Once again, a very interesting video, Eddy. It was just over 50 years ago that my father (a Glaswegian who left his home city for Australia as a 17 year old in 1950) took his family to Glasgow (including me, as a 14 year old boy). We stayed with my grandmother in one of the high-rise flats at Sighthill (Pinkston Drive). My father told us that the concrete cooling tower was a porridge pot and was used to feed the people of Glasgow. Best wishes from Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺
Great stuff Ed!. Most interesting video, ref the rusty bridge, things arent made to last these days. Look forward to the next one, & enjoy your music also! Many thanks😊👍
For those who are unaware, the final stretch of The Monklands Canal still exists the other side of the M73 and continues on to almost Chapelhall near Airdrie. It’s definitely worth walking along and is stocked with coarse fish for anglers. Around the time of the M8 construction, plans were in place to build the M81 motorway along the course of the Forth and Clyde Canal out to Canniesburn Toll. Great public outcry from the people of Glasgow’s west end stopped it in its tracks and the project was scrapped. Thank goodness in my opinion. If only the same could have been done for the people of the east end of Glasgow. Both the Monklands and Forth and Clyde Canals were owned by private companies, so I think the ownership may be the clue to solving to whom owned which stretch and therefore its name thereafter. PS: Thanks for the excellent video.
I lived in Sighthill, the school too us all up the Cuddies to watch the power station be demolished. They put a wee stone circle at the footbridge into Townhead to commemorate it. I remember being all proud, cos we were in the paper.
Hard to imagine all that heavy industry that once was don't know if I would be keen on a stand up paddle board on certain parts of the canal 😂another great documented video Ed
Very interesting video. I had not heard of the Pinkston tower but have probably breathed in its soot. My Glasgow secondary school in the 1960s had a science experiment ongoing on a bit of flat roofing. It was collecting soot particles to illustrate how much soot a person was breathing in per year. Glasgow's air is much clearer now.
That was really interesting and enjoyable. Thanks once again eddie. I must confess i was waiting to see what you had brought for a snack but you were just building up your appetite. Congratulations on the success of your work and thanks again. Cheers from down under.
really enjoyed that,, thanks Eddy, oh oh! the subscribers are still going up, I think the parrot needs to get on top of the situation . Or is he wondering what is going on also?
Fantastic film Ed. Always wondered where that tower actually was located. Under the junction of Royston Rd and Castle St a part of the Monkland canal stone work can still be seen where the water was is now a walking underpass. I always thought and i have a fuzzy memory of seeing it on a programme that the canals met in front of the area of what is Baird St Police Office..but who knows !!
Thanks Steven. I'll need to check out the Castle Street/Royston Road area - that is one serious spaghetti junction of roads. I think you're not far off with the police station location.
My understanding was that the "cut of junction" joined the Monkland Canal from its Townhead basin terminal by Glebe Street/ Parliamentary Road to the Forth & Clyde at Port Dundas. It was a shared channel rather than belonging to one ore other of the canals. Obviously open to further information. The water of the Monkland still runs under the M8 & acts as a feeder to the F&C. I'd flood the motorway tomorrow& re-instate the canal. My childhood playground.
Usually with old power station sites the electrical switchyard is a legacy and still is used for bringing power in from the national grid. I suspect the pylon line behind you at Spiers Wharf would be that Grid connection
The 1st radio broadcasts from BBC Scotland used the chimneys of the Pinkston power station to hold up the aerials. The original studios were on Bath St and they used phone lines to get the signal up to the transmitter in Pinkston
Great video Ed, one thing that i always think of is how quiet things must have been back then, away from the workplaces of course. Edit: also, did you know Burke and Hare worked on the Forth to Clyde Canal, something i learned from wikipedia recently.
Stinky Ocean it was called, rumour there was a Animal Slaughter House for many years and the remains of manyf thousands of Animals buried there and when there was heavy rain it forced the stinky smell out.
