Photo: Side view of 1937 Building
Photo by: hiddenglasgow June 2001

Dominating the skyline on the Clyde at Meadowside Quay is one of Europe's largest brick buildings. However, regeneration plans have dictated that this massive foreboding structure be demolished. Indeed demolition of the old buildings has already begun.

Meadowside Granary (soon to become Glasgow Harbour) stands on the banks of the River Clyde in the West End of Glasgow. The complex consists of 4 brick buildings dating from 1914. [Over 5 million bricks were used in the construction of the 1914 building.]

It is now in the process of being demolished to make way for Glasgow Harbour. This is a major housing and retail development consisting of 2,500 houses, shops, offices and a river walkway, that is expected to take 15 years to complete.

The debris from the Granary is to be ground into a fine sand and used in the foundations of further construction work. We aim to create an archive of photographs and stories before it disappears completely from the skyline.

It was run by the Clyde Navigation Trust who made their money by letting some of the granary storage space to independent importers. The quay was built in stages, first part being completed in 1907 and extended eastwards as handling capacity grew. The first granary building opened in 1914, it was to become the most important grain store in the country during WW1. The grain was originally lifted from the bulk carriers by bucket elevators.

But in 1922 they experimented with a pneumatic suction elevator to assist in clearing the grain from the bottom of the ships hulls. It proved to be so successful that one of the two bucket elevators was converted to suction operation 5 years later in 1927. CNT agreed to extend it's handling capacity by 15,000 tons of storage in 1935. This extension took it's first delivery in 1938. This is the East most building that has CNT 1937 on the top gable (shown below). All for the princely sum of £98,000. (how much would that be in today's money)?

The next addition was opened in July 1960 at the West side of Granary. The final extension was under construction in 1966 & opened in 1967 and had a capacity of 80,000 metric tonnes....that's a lot of grain!!. Clyde Navigation Trust was incorporated with Clyde Port Authority in 1965.

ABOUT THE SITE

The enormous building is being swept away to allow the £500m Glasgow Harbour development which will stretch over 2 miles along the north bank of the river - form Yorkhill Quay at the Glenlee in the east to the former Merklands Lairage just west of the Granary, to go ahead. The area was formerly occupied by the following:

Yorkhill Quay and Basin - originally a shipyard operated by John Shearer and later Alexamder Stephen. Yorkhill Quay and Basin were constructed about a century ago and became famous as the Glasgow base of the Anchor Line's services to New York, India and Burma

Pointhouse Shipyard originally operated by T B Seath from the 1850s then A & J Inglis up to 1962 Produced several BISN liners countless coastal paddle steamers, at least 1 Royal yacht, tugs, whalers, etc, etc

Meadowside Shipyard developed by Tod & McGregor then D & W Henderson for shipbuilding (mid range liners, cargo ships, racing yachts) until 1935 and shiprepair until 1962. During WW2 used by Arrol, Motherwell Bridge and Redpath Brown to fabricate hundreds of landing craft.

Meadowside Granary - built in two sections - the first (eastern) building about 1914 on site of former ground of Partick Thistle FC who moved to Firhill. The larger western section was built much later in early 1960s when the Upper Clyde was still a busy port. This made the total complex the largest grain store in the UK and the largest brick built building in Europe

Merklands Lairage - used for many years for livestock shipments principally to / from Ireland

Demolition of the buildings will be gradual over the next 10 months. Unlike previous large landmark demolitions - like St Enoch Station, the Grand Hotel at Charing Cross and hundreds of Glasgow's characteristic sandstone tenements which all found their way into the river in the in-fill of the Prices, Queens and Kingston Docks - the materials from Meadowside will be crushed and pulverised into fine dust, reconstituted and recycled as new building materials - some may even find their way back to Meadowside as part of the new riverside commercial and residential developments. These developments will start next year and will carry on for five years until the projected completion in 2007

So there will be no spectacular photos of the Granary disappearing in a cloud of dust - its finally been accepted that such clouds are not very eco-friendly - but its gradual disappearance over the next year could make and interesting photo sequence. [ Stuart Cameron ]

Photo: View from the Granary roof looking East up the Clyde.
Photo by: Jim Colquhoun

Your Memories

My husband came home all excited one day in 1966---he had gotten a job in the construction of the granary and the weekly pay was excellent for those days. Alas he was only in the job for a approx. one week, when the leg of his trousers caught in a conveyor belt and pulled him with it. Luckily someone heard his yells and managed to turn the belt off just in time before he was sucked into the machine. Charlie was seriously hurt in this accident and he was taken to the Western Infirmary, where he had to have skin grafts to his groin ( you can imagine that he was very lucky, bad as it was, it could have been much worse). That was the end of his fantastic job at the Granary. The company he worked for was Taylor-Woodrow. He still bears the scars to this day.

Marion McC [14/06/2002]

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