Garnethill Women’S Heritage Walk Glasgow Garnethill Women’S Heritage Walk As 19Th Century Glasgow Prospered, It Expanded West
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Glasgow Garnethill Women’s Heritage Walk Glasgow Garnethill Women’s Heritage Walk As 19th century Glasgow prospered, it expanded west. The wealthy middle- classes built detached residences on the drumlin of Garnethill, attracted by its fresh air and hilltop vistas. A century on from those sedate beginnings, Garnethill had grown into a bohemian enclave, home to theatre people, incomers, artists and activists... and some remarkable women who shaped this corner of the city. Route map W. GRAHAM ST BUCCLEUCH ST 6 BUCCLEUCH LANE GARNETHILL ST 5 SCOTT ST 4 BUCCLEUCH ST HILL ST 8 9 DALHOUSIE LANE 7 !0 GARNETHILL PARK HILL ST 3 ST. ALOYSIUS’ 2 GARNET ST COLLEGE ST. ALOYSIUS’ CHURCH RENFREW ST DENTAL HOSPITAL !1 DALHOUSIE ST GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART ROSE ST SCOTT ST SAUCHIEHALL ST CCA ABC GFT !2 SAUCHIEHALL LANE 1 BATH ST PITT ST !a Image Credits: Cover image: Chookie Burdies by Shona City Council • Betty Brown, Newsquest Jewish Archives Centre • Glasgow Close, Kinloch, Glasgow City Council • David Glasgow Herald & Times • Women in Washing Lines, Cowcaddens (1964) by Smith’s 1828 Map of Glasgow and Profile, Glasgow Women’s Library • Hilda Goldwag, University of Strathclyde environs, courtesy of University of Glasgow High School for Girls gymnasium, • Catherine Carswell, ‘Mungo’s Bairns’ by Glasgow Librarian • Woman with Bird 1901, courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Carol Primrose (University of Glasgow, (1955) by Hannah Frank, courtesy of Fiona Glasgow City Council • Agnes Toward 1990) • Students and Fra Newbery, 1894, Frank • Darling & James advertisement, dressed for a wedding in the 1960s, The Glasgow School of Art • Suffrage centre, 1914, University of Glasgow Archive National Trust for Scotland • Night Forms 1908, © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Services, Glasgow University Magazine (1932) by Hannah Frank, courtesy of Collection • Back cover: Garnethill collection, GB0248 DC198/26 • Kate Fiona Frank • Hilda Goldwag (left) and Mosaic Mural (1978) by various artists, Cranston and Margaret MacDonald, Cecile Schwarzschild on steps of Refugee photograph by Heather Middleton. courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow Centre, Sauchiehall Street, Scottish We begin our tour at the junction of Sauchiehall and Rose Jane Sutherland began its regeneration. Most of this Streets 1. environmental art is gone but one mosaic and a gable end survive in the urban oasis of MAGINE Sauchiehall Street around the turn of the Garnethill Park. A key player in the century. Glasgow was the Second City of the Empire. Upmarket department stores competed in the splendour site’s development was “Battling” of their displays, tearooms and even orchestras to entice Betty Brown (right), an STV cleaner Ifemale patrons, for whom shopping was no longer solely and union representative who chaired about necessity but also pleasure. Copland and Lye at 165 Garnethill Community Council. She organised groups to recycle masonry offered the latest Paris fashions. PalatialPettigrew and from skips and demolished buildings Stephens next door was Scotland’s for the park. Designed by Dieter largest department store. Both are now Magnus, it was opened in 1991 by demolished. Daly’s, at 199, was “the Princess Diana and incorporates Harrods of the North” and the former mosaic, lighting, metallic globes and McLellan Galleries housed Trerons’ waterfalls. Cast slabs by architect Magasin des Tuileries, promising Ulrike Enslein bear quotations “Paris in Glasgow”. The street was also from residents, one of which pays famous for furriers. This advert for tribute to Betty. Her determination was legendary: “If you Darling & James, in the Glasgow don’t harass, then things don’t get done.’’ Honoured with University Magazine, was designed an MBE in 1998, she died in 2006. to attract the new spending power of female students, admitted since Walk through the park to the corner of Hill and Dalhousie 1892. The grand stores declined with Streets. the difficult economic conditions of This shop front marks the first home ofGlasgow the inter-war years and competition Women’s Library, opened in 1991 3. GWL grew from a from chains like Woolworths; Watt Brothers is the only grassroots project, Women in Profile, founded in 1990 (when survivor from that heyday. Glasgow was European City of Culture) To your left are the Willow Tearooms to promote the work of !a, opened in 1903 by businesswoman women artists. The WiP and art patron Kate Cranston (1849- building, round the corner 1934). Glasgow invented the tearoom. in Dalhousie Lane, was Kate’s brother was the pioneer but her in poor condition with fame soon eclipsed his. Miss Cranston’s no windows, but from it premises here, and in Argyle, Ingram and emerged an ambitious Buchanan Streets, made Glasgow “a very programme of events. GWL Tokio for tearooms” [sic]. Charles