I love industrial history and would give my life to own a time machine for a month starting with my home town of Greenock where I remember in 1974 the last time the miles of shipyards had a ship being built on every slipway. The chemical plant at Pinkston/St Rollox was the largest in the world and every time you enter the Queen Street tunnel by train you get a smell of rotten eggs from the contaminated carcinogenic land that they obviously then built thousands of council houses on 🤦♂Under Castle Street at the junction of Baird Street/Royston Road there's an interesting section of the Monklands canal still their minus the water.
Hi Ed, the flour mills your map shows next to the canal, I always thought they were whisky warehouses. Probably because there were distilleries just roon the corner.
Hi Colin. Yes, I thought the same. I suspect they were used for a variety of things, and probably did store whisky for a while. But it's a long row of different buildings of varying age, and certainly the map reveals one use.
I think the steel used for the bridge at the end of your video was infused with a copper alloy which protects the steel which only surface rusts. This procedure has been used extensively here in Canada and requires little maintenance although I have to admit it does not look great.
Hi Tom. Yeh, I was only kidding about the bridge rust - it's meant to be like that. Just my warped sense of humour. I think the rust definitely has a nice broon colour.
According to staff at BWB Spiers Wharf (in 1962), the Glasgow Branch ended here. The Monkland then continued as a separately funded construction, and the cooling tower took water from the canal to help evaporation. It isn’t the Forth & Clyde, that runs from Bowling to Grangemouth only. Glasgow Merchants were annoyed the canal would miss them out, so the short Glasgow Branch assuaged their annoyance - this too was seperately funded. It was coal that paid for the Monkland, serving both mining and steel works at AIRDRIE and Coatbridge. The Riddrie Incline was famous at the time as water levels initially were too creat, and boats were dry-hauled to the next stage (at Townhead).
Thanks Raymond. I've included a quote from the 1794 Statistical Account in the video description. It's very interesting, more so as it was written at the very time the canals were built and joined. It does appear to suggest that the canal branch running from Stockingfield actually only went as far as Hamilton Hill, which would mean that Spiers Wharf and Port Dundas formed part of the new cut linking it with the Monklands Canal.
@@EdExploresScotland The Stockinfield realignment added to the length of the Glasgow Branch but we rarely think about it these days. This was because the trams electrification meant the road crossings / aqueducts had to be rebuilt at a high cost - and all of similar design (at Maryhill Road (F&C), Bilsland Drive and Possil Road (Glasgow Branch). This concluded the final construction phase and start of the managed decline. Incidentally, the Kelvin Aqueduct almost bankrupted the company as it was the most expensive engineering item ever devised on the route. For a future vid - you can still walk much of the old Monkland Canal from AIRDRIE west to Easterhouse before the M8 obliterates it.
You mean the BLACKHILL incline. Was one of only two double stairway locks in the UK & also had a railway from the lowest basin to the graving dock at the top of the hill.
Lots of things about the past just doesn’t add up, for eg. The speed in which they installed the grids for the trams, the electrification done in a short period of time, then just like that in 1962 they got rid. None of it makes sense.
Hallo there. I suspect I'm just confused by Peter Fleming's 1807 map which names a part of the canal west of where Pinkston Water Sports is, below Hundred Acre Hill, as the Monklands Canal, when it probably shouldn't be. maps.nls.uk/view/74400939 James Cleland's 1832 map clearly mentions the Cut of Junction south-east of where Pinkston Water Sports is, below Broom Hill. maps.nls.uk/view/74400937 Allan & Ferguson's 1839 map mentions the 'Cut of Junction Canal' at two locations: right at the basin where Pinkston Water Sports is now, and at the same location as given in Cleland's 1832 map. maps.nls.uk/view/216443711 So we can clearly see where the Cut of Junction was. My main question is where exactly did it start and end? It presumably joined both ends of the Monklands and F&C canals? Did it run from the Port Dundas basin to the small basin close to Castle Street? The 1794 Statistical Account appears to further confuse the issue by saying that the original canal branch off the main F&C Canal from Stockingfield Junction only ran to Hamilton Hill (well short of Port Dundas), and that this was only extended to Port Dundas and beyond as part of the Cut of Junction linking it to the Monklands Canal. Any information clarifiying all this would be most welcome.
