Novar Drive, Hyndland

I used to live in rented rooms in a red-sandstone flat in Hyndland, just like these when I started my working life in Glasgow. I remember the grandeur of the lounge - high ceiling, elaborate cornices, chandelier and bay window, and also the winter when my flatmate and I huddled round a two-bar fire because we could not afford rent, food and heat! Our landlady found living there alone expensive too or she would not have succumbed to taking in lodgers! Although I was a young professional she looked on me as having strange bohemian ways, I think! My friend and I moved on in due course, to a much less grand tenement, but I enjoyed my brief sojourn as a Hyndland resident!

Hyndland was built in the late Victorian and Edwardian period and is defined principally by its quiet streets and red sandstone tenements, often embellished with ornate doorway carvings, elaborate tiled closes and stained glass windows. It is very much a middle-class district populated by academics from nearby Glasgow University, some noted authors, poets, actors and media people also, as the BBC Scotland headquarters used to be close-by until recently. Average property prices are much higher than Glasgow averages and this is where to buy to maintain value, not the new-build estates! However, as you can see, parking is at a premium and even in the middle of the day there's not a gap! The local railway station at Hyndland is close - hence the reason the people are striding purposefully past.