A plaque marking the site of the former St Rollox Chemical Works in Glasgow, alongside the grave memorial of its founder, Charles Tennant, in the nearby Necropolis. Inspired by a demonstration by James Watt, tennant founded the St Rollox works in 1797, along with the chemist Charles Macintosh (of the waterpoof overcoat fame), and and over the years it grew to become one of the largest chemical works on the world.

Cont./

#glasgow #glasgowhistory #plaque #memorial #strollox

Traditional pre-World War One red sandstone tenement on Springburn Road in the north of Glasgow left stranded by post-World War Two road development. While such developments made it easier for those living in surrounding suburbs to access the centre of Glasgow by car, they did little for the communities through which they passed.

#glasgow #strollox #possilpark #urbandevelopment #architecture #urbanplanning #tenement #glasgowtenements #architecturephotography

The entrance to Saint Rollox House in the Springburn area of Glasgow.

Built in 1887 using the classic polychromatic brick style of Glasgow's industrial buildings, it was once the office for the Saint Rollox Railway Works at a time when Springburn was the global centre for locomotive construction.

#glasgow #springburn #architecture #industrialarchitecture #glasgowbuildings #polychromaticbrick #strollox

New blog post:

https://newcleckitdominie.wordpress.com/2023/07/08/stalks-and-the-sublime/

This is an oblique spin-off from my talk on McCulloch's View: it's about Glasgow's two monster chimneys and the ephemeral tourist opportunity they provided.

#Glasgow #History #StRollox #PortDundas

Those who are familiar with Thomas Sulman’s Bird’s-Eye View of Glasgow (1864), or with George McCulloch’s even more fascinating View of Glasgow (1853) will have come across the comparisons that were often drawn between these panoramas and balloon views.

In fact, few of the people who bought these prints can have experienced a balloon view. Balloon ascents weren’t common in Victorian Glasgow, but on at least two occasions in the mid-nineteenth century intrepid locals could enjoy the next best thing: chimney tourism.

Tennant’s Stalk at the St Rollox chemical works was completed in July 1842. At 436.5 feet it was probably the tallest chimney, and among the tallest buildings, in the world. The engineer, Andrew Thomson, and the contractor, Dugald McIntyre, managed to complete it without a single casualty: an impressive achievement for the era.

As the last few courses went on, McIntyre started allowing curious visitors the chance to ride in the bucket that raised the bricks. A steam pulley drew them up the inside of the chimney, and after two and a half minutes they emerged onto a platform at the top.

The view was worth it, as the reporter for the Scottish Guardian reported:

Depositing yourself in the truck or bucket employed for raising the brick and mortar, a signal is given to the engineman, a wary and cautious person, who has charge of the pulley-rope, and knows the progress you are making by marks upon the line; and straightway you are ascended by the power of steam… Notwithstanding the height to which you rise, and the murkiness of the way, the ascent is accompanied with no unpleasant feeling — only hold on to the rope!

On nearing the summit, signals are exchanged by the workmen with the engineman, who slows the rope; daylight appears, the hatchway opens; and as the pulley is suspensed by iron bars stretching high atop, you begin to apprehend that it is barely possible the bucket and you may be swung a good many feet higher than the occasion requires, and left awkwardly dangling in mid-air; the the workmen and the engineman perfectly understand each other, and you arrive at a secure landing-place, with a parapet above the platform sufficient to banish all fears of toppling over. And then “circumspice!”

The view is beyond conception grand, stretching in all directions as far as the eye can reach. Thursday was slightly hazy, but from Tinto to Goatfell in Arran, hill and dale were spread out below like a map, and the view southward was still more extensive, shading away into the remote horizon. The Cathedral was diminished to the proportions of a neat little extension church; the Necropolis resembled a knoll intersected by ridges, and dotted with stones; the great city itself seemed reduced to a dense mass of masonry, huddled together in inextricable confusion, and curtained with smoke, from which might be seen to emerge here and there some humble church spire, “hiding its diminished head”, or some dingy brick-stalk of the lower orders, “palling its ineffectual fires”, before the monstre chimney of St Rollox.

Nothing is so likely to turn one’s head as looking sheer down over the parapet, or casting a glance, as the trap-door opens, at the yawning chasm you have yet to descend; and, taking all things into consideration, we are free to confess that it was extremely comfortable to find one’s self fairly afoot upon the level earth again.

Scottish Guardian, reprinted in The Witness, 2 July 1842

Not to be outdone, the Glasgow Herald reported that

… in another direction the gaze commands the outlines of Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth, and the shores of the “Kingdom of Fife”. Indeed a gentleman made the ascent on Friday last, who stated that a day or two preceding he had seen the rising summit of the chimney from the top of Arthur’s Seat.

Not the least interesting part of the view is the busy city mapped at the gazer’s feet, where its bustle and activity are seen, though its hum and din are unheard, and men and horses are reduced to Liliputian stature.

