Sandstone Tenement - Glasgow

A day trip north to see my Dad provided the opportunity, between the showers, for a Glaswegian blip and, deep-fried Mars Bars apart, there is little more characteristic of Glasgow than a sandstone tenement building.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most people in Glasgow lived in tenement flats. At that time they were not referred to as 'flats', but as 'tenement houses'.

The tenement was an ideal way of housing a population which grew rapidly during Glasgow's industrial expansion in the first half of the 19th century. It provided accommodation for many families on the minimum of valuable building land, and it could be adapted to suit the incomes of different social classes. In working-class areas, tenement flats had only two rooms ('room and kitchen' flats) or even only one room (the 'single-end'). Three-quarters of all tenement flats in Glasgow were either room and kitchen houses or single-ends. Flats with two rooms and a kitchen and bathroom, were built for the slightly better-off; for even wealthier people, there were larger flats with four, five or even more rooms.

Glasgow tenements were built in white or red sandstone and usually had three or four floors, with two or more separate flats on each floor.

This one has particular significance to me because as a small boy I lived just up the hill from it and what is now "Hardy's Hardware" was once, if memory serves, my local sweetie shop - RS McColl.


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