Rennie was run by volunteers for Mackintosh and his wife Margaret its first seven years; it now Macdonald (1865-1933, below) worked has 14 paid staff and soon closely on their elegant art nouveau begins a new chapter in permanent premises at the former interiors. Mackintosh appreciated his Bridgeton Library building. wife’s contribution where some have Now look up at the lamp-posts to the small plump birds not, saying, “Margaret has genius, I only perched on top. These are the much-loved Chookie Burdies have talent”. Miss Cranston’s dress - all ruffles and outmoded (as pictured on the cover of this guide) by sculptor Shona crinolines - was eccentric, but her progressive taste Kinloch. Around 150 were installed in the surrounding introduced generations of ordinary Glaswegians to avant- streets in 1993. garde design in a refined setting. Go up Dalhousie Street and left on to Buccleuch Street, to 2 Walk up Rose Street to Garnethill Park . the corner with Scott Street. Garnethill, originally called Summerhill, is said to have been The sandstone villa with the roundel showing Charity named after resident Thomas Garnett (1766–1802), an comforting a child housed Glasgow’s firstHospital for early supporter of female education. He was appointed Sick Children 4, opened 1882 in Professor of Natural Philosophy at the new and progressive response to Glasgow’s high infant Anderson’s Institution in 1796, “the first regular institution mortality rate. Its operating theatre in which the fair sex have been admitted to the temple of was gas-lit, and the authorities prided knowledge on the same footing as men”. Half the themselves on recruiting only ‘ladies’ students at his popular lectures were female as nurses. It survived entirely on and, in his words, represented “an era in the charitable donations, so fortunately annals of female education which posterity may its location gave it excellent access contemplate with peculiar pleasure.” to the benevolent ladies of Glasgow’s From the 1820s Garnethill developed prosperous West End. It soon outgrew into a leafy suburb of detached its premises and in 1914 a new villas, tenements and terraces. purpose-built hospital opened at Cheaper housing spread as Yorkhill. This building is now an annexe the area became built-up and of St Aloysius’ College. less desirable. By the 1970s Continue along Buccleuch Street, past Garnethill Street. it was in decline and artists including Margaret Watt, Carol The grand building marked Garnethill School and its Rhodes, Irene Keenan and neighbour served as the Glasgow High School for Girls 5 (above) from 1899-1968. Graduates include veteran journalist Katherine Whitehorn; writer and broadcaster Muriel Gray; Lady Hazel Cosgrove, first woman to be appointed to a permanent seat as a judge in the Court of Session; and Alison Sheppard, Olympic and Commonwealth Games swimmer. The school moved to Kelvinside in 1969 and, despite opposition from both sides, merged a few years later with the Boys’ High School. The vacated Garnethill buildings were used for a while by Glasgow School of Art then converted into flats in 1998. Continue to the end of Buccleuch Street, just During the war years she and Cecile before it curves left. worked as turners at engineering works in Glasgow, living in poor This row of seven red sandstone tenements hostels; post-war, Hilda became head dates from 1892; the last, 145, was the home designer at Friedlanders designing of Agnes Toward (1886-1975) 6. Born in scarves for Marks and Spencer, afterwards moving into nearby Renfrew Street, she was brought up freelance illustration. When the Great Storm of 1968 took by her mother, her siblings having died in the roof off their Garnethill flat, she and Cecile relocated to infancy and her father dying when she was Knightswood, close to the Forth and Clyde Canal, subject of three. They moved here in 1911 and after her many paintings. mother’s death in 1939, Agnes stayed another 26 years. A shorthand typist who worked for A major exhibition at the Collins Gallery in 2005 brought a shipping company, she never married and Hilda’s work to the notice of a new generation. The Scottish worked to the age of 73. She occasionally had Jewish Archives Centre holds a collection of her papers and the house redecorated and in 1960 had electric works. light installed but made no major changes. She The building opposite the synagogue has significance for spent the last decade of her life in hospital. The many women in Glasgow and beyond. In 1896, following flat and her belongings remain a time capsule and a local appeal, the recently established Glasgow Cancer their very ordinariness makes them fascinating. Owned Hospital 8 moved here. Two existing villas were converted by the National Trust for Scotland, The Tenement into a modern 30 bed hospital, research facilities and staff House is open to the public from March to October. accommodation. Director George Beatson was one of Another woman associated with Garnethill is author the pioneers in the treatment of breast cancer. The current Denise Mina (b.