Welcome to Bygone Bungo

Welcome to the Bygone Bungo blog. The aim is to collect and summarise all that is known about the dear little place we know as Strathbungo.

Over recent years I have amassed a wealth of information, from historical accounts and swathes of records, to many timeless photographs. This blog allows me to share them with a wider audience.

There is also the database of properties and previous residents – you can search through some 5000 landlords and residents from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Database search pages.

So if you have ever wondered about the history of the area, who built it and why, or who lived here, or you have information of your own to add, delve in.

Andrew Downie

The Queen’s Garage

The Commercial Tyre Service Company (garage proprietors, and manufacturers and hirers of motorvehicles) was founded in May 1927 with £12,000 capital , and the same year an application was submitted to construct a garage and showroom at 640 Pollokshaws Road at the junction with Nithsdale Drive. The land had previously belonged to Glasgow Corporation.

Elevations of proposed garage

Elevations from Pollokshaws Road and from Nithsdale Drive. Source GCA plans 1927/496

Site plan

Plan of the garage. Note the many lock ups. Source: GCA Plans 1927/496

The business traded as The Queen’s Garage. Like many of the local garages, it initially sold petrol from the small forecourt on the corner, and concentrated on lock-ups for local car owners, which take up much of the site.

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Nursing Homes in Marywood Square

I have now been approached by three people regarding relatives, or themselves, being born in a nursing home in Marywood Square, including Hilary, the wife of Mike Stanger, founder of The Strathbungo Society back in the 1970s.

So here’s what I know, should anyone else ask.

Dawsholm Nursing Home

Margaret G Dawson rented premises at 8 Marywood Square from the architect James Money around 1935 and opened her nursing home. While the Post Office Directory always called it the Dawson Nursing Home, there are numerous birth announcements in the press under the name Dawsholm Nursing Home. This is the earliest I have found:

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Regent Park Motor Garage Company

Fourth article in a series about Strathbungo’s motor garages.

The Regent Park Motor Garage was founded in the earliest days of motoring and survived for nearly seventy years, and yet information is limited, photos extremely rare, and it has left almost no trace.

The garage was opposite Fenwick’s on Nithsdale Street. The early history of this plot of land is described in the recent post about 2 Nithsdale Street and Duncan Brown’s photograph of Robert Bryce’s plumbing business.

Sepia photo of advertising hoardings and buildings at mouth of Nithsdale Street

Junction of Pollokshaws Road and Nithsdale Street c 1895 by Duncan Brown. Robert Bryce’s plumbing business abuts the tenement gable end on the right. Source: Glasgow School of Art Archives

Bryce’s building was taken down around 1899, and a planning application was submitted that year to open a shopfront in the end gable of the adjacent tenement, and extend the shop over the railway line where it passes under Nithsdale Street.

Composite of existing (left) and proposed (right) elevations for the tenement at Pollokshaws Road and Nithsdale Street, 1899. Note the additional detail on the chimney breast, which is still visible. Source: Glasgow City Archives

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