Launch of Historic Glasgow 2010

by Lynsay Keough, photo Stuart Maxwell

Lord Provost Bob Winter (centre) with children of Knightswood Primary School in medieval costume. L to R: Annalise Gillan, Niamh Condron, Russell McGill and John Evans.

Rarely-seen images of Glasgow will go live on the web next week and an open day in the City Chambers will be part of the 5th Historic Glasgow event.
The new website is www.historicglasgow.com and will be housed within the See Glasgow website, www.seeglasgow.com.
Visitors at the open day on Tuesday 14 September will have a chance to see films of Glasgow, discover Govan’s history, see how the River Clyde’s role evolved through the ages, and get an understanding of Glasgow as a place of pilgrimage for people of different faiths.

There will also be a presentation on the Red Road flats by Mark O’Neill of Glasgow Museums and, for sports fans, “How Glaswegians played through Sport and Architecture” by Ged O’Brien.
The new website will include 200 images rarely seen by the public, a children’s page and, of particular importance, a teacher’s resource page to help them bring local history alive in the classroom.
Bailie Catherine McMaster, member of the Historic Glasgow working group,said: ‘The 2010 Historic Glasgow event will once again give everyone interested in exploring Glasgow’s history the opportunity to find out more on the subject. The new Historic Glasgow website will reveal even more of the hidden history of the city. I am sure everyone will be interested to see these rarely seen images of a changing Glasgow over the centuries. They give a fascinating insight into how this great city of ours has evolved.’

Historic Glasgow
Tuesday 14 September, 12.30 – 3.00pm
Glasgow City Chambers
Free admission

Hit the ground running and win a copy of Played In Glasgow

Football grounds, bowling greens, dog tracks, ‘doocots’, racecourses, blaes pitches, athletics tracks and swimming clubs; our city has had them all. Ged O’Brien’s book, Played in Glasgow, is a modestly-sized but mighty anthology that covers every sporting nook and cranny since Victorian times.
This is part of the superb Played In Britain series,  backed by Historic Scotland and English Heritage. The volume is subtitled ‘charting the heritage of a city at play’, and is a store of information for those of us who choose to look beyond the elegant stone facades, towering steel skeletons and pretty, manicured lawns.
Beyond Hampden Park, the home of Queen’s Park and Scotland’s international team, there are retrospectives on the homes of Rangers, Celtic, Partick Thistle, Clyde and the bullish ranks of Glasgow Junior football.
O’Brien also looks at the homes of the city’s many rugby teams and enjoys our rich bowling heritage, all recorded with excellent photography and detailed with the care of a first-class reference work.
Played In Glasgow has a section on swimming baths and clubs, from the elegant but forgotten municipal pools of the late 1800s to their 21st century heirs and the architectural wonders of the Western and the Arlington Baths clubs.
The book also strikes a nostalgic tone with a look at the city’s remaining red ash ‘blaes’ pitches and takes a flight into the world of the Glasgow pigeon fancier and their home-built doocots. Neither does it neglect cricketing heritage nor pass by the huge achievements of our many athletes over the years.
With one eye on Glasgow’s place as host for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, this book is a roadmap that shows us how far we have come, what we have won, what we have lost and hints at what could yet be.
A blend of social and cultural history and a treat with archive and modern photography, sometimes evocative and occasionally controversial, Played In Glasgow is an essential addition to the book collection of anyone who has an eye for their city’s sporting heritage.

LOCAL NEWS GLASGOW has three copies of Played in Glasgow to give away.
For a chance to win your own copy, just write and tell us which football teams play their home games at Hampden Park.

Send your answers by email to competitions@localnewsglasgow.co.uk. Please put ‘PLAYED IN GLASGOW COMPETITION’ in the header field and remember your name, address and a daytime telephone number. You can also enter by snail mail, please write with your answer to Played In Glasgow Competition, Local News Glasgow, YAM Publications, Third Floor, 142 West Nile Street G1 2RQ. Don’t forget all your contact details.

This competition closed at 9am on Monday, May 24.