This article is a semi-fictionalized attempt to track one Govanhill building over time. None of the people in this story are the real inhabitants of 80 Bankhall street; characters have been created around what would have been ‘typical’ in Govanhill at the time.

By Liz Ely, Govanhill Housing Association

80 Bankhall Street was built after 1880, but before 1910, constructed from red sandstone, likely to have been brought in by rail from quarries in Ayrshire and Dumfries. Before the railways connected up Glasgow with these quarries, tenements were constructed with blonde sandstone from more local Bishopbriggs and Giffnock quarries.

The tenement is four stories high and contained 12 dwellings at the turn of the century. Each floor had three apartments, which were ‘room and kitchen’ flats. Most tenements in Govanhill were built after legislation which required all dwellings to have a minimum of two rooms and a shared toilet. This means that 80 Bankhall Street is unlikely to have contained any of the infamous one room, or ‘single end’ flats that were common in other parts of Glasgow.

A single-end is a one room apartment, where a family would all live in the kitchen, with a wooden table in its centre, a coal fired range and skillet, and a Belfast sink.

Susan and Patrick McFadden moved to Govanhill from Donegal at the end of the 19th century. They attended mass at the newly opened Holy Cross Church on Dixon Avenue with their family. This mass was so popular that sometimes tickets were required to control the number of attendees.

Back home, cooking would have taken place on a coal-fired range with a cast iron skillet, which also provided heat for Susan, Patrick, and their young son, Tadhg.

At night, the family slept in recess beds in either the parlour or the kitchen, with a platform bed for Patrick and Susan and a truckle (pull out) bed below for Tadhg. When their second child Nuala was born, they might have built a shelf on which to place the baby and allow for ease of feeding during the night – a move that would horrify modern day health visitors.

The toilet, or ‘cludgie’ was on the stairwell and shared with the other families. Washing would have taken place in either a tin bath, or at the nearby Govanhill Baths. Laundry would have been done at the local wash house or ‘steamie.’

By the 1920s, the McFaddens had new neighbours, the Bermans, who had moved to Govanhill from Poland, seeking a better life. The Bermans installed a mezuzah, a small case affixed to the doorframe of which contains a tiny scroll of parchment inscribed with a prayer. Whenever they passed through the door, they would touch the mezuzah and kiss the fingers that touched it.

The Bermans may have paid the now teenage Tadgh McFadden as a ‘Shabbas goy,’ to perform services which are religiously forbidden to Jewish people on that day, such as extinguishing lighted candles and lamps on Friday night and making a fire in the oven on Sabbath mornings during the winter.

By the 1940s, the gas lighting in 80 Bankhall Street was replaced with light bulbs. This brought with it new possibilities for decor. In the gas era, most tenement walls were painted brown or other dark colours to mask stains from the coal fires and gas lighting.

An era of ‘slum clearance’ followed the second world war in Glasgow, and many tenements similar to 80 Bankhall Street were demolished; their inhabitants rehoused on the fringes of the city in new developments in places like Castlemilk, or in new towns like Cumbernauld and East Kilbride.

Another major change to Govanhill at this time was the arrival of people from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In the 1950s, the Sodhis moved into 80 Bankhall Street. As with many families from India and Pakistan, the family came to the UK with clothing in suitcases to sell around Glasgow and were eventually able to open their own store.

As 80 Bankhall Street was nearing its 70th anniversary it was starting to show signs of age, with internal structural issues and rot while the red sandstone was stained black through years of exposure to pollution from heavy industry.

On 15 January 1968, the Sohdis experienced a generation-defining storm when ‘Hurricane Low Q’ blew its way through the city, killing nine people and leaving 700 more homeless. 80 Bankhall Street survived the storm. However, this event shone a light on the state of the city’s tenements and was a factor in policy changes that would secure the future of the building.

The 1974 Housing Act brought with it funding for tenement improvements, and groups of residents came together across the city to ‘stop the bulldozers’ and preserve and improve tenements, and the communities around them.

Govanhill Housing Association was formed from this movement and later purchased all 12 properties in 80 Bankhall Street.

At this time, many properties in Govanhill were empty. An article in the 1981–82 Govanhill Housing Association annual report states ‘There can hardly be anyone in Govanhill who is not worried at the number of empty houses around’.

Upon acquiring the property, Govanhill Housing Association made significant changes to the tenement, they amalgamated four flats, bringing the total number of apartments within the block down from twelve to ten. The toilets in half landings were brought inside the middle flats, and the front of the building was sandblasted, removing decades of soot, vastly improving the outer appearance of the tenement.

This created larger properties on the ground and top floor, more suitable for families. In 1981, 80 Bankhall Street was just one of 179 properties that had been improved by the Association.

The more recent changes to 80 Bankhall Street, though vital, are far less drastic. These include rainwater and guttering replacement (2000), installation of a door entry system (2010), window replacements (2013) kitchen replacements (2002 and then as and when) and central heating replacements (1997 and then as required).

Sometime around the turn of this century, 80 Bankhall Street celebrated its 100th birthday. The fact that this tenement survived its first 100 years is the result of many coincidental factors, as well as is the case with any long life, a great deal of luck.

It was luck that 80 Bankhall Street survived the second world war, positioned far enough away from munitions factories to escape German bombs, although nearby Boyd Street sustained some damage.

During the 1950s and 60s, 80 Bankhall street was just far enough away from the city centre not to be ‘top of the list’ for the encroaching bulldozers (unlike tenements in nearby Gorbals). It was also in the right place at the right time to be purchased by Govanhill Housing Association who had the will and appropriate funding to invest in the property.

As for the occupants of 80 Bankhall Street, it is likely that they have followed the pattern of Govanhill itself, in all its diversity – providing shelter for over a century both to people born in Scotland, and those who arrived into this multicultural neighbourhood to make a home.