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Streets of Glesca ..
Bridgeton
/ Calton
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Abercromby
Street
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Abercromby Street
taken
approx 1962
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Abercromby Street looking north if you walk up this street you come to the
junction of the Gallowgate, cross over the Gallowgate, keep heading north
and the street name changes to Bellgrove Street.
The trees and wall on the right is the old graveyard which was founded in
1786 and three of the six Calton weavers who died in the famous
riots of 1787 are interred here.
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December
2002
The flat roofed grey building on the left of the photograph is Bridgeton telephone exchange in Stevenson Street. Traffic traveling south down Abercromby St is
rerouted behind the tenements. The street at London Road is now a 'dead-end'
which is very appropriate......because that's where the
funeral parlour and
old
graveyard is!
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 .I remember the mens model lodging house which is the tall building on the
left, the old guys used to hang about outside the place, normally drinking
fortified wine. The model housed men down on their luck and normally from
the poorest homes displaced by the slum clearances. It remained in use as
a hostel until it was demolished following a fire in 1981.
( Model - pronounced mow-del was a name given to lodging houses for men
and women in Glasgow, I don't know if the term is used elsewhere. These
places were dire and housed down and outs, normally alcoholics, the poor
and penniless)
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" When its springtime in the model, in Abercromby Street
The bugs begin tae yodel, ye canny get tae sleep!
You get up tae read the paper or wash yer durty feet
When its springtime in the model, in Abercromby Street."
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2012, Bob Currie, GlesgaPal
There were two Model Lodging Houses for homeless men in Bridgeton, one
in Abercromby Street, opposite the historic old Calton Graveyard, the
other in Craignestock Street.
The Abercromby Street Home was
one of seven built by The City of Glasgow Improvement Trust to deal
with the problem of homelessness. Opened in 1878, it closed in 1981 and
was demolished in 1982.
It had accommodation for 272 men, comprising 240 cubicles with
dormitory accommodation for 32 individuals. These homes were
designated‘Models’as it was intended they should be models to be
imitated as an improvement on the otherwise low lodging houses dealing
with homeless persons.
The inmates were referred to locally as ‘Modellers’not‘Down and
Outs.’Roses Home, Craignestock Street, epitomised the description of a
low lodging house. It was certainly a grim place.
In his capacity as a milk boy, my elder brother made deliveries there.
He said it stank as much inside as it did outside, and he was as quick
as he could be getting himself in and out of the place. My parents
sympathised with the Modellers who they said belonged to someone either
as sons, brothers or husbands.
The modellers were benign; an accepted part of the scenery in Bridgeton
past, and deserving of something more than local sympathy. That
'something more' took effect following the Beveridge Report (1947) that
ushered in the Welfare State and an end to the worst excesses of
poverty in our society.
Nevertheless, the Abercromby Street Model Lodging House for Homeless
Men remained open until 1981. The closure of Roses Home, Craignestock
Street may have followed soon thereafter, if not before.
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Extract from e-mail, Dec.2002, Anne
Calman,
Canada
" The
picture you have of Abercromby St brings back a whole lot of memories for me, I went to
St Marys and then West St school, back then I used to meet my then boyfriend at
Bellgrove, do you know the name of the shop on the Gallowgate that made the hats
[bunnets to] for men? I think it was past Bellgrove, going east I
think,
God I just love this web site, its the greatest thing since sliced breed,...,as
my Da used to say!"
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