurred in Glasgow on June 4^th 1810, the King’s birthday. A firework, which was part of a display to celebrate the occasion, entered a window of Aitken & Company, a dry goods warehouse on Glassford Street. The fire caused serious damage which wasn’t helped by the fact that many of the firemen had been toasting the King: ‘The fire engines were soon on the spot, but, unfortunately, and to the great disgrace of the Glasgow Police, under whose management they were, they were in such a miserable state of disorder, and the firemen all drunk… that they were of no use, and the fire was literally allowed to burn and thereby occasion a loss of many thousands of pounds, which otherwise could have amounted to only a few hundreds.’ (Report to Directors)

            The building looks severe and cold with its windows like sightless eyes and yet the faces of the figures have an expression of gentleness and sympathy. There is something ecclesiastical about the figures and they are reminiscent of some of those on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. It’s not surprising to discover that Mortimer, Wilson & Graham were also responsible for church statuary, including a figure at St Simon’s in Partick and statues, carvings and Stations of the Cross for churches by Jack Coia.

Tickets please!.... Right, come oan you, get aff...

Wee Tam McSing

Before the relatively recent wave of new immigrants into Glasgow from the Eastern European nations there was, of course, a large group of immigrants from much further East; from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and from East African Asians who had left at threat of persecution from Idi Amin. The first Indian immigrant to Glasgow is said to be Mr Noor Muhammad Tanda who left Bombay in 1916 at the age of 19, and arrived in Glasgow via Liverpool, living in lodgings at the Broomielaw until he found work in Greenock at a shipyard. Mr Tanda had the wanderlust. After travelling extensively, he spent five years in Australia before returning to Glasgow to settle in the 1930s and setting up business in the Gorbals.

            The Indians immigrants, like the Highlanders, the Irish, the Jews, the Poles, left their homeland, more often than not, due to circumstance rather than through choice. The symptoms are always the same – famine, poverty, disease, persecution. Also, the British government encouraged them to take their labour and organisational skills to other colonies throughout the Empire.

            The British influence in India goes back a long way. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted the East India Company a charter to trade with India. In 1668, when the East India Company rented Bombay ‘for ever’ from Charles II, a decree was passed making people born in Bombay ‘natural subjects’ of Britain. After the ‘The Great Revolt’ of 1857 – what the English refer to as ‘The Indian Mutiny’ – India was ruled from London and India’s population became subjects of the British crown. Many Indians found themselves as soldiers in the British army and as sailors in the British navy. Some of these found their way to Britain and some were seen on the docks of Glasgow as early as 1869.

            The 1914 Imperial Act, designed to utilise the man-power of Empire as soldiery in the First World War, had dictated that ‘everyone born within the allegiance of the crown in any part of the Empire was a British subject’, which meant they were free to live in any part of the Empire, including Britain. In 1937, the first Indian children – boys only, had come to join fathers already settled and entered Buchan Street Primary School in the Gorbals. By the beginning of the Second World War it is estimated that there were 50 members of the Glasgow Indian Community. By the end of the war this number had risen to around 100, most living in the Gorbals, and while most were Muslim some were Hindu and Sikhs. The first Sikh temple in Glasgow had been in existence since 1911. The first Muslim mosque was a billiard hall in Oxford Street hired for Friday prayers but by 1944 the Muslim community had bought the property and converted it – the first mosque in Scotland.

In 1947, a course of action was taken which has often been resorted to and which has always led to long-lasting trouble – partition of India into Pakistan and India. Ireland was partitioned in 1920; the partition of Palestine in 1947, proposed by the UN on the advice of the British mandate, resulted only in a Jewish independent state, while the Arab state was never formed; the partition of the Punjab took place in 1966; the partition of Cyprus in 1974. The partition of Yugoslavia in the 1990 led to the bitter ethnic wars which affected Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo. As Hindus and Sikhs migrated from Pakistan to India and millions of Muslims from India to Pakistan there were massive riots, mass murders and enormous loss of life on both sides. Many of the Asians who had lost homes, jobs and businesses were encouraged to come to Britain due to a labour shortage. This was aided by the passing of the British Nationality Act in 1948 which granted United Kingdom citizenship to people of Britain’s colonies and former colonies. Most of the jobs they took were jobs the native population did not want and which had remained vacant. Most of the jobs in Glasgow were with Glasgow Corporation Transport which was said to be desperately short of staff. The wages were relatively good for the time but due to the shift-work involved they were unpopular, especially as there was no shortage of other work in the city.

