The Hidden Glasgow Forums

retired tiger wrote:My old man used to work for a pump manufacturers from Yoker by the name of Drysdales, very famous they were too, but no trace exists if them as far as I can see.

My Dad served his apprenticeship at Drysdales, they were taken over by Weirs Pumps and the operation was moved to their Cathcart Factory, which is now soon to close.

Im interested in bowling clubs and there used to be a Glasgow club called Drysdale Recreation.

I could never find out any info about them, but the last couple of posts might have solved it for me. As there is now a bowling club called Yarrow Recreation that used to be called Weirs something or other, and hence the now modern Yarrows.

Does anyone know any history of this?

Here is a link to some colour photo's of the Exibition:
http://www.decarts-north.com/empire.htm

Apart from the Palace of Art the only other Empire Exhibition relic I'm aware of is the Peace Cairn behind the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park. Interested to know if there is anything else.

The Clachan Bar on Paisley Road West just down from Cessnock takes its name of course from the Clachan Inn at the Exhibition.

On my mantelpiece stands a souvenir of the Exhibition - a glass tumbler with a picture of Tait's Tower. Found it in a bric-a-brac shop in Hillhead a few years ago.

Info I found a while ago.

The Palace of Engineering is still in use at BAE SYSTEMS Prestwick , having been acquired by then Scottish Aviation , and is still refered to, by all and sundry, as The Palace. It may also interest you to know that another pavilion found its way to Ayrshire, Africa House ended up in ICI's Ardeer works, and to the best of my knowledge still stands, although now dissused.

Apollo wrote:It may also interest you to know that another pavilion found its way to Ayrshire, Africa House ended up in ICI's Ardeer works, and to the best of my knowledge still stands, although now dissused.

Indeed that does interest me. I know I'm long overdue a wee trip to Ardeer, and my days are numbered. Better get ma finger oot! Not just for this building but others too. You got any other info on 'Africa House?'

Like what did it look like and ideally where on the site it is!?

There's a brilliant set of photos of the Empire Exhibition here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/decarts/sets/662511/

Ooooooooo very nice link Len!


Is Africa House the South African Pavilion?

Or have I not looked hard enough - anyway I dont recall seeing it at Ardeer.

I see in the above photostream The ICI Pavilion (which I aready knew about) and a South African Pavilion... Is it one of these you refer to, Apollo?

Afraid the quote is all I have on this one, it was just an email from ages ago.

I had a browse in my library. Unfortunatley the larger of the books I have on the exhibition is a politically biased one, and indexes people rather than building or features. The other is smaller and skip through it only showed the South African Pavilion, near to the Canadian Pavilion.

Going by what I can make out, it is rather small and ornate, so not much reason for it to go to Ardeer.

I suspected Africa House was something bigger and potentially more useful, but having said that, I also have a map of the site (missing 8 buildings though) and it only lists "Union of South Africa" in the right place, one building distant from Canada.

There's another colour photoset here.

The cinema building in the exhibition, which went by the uninspiring name of the Empire, still exists - it was shipped to Lochgilphead where it operated as a cinema, then a snooker hall before conversion to a hotel. Interesting snippets of history on the official link at the bottom of this page:

http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/~gbarr/cinema ... phead.html

It was one of several cinemas designed by the son of former PM Ramsey MacDonald, and during the filming of From Russia With Love, when Argyll stood in for Eastern Europe somewhere, the cinema was hired for the screening of dailies!

Gary

Len wrote:There's a brilliant set of photos of the Empire Exhibition here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/decarts/sets/662511/

Speechless, apart from, WOW!

Link in my last post seems to be unreliable, so try this for 'another' 34 colour pics:

http://www.photoboxgallery.com/empire/

Some look familiar.

footbowler wrote:Im interested in bowling clubs and there used to be a Glasgow club called Drysdale Recreation.

I could never find out any info about them, but the last couple of posts might have solved it for me. As there is now a bowling club called Yarrow Recreation that used to be called Weirs something or other, and hence the now modern Yarrows.

Does anyone know any history of this?

The Drysdale bowling club, (and tennis courts) were up in Jordanhill, near Helensburgh Drive. I think they had originally been owned by Yarrows. They might have become Weirs for a while after Drysdales shut down.