Words by John Thomson
Maryhill Road, late 1970s [Photograph by George Ward]
It literally fell on my lap as soon as I opened the book – obviously a book I’d not looked at for some time as ‘it’ was a newspaper cutting from the Glasgow Herald of 8th May 1980 and it told of the good times coming to Maryhill. It was written by Murray Ritchie, who held many editorial posts with the Herald and was a superb wordsmith.
He spoke of an imaginary someone, just before or after the war, taking a red tram down Maryhill Road towards Glasgow city centre; ‘It (the tram) would have been packed and noisy – almost as noisy as the streets where women crowded the hundreds of small shops and children filled the pavements. It was a teeming, sometimes tough, self-reliant district in a successful city. It was a community.’
But he then spoke of a major change in the view from the top deck; ‘Today (1980) the blue bus sweeps commuters in from Bearsden and Milngavie past dereliction and desolation. The lifeblood of Maryhill dried up years ago leaving crumbling tenements and acres of rubble and red blaes.’
So, what had happened?
Well, like much of Glasgow there was to be a motorway, scything through Maryhill to allow those commuters to take their cars to work in Glasgow and back home to the commuter belt, but unlike much of Glasgow, eventually, there was no motorway. It would have used the, then, almost derelict Forth and Clyde Canal towards Gilschochill and gone through what is now the well established area of Summerston, which, itself, continues to expand.
It just never happened. Many Maryhill residents were against it and made their feelings well known to the city planners. The planners did take some notice and various modifications were suggested but changing politics and politicians saw its death knell. In 1975, the creation of Strathclyde Regional Council and new district councils led to a re-evaluation of the roads programme and the Maryhill Motorway was dropped. However, as James Craigen, one-time MP for Maryhill put it,
‘By the mid-1970s, Maryhill Road was in a sorry state and planning blight had put an official stamp on deterioration.’ Many local businesses had closed and a lot of the tenements had been demolished – some of this as preparation for the motorway. Gap sites and large areas of vacant land proliferated. But help was at hand.’
In 1977, various organisations, including the Scottish Office, Glasgow District Council, Strathclyde Regional Council and various public agencies such as the Scottish Special Housing Association got together and announced the arrival of the Maryhill Corridor Project complete with a Corridor Working Party the next year. It was launched to ‘tackle the urban plight and improve the wider area – of which the spine was Maryhill Road’ and to lead ‘a co-ordinated attack on deprivation in Maryhill.’
Certainly there were many local authority planning officers involved and various advice centres were established to encourage Corridor consultation.
It promised much, and did deliver some of that. There was new housing in the area and new industrial development and much of that remains with us today. The Maryhill Shopping Centre was opened in 1981 at a cost of £7.5 million on the site of the former Maryhill Central Station and, just a wee bit further up Maryhill Road, the modern world was welcomed with the establishment of the West of Scotland Science Park, opened in 1983 by Princess Anne. Indeed, much of the more modern stained glass in the Main Hall at the Burgh Halls reflects many of these developments.
On a more mundane level but to some, equally as important, four new public conveniences were to be built at Summerston, Maryhill Central, Queen’s Cross and St George’s Cross but these never happened.
And on a cultural level, the West End Times of 18th June 1982 outlined all the events that were to take place the following week in the Maryhill Corridor Festival (1982). Among the many events were the Festival Queen Competition, a Grand Gala Procession, and an ethnic dance and photographic exhibition, as well as range of arts and crafts workshops, folk concerts and theatrical performances. However, infuriatingly, there is no reporting of any of these events in subsequent editions of the West End Times. Did any of it happen? It was, after all, only forty years ago and it may be that you, the reader, remember these events or even took part in them.
The Maryhill Corridor Project came to an end in 1984 ‘against the pressure on resources and claims from other parts of Glasgow.’ (Jim Craigen) but there had been high hopes for it. Indeed, it has been claimed that much of that pressure came from the need to make sure that Summerston had none of the failings of earlier peripheral estates in Glasgow, including community facilities. Murray Ritchie, whose words opened this research, echoed those hopes with his final words;
‘When the Corridor plan was announced it was described as the “kiss-of-life” which would transform Maryhill into a “garden suburb” and restore it to its former place in the heart of Glasgow as “one of the most lovable parts of our great city’’.’
Do you have memories of the Maryhill Corridor Plan – its hopes and aspirations – and what its legacy is? It was only forty or so years ago. We would be keen to know. Indeed, you may even have been the Corridor Festival Queen of 1982. Or could any of the plans be used today to improve the area? Is the idea of a garden suburb still a reality? Please let us know.
You can either comment here or, for longer thoughts, please email info@mbht.org.uk
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Credits for much of the information in this article must go to Murray Ritchie (‘A glimmer of hope at the end of Maryhill Corridor’ Glasgow Herald, Thursday 8th May 1980), James Craigen (‘Memoir on the Road through Maryhill’, September 2003) and the staff at the very helpful Special Collections of the Mitchell Library.