Glasgow City Council housing - tenement block, Pollok Estate, Glasgow - c1945
One of Glasgow's many and vast peripheral housing estates, developed from the 1920s up into the 1960s, inlcuded Pollok - this wartime picture shows one of the tenement blocks (built using what was seen as very developed and experimental constructional techniques) that are typical of the schemes.
Glasgow's housing schemes sadly became a by-word for poverty and deprivation - isolated on the fringes of the city, often with no communal or social infrastructure, they have largely now been demolished or redeveloped (along with Glasgow's equally vast inner-city redevelopments) - but it is easy to forget the sheer scale and volume of housing that was provided by the City Council - and how swiftly it was delivered - it was also the case that people rehoused in suburbs such as Pollok often lived in some of Europe's worst slums and perhaps we shouldn't wholly overlook the social intentions of those who strove to re-house Glaswegians.
Mind you - I've always been amazed that anyone who knows the weather in the west of Scotland would build a flat roof anything!
Glasgow City Council housing - tenement block, Pollok Estate, Glasgow - c1945
One of Glasgow's many and vast peripheral housing estates, developed from the 1920s up into the 1960s, inlcuded Pollok - this wartime picture shows one of the tenement blocks (built using what was seen as very developed and experimental constructional techniques) that are typical of the schemes.
Glasgow's housing schemes sadly became a by-word for poverty and deprivation - isolated on the fringes of the city, often with no communal or social infrastructure, they have largely now been demolished or redeveloped (along with Glasgow's equally vast inner-city redevelopments) - but it is easy to forget the sheer scale and volume of housing that was provided by the City Council - and how swiftly it was delivered - it was also the case that people rehoused in suburbs such as Pollok often lived in some of Europe's worst slums and perhaps we shouldn't wholly overlook the social intentions of those who strove to re-house Glaswegians.
Mind you - I've always been amazed that anyone who knows the weather in the west of Scotland would build a flat roof anything!