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

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.

In 1950 plans were submitted to include a roof over the forecourt filling station.

It sold Austin & Morris cars in the 1950s, and Vauxhalls from the 1960s. In the 1990s the business was taken over by Arnold Clark. The petrol pumps were lost, and a new fascia erected over the exterior of the original building. It continued as a Vauxhall dealer until its closure in 2022, and has now been demolished. During demolition the old frontage seen in the 1928 photo briefly re-appeared from under the modern fascia, but it was gone before I could get a photograph of it.

Note the short-lived Union Jack-based logo for BP Motor Spirit on the building.

Unfortunately I can’t find any more information about the business. Their records, including photographs, were apparently submitted to the National Archives, but were never received .

The site has now been cleared, awaiting development.

Queens Garage site from Nithsdale Drive, cleared for demolition, 2024.

Artist’s impression of the new housing development, as seen from Pollokshaws Road, superimposed on Streetview.

Blue Line Motor Spirit Garage

Another garage on the verge of Strathbungo is worth a quick mention. It lay between Nursery Street and the Tramway. The site was previously used by WG Walker & Sons, asphalte manufacturers, but in July 1925 the Blue Line Motor Spirit Company opened their new filling station and garage, just a month after their first filling station opened on Gallowgate.

Opening of Pollokshaws Road branch advertised in the Daily Record, 20 July 1925. Source: BNA

They subsequently expanded to other branches, including Blantyre, Callander and Stirling. In 1932 the Daily Record recounted how the manager of the Blantyre branch used his car to chase a stampeding cow that was causing chaos and endangering pedestrians, eventually, in desperation, ramming it (rather conveniently, into a slaughterhouse) .

The Blue Line office and garage at 538-550 Pollokshaws Road, Sep 1937. Source: Virtual Mitchell C6727

In 1930 they applied to extend the garage to the end of Nursery Street. I have not found any reference to them after 1937. The site is now a block of flats.

McDaids Motatune

A relatively recent addition to Strathbungo garages, Motatune was established in 1982 in Govanhill, but moved to Barbreck Road perhaps around 2010.

Barbreck Road is a short street probably first laid out when the Cathcart Circle was constructed, circa 1886, and is shown on the OS Town Plan of 1895. At that time the last remaining old Strathbungo lands stood on the adjoining land.

OS Town Plan of 1895 showing barbreck Road and the old Strathbungo “Lands”. Source: NLS Maps

Strathbungo Lands by Barbreck Road, by Duncan Brown. Source: Glasgow School of Art Archives

New tenements were built on the site around 1903, on three sides of the block, with a single storey premises in the back court opening on to Barbreck Road. The road itself did not even feature in the PO Directories until c 1940, though a 1935 map shows the building was a billiard hall. I don’t know what it was used for before Motatune moved in.

Motatune in 2018. Source: Google Streetview

W & H Packham

I don’t know much about W & H Packham’s business on Torrisdale Street, although they did have a stand at the 1936 Scottish Motor Show at Kelvin Hall, where they displayed their Vulcan 21 ton commercial vehicles.

It was a wine and spirits cellar in the 1970s, and is now partly (and previously wholly) the Phoenix furniture warehouse. The other portion recently achieved notoriety for housing an illegal cannabis farm.

W & H Packham, Torrisdale Street, Feb 1930. Source: Glasgow City Archives

Additions and corrections are welcome. And old photos, if you have them.

References