greater pollok heritage

I spent a good part of my childhood in the Kinning Park area of Glasgow before moving to the Pollok housing ‘scheme’ on the south west of the city. Kinning Park then would be considered a ‘slum’ and nowadays Pollok would be labelled a ‘scheme’ (which some might regard as just a notch above a ‘slum’) but as a boy, I never looked upon either area as a slum or a scheme and just saw it as another district in the city. When I lived in Pollok as a boy, I don’t remember anybody ever referring to it as that. It was a ‘district’ of Glasgow, like Govan, Kinning Park or Gorbals or Pollokshields - it didn’t matter to children where you came from. And for a little boy reared for nine years on grey tarmac and rubbish bins as his playground, the sudden sea of grass surrounding us when we moved from the old ‘slums’ to the green belt of Pollok was simply magical.

The social problems that arose from the ‘schemes’ did not materialize for some time, at least for me. They may have been there from the beginning but children are never aware of such things and in reality, we just loved it there. As you got older however, you became aware of the gang culture around you. That had been imported from the old ‘slum’ areas and had simply transferred to the new tenements as the influx of people accelerated. We were not not really bothered by it until you became about sixteen and then the gangs like the ‘Bundy’ would occasionally chase you, although, fortunately, in my particular experience, they never caught me. That culture, sadly, still exists into the 21st century and despite some progress in the inner cities of Scotland, schemes are still schemes.

Many people in Pollok began life in the ‘slum’ areas of Glasgow: Gorbals, Kinning Park, Townhead, Tradeston and Govan. And while all of these areas have changed dramatically over the years and some are unrecognizable from childhood, when you grow up in an area, you usually look back on it with fondness - I know I do. The characters from the past that we all remember so well, like the ragman, the coalman and the ‘society’ man have pretty much all disappeared now. In fact, the younger generation have probably never seen a ragman or a coalman and that fact makes you feel just a little bit old. Just the other day I was talking to someone about the days when the ‘electricity man’ used to come to read and empty the meter and we kids used to queue up to see what the ‘rebate’ was. Nowadays, with credit meters and powercards, there is no such thing as a ‘rebate’ but in the past that was an exciting occasion. Not that we kids ever saw anything of the ‘rebate’ in terms of cash, but we knew that there was a possibility of a ‘treat’ from some of it. It was simple things like that which kept you amused and yet still stick in your memory because it was perhaps the first inkling that we were not exactly millionaires in our little tenement homes. But you don’t need a lot of money to enjoy your childhood. What we lacked in money, was made up for in caring. Many who moved from the old tenements to the new schemes still live there; some through choice but most through circumstance. Some have grown upwardly mobile and moved out and away, sometimes to what many still regard as the ‘toff’ areas of the city but their memories linger on.

We hope you will enjoy the website and if you have an interest in local history, please contribute to it. Wherever you lived, your memories are very important and need to be recorded so that in the future, people will remember the way we were.

(PHOTO: School clinic, Netherplace Road, Pollok - now Mohsen Nursing Home)

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