Shakespeare Street School in Maryhill was built in 1915 as one of the new School Board schools to educate the masses – and clean them, it was well provided with showers for the grubby little tykes.
Jan 12
La Scala / ABC Cinema
Clydebank’s La Scala cinema opened in 1938 – seating 2,648, it was described as the pride of Clydebank, and survived the Clydebank Blitz unscathed.
Dec 31
Lochaline Silica Mine
Lochaline is a pretty wee village in, basically, the middle of nowhere – when you need to take a ferry and drive down 20 miles of singletrack to get somewhere, it’s very un-urban exploring!
Continue reading →
Dec 17
M8 Scaffolding
No idea why I didn’t report on this before – probably because it wasn’t all that exciting, but there were some decent views of the Mitchell Library, so here you go 
Nov 26
Barnton Quarry Bunker II
Barnton Quarry has had several lives – first it was a stone quarry of course, then in WWII it was the operations room for the Turnhouse sector of Fighter Command. After the war it was unused for a few years, then in 1952 a whole second bunker was built underground to turn it into a R4 ROTOR bunker – ROTOR was a radar early warning system. Abandoned again, it became a Regional Seat of Government (RSG) in the 1960s, where the Scottish government could hide in the event of nuclear war – a BBC studio was built where encouraging messages could be broadcast to the surviving population.
Nov 20
NISA / Chris Hoy Velodrome
The Commonwealth Games are coming to Glasgow in 2014, and as usual with these big things it means lots of construction – existing venues are being reused a lot, but we’re also getting a big new sports arena – the National Indoor Sports Arena and the Chris Hoy Velodrome. This was a visit from May.
Oct 26
Cononish Gold Mine
In the hills North of Loch Lomond, at the end of a quiet glen, this mine closed down in 1995 after producing not much gold – permission has just been granted for the mine to reopen. This was visit from a couple of years ago which for some reason I forgot to put on the website.
Oct 03
Kilbagie Mills II
I last visited this mill back in 2009 – it wasn’t in brilliant shape then, but there are some lovely touches and an amazing collection of different buildings of different ages.
Aug 28
Steel Plate & Sections
SPS was (is?) a large steel stockholders owned by Corus – their 300,000 square foot warehouse in Bellshill held over 20,000 tonnes of specialist steels for shipbuilding, boilers, pressure vessels, structural sections and loads of different types of pipe. Big boys’ Meccano, basically.
Jun 26
Southern General Hospital
Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital is being hugely expanded and rebuilt, with about £1bn being spent to consolidate the city’s hospital care. The cranes on this site have tempted me for ages, but they’re rather secure – the building itself, however, is not
