This short post was prompted by the discovery of an old advert from 1861 listed on the Scottish Brick History website, above. It describes the offer for sale of a plot of land at “Muirhouses”.
The land didn’t sell, and was advertised again in May 1862, with the additional option to use as a brickfield, or at least for extracting its clay.
Advert in Glasgow Herald 6 May 1862, now advertising use as a brickfield. Source: Scottish Brick History
The Scottish Brick History site presumed it to be land used by William Wilson for a brickworks in Muirhouses, near Eglinton Toll , but it didn’t ring true. So where was it?
It partly fronted Pollokshaws Road, and ran to the Shields Burn, but was “unrestricted and free of the City Taxes”, meaning it was south of the city boundary. This excludes Muirhouses. It was close to the newly opened Queens Park, which places it nearer modern Strathbungo. Being south of the boundary, it was almost certainly Sir John Maxwell’s land, and was being shown by his tenant, Mr Curr, farmer at Shields. Thomas Kyle, the well-known land surveyor, had only a few years earlier drawn up the original (unused) feuing plan for Strathbungo for Sir John . Yet the land of modern Strathbungo had already been sold off by this time. So that didn’t leave much.
Looking at an OS map of 1858, there is one parcel of land that fits the bill. The Shields Burn, now culverted, runs through it. It’s immediately south of the county/parish boundary, the long dotted black line that runs east to west before turning north along the line of the burn. It measures 3.116 acres (decimal), while the advert is for 3 acres and 15 poles (imperial). To save you the effort of looking up acres, roods, poles and perches – trust me, you really don’t want to – that’s 3.09 acres, close enough. The advert describes buildings on the plot. The most obvious is the old school house, which would eventually be demolished to make way for March Street, which would have neatly delineated the eastern boundary of the plot.
OS Map of 1858. The outlined plot is Field Parcel No 1727, and 3.116 acres. Source: NLS Maps
So this looks like Sir John Maxwell trying to feu the land between the old Nithsdale Road (now called Nithsdale Street) and the railway. Yet for some reason Salisbury Quadrant and the March Street tenements and police station weren’t built until around 1886, 25 years later. Nithsdale Drive was created at the same time. The land on the north side of this new road became more industrial, most recently the Arnold Clark service depot, although flats are finally due to be built on it in the next few years. The land drops away sharply from Nithsdale Road into the service depot and I wonder if someone did actually extract the clay from the site for use in a brickworks elsewhere, prior to its commercial use.
Recent demolition of the Arnold Clark buildings reveals how the site level is a whole 2-3 m below road level, possibly due to clay extraction in the past.
The land for Salisbury Quadrant was sold to Andrew McIntyre (brother of John McIntyre, developer of modern Strathbungo, builder of 1-10 Moray Place) in June 1880, with a view to erecting tenements within the year, and laying out Nithsdale Drive. The land for the police station was sold by Maxwell to the Renfrewshire Commissioners for Supply a few days later . However, Salisbury Quadrant wasn’t occupied until 1885. The reason for the delay in building isn’t known.
Trolleybus TBS12 on route 108 passes the Salisbury Quadrant on 8th August 1963. Image: Charles Billette, reproduced with permission.
The police station appears to have progressed faster. In November the proposed station was announced in Building News, with a design “in the Scottish style” by Mr Davidson, almost certainly Charles Davidson (1841-1925) who was active in Paisley at that time. It first appeared in the PO Directory in 1883, with Duncan McDiarmid as the inspector. The station lasted barely ten years before closing in 1895; Strathbungo was annexed to Glasgow in 1891 and a new Police Station opened in Craigie Street in 1893. It may have continued in use as police accommodation however.
Building News 5 Nov 1880. Source: BNA
Leave a Reply