By 1960  the Asian population of Glasgow was around 3,000. As usual, the earliest wave of Asian immigrants moved to the Gorbals. By 1971, a survey estimated there was around 12,000 people of Asian origin in Glasgow. At that time the Gorbals was undergoing the slum clearances and many people, including the Asians, were moving out. The situation took a turn for the worse in the 70s and 80s with the rise in unemployment, especially youth unemployment, meant children of Asian immigrants who had been born and brought up in Glasgow, despite having good qualifications, found they were often passed-over in favour of white youths. In 1981, changes to the British Nationality Act made it difficult for further immigration from India and Pakistan unless family members were already settled in the UK. The 2011 census recorded 22,405 Pakistanis in Glasgow, with the largest Pakistani community being in Pollokshields. A Glasgow University survey found that the majority of Pakistanis in Glasgow support the SNP and Pakistanis feel more Scottish than English residents in Glasgow. In the same 2011 census the number of Hindus in the whole of Scotland was over 16,000, with 8,640 in Glasgow

There is a Hindu Mandir Temple in Glasgow facing Kelvingrove Park at 1 La Belle Place. The building was originally a Renaissance Hall known as the Queen’s Rooms and was designed by Glasgow architect Charles Wilson and has been a Category A listed building since 1966. Prior to becoming the Hindu Mandir Temple it was home to the First Church of Christ Scientist from 1948.

Queen's Rooms - Mandir Temple

Charles Wilson was born in 1810 and articled to the architect David Hamilton in 1827, whom he left in 1837. His later independent and classical work was known for its sophistication, or ‘feminine elegance’ as Thomas Gildard, another Glasgow architect named it (We’ll hear more of Gildard later when we come to the Brittania Music Hall of Argyle Street which he designed.) At the young age of 30, Wilson was commissioned to design the City Lunatic Asylum – Gartnavel Mental Hospital as it became known. As part of the commission he made a study-tour of similar facilities in England and France. It was while visiting one mental asylum in England that he was mistaken for a patient. The doctor assigned to guide him around the labyrinthine corridors had been called away suddenly and Wilson, left to his own devices, had wandered into a section of the hospital which was out of bounds. A guard, having no idea who this visitor was, mistook him for a well-to-do patient and attempted to lead him away. Wilson protested that he was an architect inspecting the facilities before designing a modern asylum in Glasgow. The guard took this as a symptom of delusion and attempted to detain Wilson. Wilson, understandably, cursed the man and became violent. The guard called for help and Wilson was retrained in a strait-jacket until the mistake was discovered two hours later. 

A great many of Wilson’s designs are still standing in Glasgow, especially in the West End surrounding Kelvingrove Park, Woodlands and Broomhill. He is also responsible for the layout of Kelvingrove Park itself, and, what is probably his most visible building, Free Church College, otherwise known as Trinity College which is perched high on the hill of Park Circus with its tower being one of the most visible points of Glasgow. Wilson won the commission for this building by competition in 1856 and the tower was completed in August 1859. The tower is included among the photographer's pictures but not as the main point of interest, it is merely in the background of some of them. I'm not a big fan of Wilson's work, I don't think there is anything special about the tower other than it's height and prominence on the Glasgow sky-line. The Queen's Hall is more distinctive for the bas-relief around its front than for the building itself and the bas-relief was designed by John Mossman. 

Mossman and his family - father William, brothers William and George - were English sculptors who moved to Glasgow. The family had originated in Scotland and a relative, James Mossman, was a supporter of Mary Queen of Scots. He was beheaded after the siege of Edinburgh Castle in 1572. The family firm dominated sculptural work in Glasgow in the mid 19th century. John Mossman's work has already been mentioned in this blog as he designed the statue of Robert Peel in George Square. The family produced a vast number of monuments for the Necropolis and other cemeteries in Glasgow. The were also responsible for the sculpting of the Stewart Memorial Fountain in Kelvingrove Park in 1872, which we have also already seen. The firm of J & G Mossman finally closed its Glasgow office and showroom on the 27th May, 2011.