Glasgow Herald, reprinted in the Caledonian Mercury, 30 June 1842

Several hundred people made the ascent before the chimney was finally completed and attached to the flues, and tourism ceased. (I wonder whether George McCulloch, a lad of about fifteen, looked up to the Stalk and imagined…)

But that wasn’t to be the last opportunity. Tennant’s Stalk kept its crown only until 1859, when Townsend’s Stalk in Port Dundas — serving a works best known for the production of chemically enhanced manures — out-topped it at 454 feet.

The new stalk had an inauspicious start: when part-finished, it was damaged by high winds and had to be restored to vertical by a delicate and controversial sawing operation. Legal wranglings over the safety of Townsend’s Stalk were still going on when it was finished in October 1859; it was only a few weeks later and after many expert opinions that the Dean of Guild’s Court accepted that the repaired structure needn’t be torn down.

Nevertheless, once the flag appeared on top to announce its completion, the works were besieged by eager visitors, and the polis were summoned to keep order. On the first day alone, 700 visitors made the ascent, again by a steam pulley which raised them at 70 yards per minute to the platform at the top, whence

The lower part of Loch Lomond is visible; Dumbarton and Greenock, and the windings of the (germain)-silvery Clyde are not too remote to be seen distinctly; Bute and the lofty peaks of Arran can be caught a glimpse of; and the aristocratic Edinburgh cannot keep out of view. Looking nearer home, Glasgow lies beneath, all the ramifications and circumbendibuses of its streets and suburbs forming a bird’s-eye map, and its tall spires, and chimneys less pretentious than this one, hiding their diminished heads under the begrimed hood of smoke and steam which hangs over the city, many feet below the top of the new stalk.

North British Daily Mail, reprinted in the North British Agricultist, 26 October 1859

(I wonder whether McCulloch was in the mind of the writer as he described that “bird’s eye-map”.)

Night ascents were permitted too, calling forth further expressions of awe from the same writer:

At night the view from the chimney is really grand; owing to the purity of the atmosphere the stars appear with a brilliancy not visible to gazers from the grovelling earth; the hundred furnaces of the city vomit forth flames on every side; the course of the streets is clearly traceable by the lamps, which appear like narrow twinkling chains of fire; and looking farther off, one sees the lurid light of the numerous furnaces which are at work for many miles around.

(Some of the luridness of those furnaces seems to have rubbed off on the prose.)

Even a few ladies made the trip, though the crinolines of the day proved poorly adapted for the descent: they had to tie their dresses round their ankles to prevent themselves snagging on scaffolding or being turned over like shuttlecocks.

Although the chimney ascents were a short-lived phenomenon, they were part of a broader pattern of industrial sight-seeing. Well-bred tourists could expect to be admitted to works upon polite request, and John Willox’s Glasgow Tourist and Itinerary (1850) devotes three pages to Dixon’s Blazes and five to the foundries of Lancefield Quay:

[T]he traveller up the north margin of the Clyde may be said to enter upon a town of engineering manufactures of exhaustless ingenuity, scarce comprehensible magnitude, and bewildering complexity; vast assemblages of low-roofed edifices, pierced by the flickering points of countless chimneys, of varied height and in every variety of form, continually pouring out dense clouds of rolling black smoke, or roaring torrents of bright lambent flame, strike the eye with startling frequency and force, while the ear is stunningly assailed by the clangours of a thousand ceaselessly plied hammers, sounding in every succession of tone, from the grave thunder of the monotonous tilt, to the sharp clang of the boilermaker’s rivet driving; the diapason being filled up by the never-failing roar of steam engines, the groaning tumult of stupendous machinery, and the unslackening cadence of the thousand trucks and other conveyances which throng this region, teeming with labours of magnitude, power, and importance, compared to which the fabled workings of the antique Cyclops were but the pastime of a giddy youth, as measured by the subduing achievements of a Hercules.

I’m not sure when this vision of the industrial sublime finally faded from popular consciousness. It was a Romantic fantasy, but no more so that the vision that looked at the depopulated clachans of the Gàidhealtachd and saw unspoiled wilderness there…

A final tantalising thought: I find it very hard to believe that, of over a thousand visitors, none took a sketchbook up. By 1842, and certainly by 1859, even photography would have been a possibility. I’ve yet to see anything that might be a view from one of Glasgow’s monster chimneys, but I’m keeping my eyes open. Do let me know if you spot a possible candidate, please.

Notes

As usual, much of this is drawn from contemporary newspaper articles via the British Newspaper Archive.

For more on the Stalks see ahaufstop’s blog, https://ahaufstop.blogspot.com/2021/07/when-glasgow-had-tallest-chimneys-in.html, and sequels.

A modern skyline generator suggests that one couldn’t in fact see Edinburgh (not even Arthur’s Seat) from the top of Tennant’s Stalk, though it’s possible the famous reek would have been visible on the horizon.

Finally, Edwin Morgan features the story of the ascents in his poem on John Tennant, which is worth a read.

https://newcleckitdominie.wordpress.com/2023/07/08/stalks-and-the-sublime/

#chimneys #StRollox #TennantSStalk #tourism #TownsendSStalk