In his book “Industrial Archaeology of Glasgow”, John Hume provided a gazetteer of industrial sites in the Glasgow area, including those at Dawsholm and Temple I have described previously (see this link, for example).
In Maryhill he also lists the site of a horse tram depot in Duart Street – this is the street off of Maryhill Road with The First and Last pub on the corner (its address is 3 Duart Street) and was formerly known as Watt Street.
The depot can be seen on this map from 1893:
Here is the equivalent modern view with the red pin showing the site:
Not only has the building been demolished, but a road has been built through the site (looking back to Maryhill Road):
Hume describes the building as follows:
“A three-storey 5 by 16 bay red brick building with white brick string courses and a Renaissance sandstone façade. There are three large round-headed doorways with glazed fanlights, and a central pediment.”
And I’m delighted to say, there is a photo, seen from across the green of the bowling club:
Here is a colourised version:
The building had four ‘lives’.
Life One: depot for the Glasgow Tramway and Omnibus Company
The building was commissioned by the Glasgow Tramway and Omnibus Company as a depot for their trams and horses.
The GT&O had the contract to operate trams across Glasgow from 1872, using track owned by Glasgow Corporation. At this time, all trams would have been pulled by teams of two or three horses.
The original tracks ran from St Georges Cross to Eglington Toll, but the network grew in all directions, including a line to the Burgh Buildings at the corner of Gairbraid Avenue, Maryhill, starting on 23rd May 1881. On 13th March 1882, the line was extended north to the bridge over the railway, by the end of Watt Street. This had been a terminus for horse-drawn buses previously, as we know from the newspaper account (Glasgow Herald 25th April 1879):
The difference between trams and buses was that the former ran on tracks and hence gave a smoother ride and reduced the work the hosrses had to do.
At this stage the trams probably came from the depot at Cowcaddens but at some point in the 1880s, GT&O decided to build a depot close to the Maryhill terminus and chose the site in Watt Street. Hume says this was circa 1883.
However the 1885 Valuation Roll (above) refers to the company as the owner of houses and a stable – none of which reflect the building at the start of this post. It’s possible the building dates from the later 1880s.
Referring to the 1893 map, at the start of this post you will notice the entire ground floor was dedicated to tram car tracks. The building had two additional floors and the horses had stables on the upper floors, reached by a ramp (not very clear from the map).
The contract to operate trams in Glasgow was up for renewal in 1894 so building a depot nearly 75% of the way through suggests confidence it would be renewed. This was misplaced, as the Corporation made clear they wanted to take over. The GT&O could not stop them but they refused to hand over depots, vehicles, horses and staff, opting to continue in business operating hose-drawn buses (very similar to trams but not on tracks, so not as smooth a ride and harder on the horses).
The Corporation set up a parallel organisation from scratch in time for 1894 – including a horse tram depot at Celtic Street in Maryhill, a hundred yards away. This became a home to trams powered by electricity and finally to buses and is much better known than Watt Street / Duart Street.
The competition between the G&TO’s horse buses and the Corporation’s horse trams was an unequal one as the Corporation ultimately had the pockets f the ratepayers to draw upon. By 1902 the G&TO was beaten.
Life Two: John Craig, paper maker
In the 1905 Valuation Roll, the GT&O was still listed as owning “Store and Offices” but it is in liquidation and the tenant was John Craig and Sons Limited, paper merchants:
They owned the nearby Dalsholm Paper Mill (covered in my post here). There’s no information about what the building was used for but it could have been some combination of a depot for vehicles, a store of raw materials (wood for pulping) and a store of finished product waiting to be distributed.
Given the date when GT&O went into liquidation, John Craig probably occupied the building for less than ten years.
Life Three: John Macdonald and Son, pneumatic engineers
This company began in 1895 and had a base at York Street in Glasgow (in modern terms, in the new financial district, just off Broomielaw). They also had an office in Newcastle. Their business was pneumatic engineering – the use of compressed air (or another inert gas) as a source of power.
(Yorkshire Post 2nd October 1905)
The advert below shows that the company was in Watt Street by 1911 (photo credit to Grace’s Guide, link here):
There is no mention of the York Street address so it seems the firm had moved from cramped city centre premises to the spacious former tram depot.
The company had business across the UK, as shown by its role in repairing the liner Mauretania, which was the world’s biggest ship until 1910 and the holder of the speed record for crossing the Atlantic:
(Leeds Mercury 15th December 1911)
The 1915 Valuation Roll adds the information that the proprietor was Thomas Macdonald of Beechwood, Bearsden:
Note that at the time there was another company called John Macdonald and Co, based in Pollokshaws who made water turbines and in the 1930s moved into pneumatic engineering – but apart from the name, they do not seem to have been connected.
The company appears to have been in steady business ntil the early 1920s when they had to defend a court case (The Scotsman 27th November 1924):
While I cannot find the outcome of this case, the firm seems to have left Maryhill soon after and relocated to Nitshill:
(from the Yorkshire Post 27th October 1934).
Life Four: paint manufacturing, initially for J&D Hamilton, then for International Paint (Scotland) Limited
In the 1930 Valuation Roll, the building seems to have been empty, although owned by Perry & Hope Limited of the Forth and Clyde Chemical Works, Nitshill.
Then in 1935, the occupant was J & D Hamilton, oil and paint manufacturers. While this was a local business initially, it was taken over by the International Paint and Compositions Company in 1929 and by this time was a subsidiary. International Paint began in Newcastle, initially making paints and varnishes for ships, but expanded to include offices in London and factories elsewhere in England. The acquisition of J & D Hamilton may have been part of a move to diversify the range into industrial paints, varnishes and lacquers.
By 1956 International Paint claimed to be the biggest paint organisation in the world with involvement in 36 companies and 23 factories in 16 countries (source).
It was under the name “International Paint (Scotland)” that the building was photographed by John Hume in 1968 and 1970 (link):
