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  Streets of Glesca ..        Bridgeton / Calton
   Abercromby Street                            page1

 

Abercromby Street    

 taken approx 1962  
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)  

 

" 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."   

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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 more Abercromby St. 

 page1 page3 page5

 St.Mary's Chapel 

 
 page2 page4

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