Category: History (Page 2 of 2)

Here’s a genealogical request:

“I have traced my family to Strathbungo Village. Any information on the Mclachlan’s from 1793: Barbara Mclachlan had three children Daniel (1822), Catherine (1824) and Barbara (1834). Also where can I get or buy photos or books about the village? Would appreciate any info. Helen”

Help us create a fascinating profile of the past 150 years in the Bungo!

Like researching family history, tracing the history of one’s house is a fascinating insight into the past. What sort of person lived in the houses and tenements of Strathbungo? Were they industrial workers, tradesmen or professionals? Did they work locally or commute into the commercial and industrial city centre? Did they have servants? And how many children?

The Strathbungo Society would like to encourage and assist a co-ordinated attempt to record all the past owners of our houses and illuminate the lives of the families that have lived here over the past 150 years.

The sources of this information are easy to find in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library. The most comprehensive and easily accessible are the annual Trade Directories, which list the householder at every address, including their occupation and often their place of work.

For more detailed information on families and servants, the ten-yearly census returns record the names, relationship to the head of the household, age, marital status, occupation and place of birth for each person in the house on the night the census was taken.

Voters’ rolls (or electoral registers) list the names of all those eligible to vote in local and general elections, and valuation rolls list the owners and the rateable value of commercial and domestic properties and the names and occupations of tenants.

All we need is a handful of enthusiastic volunteers who would be willing to spend a few hours a month in the peaceful atmosphere of the Mitchell Local History section recording these names and addresses.

If there is sufficient interest in this the Society will provide an Excel spreadsheet, or paper form, for you to fill in. We will set up a spreadsheet on our website on which the information can be displayed for all to see – a unique resource for every Strathbungo resident and local historian.

Extracts from articles by Lucy Bannerman

(The Herald, April & May 2004)

One Moray Place, a grade A-listed building and the former home of one of the country’s most famous architects, Alexander (Greek) Thomson, is [part] of a nineteenth-century terrace in Strathbungo on Glasgow’s south side.

Famed for his love of the horizontal lines and geometry of Greek architecture, Alexander Thomson moved into the first house of Moray Place in 1861. The terrace, which he designed a couple years previously for a local builder, was described by Henry Russell-Hitchcock, an American historian, as ‘with little question, the finest of all nineteenth-century terraces, both in design and execution, and one of the world’s most superb pieces of design based on Greek precedent.’
Thomson apparently modelled the terrace on the Stoa of Attalos II of Athens circa 150BC.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thomson, famed for his love of classical styles, paid particular attention to the design of his own home, decorating the property with his trademark oriental motifs and cornicing. As well as buildings, Thomson designed doors, stencils, furniture and textiles.