This is a bird’s eye view of the Scottish Event Campus area in 2025:
The city centre of Glasgow is out of shot to the right. You can see “Scottish Event Campus” in blue in the centre of satellite photo. Conferences are held in the white roofed buildings. The Hydro to the right is a concert venue. Just south of that is the Armadillo, another music venue. To the right of the Hydro are hotels, the Moxy, the Campanile and the Courtyard by Marriott to the north and the Radisson Red closer to the river.
We can see the previous use of the land from this 1964 map:
The land the Exhibition Centre, the Hydro and the Armadillo stand on were previously one of the large docks to the west of the city centre. Originally to be called Stobhill Dock, it was named Queen’s Dock after Queen Victoria consented for her name to be used. However, she did not attend the opening ceremony.
Queens Dock was constructed in the 1870s, in response to the overcrowding of the existing quays on the Clyde near to the city. Demand for spaces had outstripped supply at Broomielaw and even with Anderston Quay and Lancefield Quay in the north and Windmillcroft Quay, Springfield Quay and General Terminus Quay and on the south bank, ships were having to tie-up two or more abreast. As the river was already quite narrow, this was becoming critical.
The Clyde Navigation Trust had been established in 1858, a partnership between ‘the Corporation’ (the city council), shipowners, the Chamber of Commerce, etc. It was funded by a levy on those using the river for commercial purposes. Its role was to manage the river for mutually beneficial commercial purposes. The Trust sponsored the necessary Parliamentary legislation to buy the land and agree its use.
Work on the new dock started in 1872 and took eight years to complete; the dock was officially opened (with work on-going) in August 1877. This was a time of transition from sailing ships to steam-powered ships, but the design seems to have stood the test of time and there is no record of problems.
Photo 1: This view is from May 1889 (photo credit Mitchell Library):
This is looking along the South Basin of Queens Dock with the North Rotunda just behind the camera. Note the sailing ships, the railway carriages, the iron tubes spilling over the quayside, and the crane.
Here is approximately the same view today, the Armadillo on the left and the Hydro on the right. The entrance to the conference has triangular roof just to the left of the Hydro:
Photo 2: Even by 1900, sailing ships still seem to have been common:
This is the North basin looking east – the distinctive ‘triangular’ structure in the background is the Verreville Pottery which took up most of the east side of Finnieston Street for nearly 100 years until its closure in 1918.
The truest comparison would be from the roof of the Exhibition Centre – this rather lame view is from about 20 metres to the left:
Photo 3: Of course, the days of commercial sailing ships were numbered as steam-powered ships took over (photo dated 1913, North Basin looking west):
Again, an exact comparison is difficult, but we have the short tower (circled in red in the photo below) for comparison – this is from the car park to the west of the conference centre, looking west:
Photo 4: A few years later (photo dated 1915), the sailing ships have gone:
And today – note this is essentially the ‘reverse view’ of the previous photo:
Not quite so attractive, perhaps, but the good news is the people who run the site take your safety (ambulances) and recycling (bins) seriously! The building sticking up centre-right is the Crowne Plaza Hotel and the conference centre is just to the left. The Armadillo is just peaking through the trees (not the sentence you would expect to read on a website about Glasgow).
Looking at the design of the dock, one obvious feature was that it added quayside space. There were two basins, separated by a central pier. The quayside had single-story sheds, suggesting goods were moved on quite quickly. There was also an outer basin for turning ships (as mentioned, the river was narrow) – this is now the car park to the west (rear) of the conference centre.
Other features of importance:
- short extensions to existing railway lines allowed better access for goods that could not be carried by a horse and cart – see Photo 1, for example
- a small ‘power station’ using hydraulic power to operate the dockside cranes and a swing bridge across the entrance – this is the short tower visible in Photo 3 and circled in red in the comparison photo
- a purpose-built mineral wharf on the north side of the north basin, which was mainly for loading coal onto ships
Photo 5: loading coal onto a ship – no subtlety here, pick up the waggon and tip it up (photo dated 1897):
This was a steam-powered crane of 25 tons. I think the next photo is of a different crane on the same quay but it shows how the railway line ran up to the crane, bringing the waggons to be unloaded using the frame at the end of the chain (dated 1894)
I also like this photo because we see some of the men who worked in the docks. Photo 6 shows men waiting for work on 11th July 1889 (I have no idea why the date is so precise):
Dock labour to load and unload ships began and ended when there was a job to be done – no work meant no pay, so men had to just wait. The location is given as Pointhouse Road, which is now the site of the Clydeside Expressway, immediately to the north of the conference centre and the Hydro and this suggests it was around midday from their shadows. By modern standards the men look to be aged 70 and above, which would mean they were born at the end of the Napoleonic wars.
I haven’t yet found a way to position this in the modern landscape but it was approximately on this rather featureless piece of road on the north side of the exhibition centre and Hydro:
Photo 7: The South basin was used for ships carrying general cargo (so it was not a specialist area for coal, live animals, etc):
And here is the approximate comparison:
Photo 8 is the reverse view of Photo 7:
We’re looking east, back towards the city centre. The river itself is out of shot to the right. The cantilever crane is on the right and we are looking along the south basin. In the centre is the pier dividing the two basins and to the left of the photo is the north basin, home of the coaling cranes and the waiting workers from the earlier photos. We can also see in the left foreground the turning basin for ships, considerably wider than the river at this point.
Here is the approximate comparison:
Note the ambulances and bins we saw in an earlier comparison photo are to the left of the camera.
Photos 9 and 10: The artist LS Lowry visited the dock in 1947 and produced at least two paintings in his highly distinctive style:
Lowry’s perspective seems to be at the side of the Campanile Hotel:
The docks started to decline as cargo was transported by container ships which were too big to navigate the river or to dock here; the small and medium-sized ships that had used the dock had had their day. As it became clear the ships were not coming back, the dock closed in 1969 and was filled in for the exhibition and conference centre to be built on the site in the mid-1980s.
This series of photos taken from similar viewpoints illustrates points in the life cycle:
Photo 11: Undated possibly around 1900
Photo 12: Undated, possibly late 1950s
Photo 13: 1962
Photo 14: Undated, probably 1970s:
Photo 15: 1978
And 2025
The Queen’s Dock had a life of about 92 years and must have touched thousands of lives in that time, from the dock workers and their families, to the sailors, the transport men (railways and cart drivers), the industries that supported shipping, the workers whose jobs depended on the exports and imports of goods and the people in other countries exporting and importing.