The Tenement House, Glasgow

Today a worthwhile visit to the Tenement House in Glasgow. *****

National Trust Website: "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 National Trust for Scotland's Tenement House is on the first floor of an ordinary red sandstone tenement in Buccleuch Street, in Glasgow's city centre. The Trust is preserving it as an important part of the nation's heritage not only because it is typical of the flats so many Scots used to live in, but also because it has survived almost unchanged for over a century.

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 like the Tenement House, 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. The tenement at 145 Buccleuch Street is red sandstone and has four floors with two flats on each floor. The National Trust for Scotland now owns both ground floor flats as well as the Tenement House. One ground-floor flat is used as a reception area with exhibitions on tenement life and the history of the tenement in Glasgow. The other flat has an education room for school groups, and office and storage space. The rest of the building is private as there are still people living in their own homes. So, it is still a real tenement!

For over fifty years one of the first floor flats was the home of Miss Agnes Toward, who came to live there in 1911, along with her widowed mother Mrs Agnes Toward. Miss Toward's life was in most respects very ordinary and it is just that which makes her story so interesting. She reminds us of people we have known: grandmothers, aunts, elderly neighbours. Her home offers a uniquely detailed insight into everyday life in the first half of the 20th century.

Miss Toward was born in 1886 in nearby Renfrew Street, and was the only surviving child of William and Agnes Toward. She had two younger sisters who died in infancy and her father, a commercial traveller in metals, died when she was only three years old. Agnes was brought up by her mother, who made a living by dressmaking and taking in lodgers.

For most of her life Miss Toward worked as a shorthand typist with a shipping firm, and retired when she was in her seventies. After her mother's death in 1939, she lived in the flat on her own and made very few changes except for occasional redecorating and, in 1960, having electric light installed. She kept all sorts of things other people would have thrown away. As well as keeping the Victorian furniture which had belonged to her grandparents, she held on to old letters, household bills, recipes, wartime leaflets, newspaper cuttings and even old jars of home-made jam!

In 1911, when Miss Toward and her mother moved to 145 Buccleuch Street, even well-off tenement dwellers usually paid rent to a landlord for their homes rather than own them. Miss Agnes Toward rented her flat from the owner of the building, Dugald McCorkindale, who was a coal merchant. She kept all of her rent receipts, so we know how much rent she paid for her flat and that she paid it every three months.

The Tenement House is very compact, with four rooms, bedroom, parlour, kitchen and bathroom, opening off a square hallway. The National Trust for Scotland has restored the gas lighting which Miss Toward had replaced with electricity in 1960. Also, the rooms have been redecorated by copying samples of the original decoration wherever possible. Samples of the original papers can be seen in all the rooms except the bathroom.

The House is furnished with typical late Victorian furniture and a few older pieces such as the grandfather clock in the hallway, made in the 1790s, and the oak bureau in the parlour which dates from the 1750s.

One of the first things visitors notice when they step into the hallway of the house is the smell and hiss of the gas lights. They are not as bright as modern electric lights, and the House is decorated in dark colours which would have been very practical as they would not show the dirt caused by coal fires. Dominating the hallway is a portrait of a man thought to be Miss Toward's grandfather, James Toward, who lived at Bonhill near Dumbarton and was an engraver of patterns for calico.

The parlour has a chenille table cover and white tablecloth and is set for afternoon tea. The rosewood piano is piled with sheet music containing traditional Scottish ballads and popular songs and dances of the Edwardian period. The chairs are covered with gleaming black horsehair. The white china bell handle by the fireplace, intended for summoning the maid, was installed in the 1890s when domestic service was cheap and many families in Buccleuch Street would have had a maidservant. The set-in bed behind a door in the corner was an economical way of providing extra sleeping space.

There is a typical Glasgow tenement kitchen. The black cast-iron range dominates one wall. Opposite sits the coalbunker and the fitted shelves with the china and cooking implements such as the "tattie champer" for mashing potatoes and the spirtle for stirring porridge. Sitting beside the low sink at the window are the zinc washboard and a Victorian clothes wringer. Some samples of washing hang on the clothes pulley overhead. Tucked behind the door is the recess bed, high off the ground to provide useful storage space underneath and with long curtains which could be closed for privacy or to hide the bed during the day.

The bedroom has a traditional iron and brass bedstead, covered with a typical white cotton bed mat. A set of pretty china jugs and a basin sit on top of the marble-topped washstand. Among the items on the dressing table are glass perfume bottles and a small brass and shell watch holder. On top of the wardrobe are suitcases which Miss Toward would pack when going on holiday.

When this tenement was built in 1892, most tenement dwellers shared a toilet with their neighbours. Often this was on the stair landing, but it could even be outside in the back court. The 1892 Act, which was supposed to force landlords to provide indoor water closets for their tenants, was not entirely successful and some flats still had outside toilets as late as the early 1960s. Landlords who complied with the law passed the expense on to tenants in the form of higher rents.

When the Toward ladies came to live in Buccleuch Street in 1911, the bathroom would have been considered luxurious by the standards of the day. It has a deep enamelled cast iron bath with brass fittings, a marble-effect wash-basin with mixer taps and a toilet with a heavy wooden seat and china-handled pull chain. Other interesting features are: the gas meter which sits on a small shelf above the bath; the cold water tank for the bath in the flat below (the tank for this flat was in the flat upstairs!); the assortment of old medicine bottles on the shelf at the window; the brass can used for carrying hot water to the wash-stand in the bedroom; and the laundry basket hanging on a hook above the bath."

Part of Glasgow Album 2010