Although I have lived in Taiwan for 40 years, I still remember the sight of the Pinkston cooling tower from the train descending Cowlairs bank as I commuted from Kirkintilloch to Queen St. and on to the University in the 1960s. I also rode on the last tram of the final procession u 1962.
I have an interest in walking from Bath to London along the Kennet and Avon canals. Have you done anything about this walk? I know it is not in Scotland, but it would be helpful.
I'm afraid I know nothing about that walk, but a quick search online will bring up any number of bits of info. The following link, for example, gives some info: www.ramblesandbrambles.co.uk/kennet--avon-canal-walk.html
Another good educational video Ed, you're the new fife robertson
Once again, a very interesting video, Eddy. It was just over 50 years ago that my father (a Glaswegian who left his home city for Australia as a 17 year old in 1950) took his family to Glasgow (including me, as a 14 year old boy). We stayed with my grandmother in one of the high-rise flats at Sighthill (Pinkston Drive). My father told us that the concrete cooling tower was a porridge pot and was used to feed the people of Glasgow. Best wishes from Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺
Cheers Ken. It's a lovely story; if only it were true. Porridge for all!
Eddy, keep walking, keep talking and keep exploring, you are doing a great service to a tired auld city.🤠
Cheers Edward.
So much history in 21 minutes and 13 seconds 😊 once again excellent👍
Thank you.
Thanks for another educational video, I really enjoy them
Thank you.
Great stuff Ed!. Most interesting video, ref the rusty bridge, things arent made to last these days. Look forward to the next one, & enjoy your music also! Many thanks😊👍
Cheers. I was only joking about the bridge. It's meant to be rusty.
For those who are unaware, the final stretch of The Monklands Canal still exists the other side of the M73 and continues on to almost Chapelhall near Airdrie. It’s definitely worth walking along and is stocked with coarse fish for anglers.
Around the time of the M8 construction, plans were in place to build the M81 motorway along the course of the Forth and Clyde Canal out to Canniesburn Toll. Great public outcry from the people of Glasgow’s west end stopped it in its tracks and the project was scrapped. Thank goodness in my opinion. If only the same could have been done for the people of the east end of Glasgow.
Both the Monklands and Forth and Clyde Canals were owned by private companies, so I think the ownership may be the clue to solving to whom owned which stretch and therefore its name thereafter.
PS: Thanks for the excellent video.
Thanks Robert.
Thanks Nice one Ed
Many thanks Peter.
Hi Ed, thoroughly enjoyed your video, so informative 🏴 Thought the Crane was an ornament until it moved.😂
Thanks 👍
These talks are so interesting. Thank you from Idaho, USA.
Thanks Mary. All the best to Idaho.
Very interesting video Ed. Your curiosity yields some really great things. Keep on wondering and walking.
Cheers.
Lynn in Naples. 😎
Cheers Lynn. All the best.
I lived in Sighthill, the school too us all up the Cuddies to watch the power station be demolished.
They put a wee stone circle at the footbridge into Townhead to commemorate it.
I remember being all proud, cos we were in the paper.
I don't know why but I have a strange fascination with that tower, love seeing old pictures of it, thanks for the video 🙌
Loved the ramble, had a wee laugh, shades..I say shades of the gobbledygook from Stanley Unwin.
A smile is better than a frown.
Atb
Another interesting and excellent video.
Another good one, ED.
Cheers Charles.
Thanks Ed. From the Windsor Bar, Established 1883, Dundalk, Ireland. Kind regards Niall O'Connell Eire
Cheers Niall. 👍
I always enjoy your history lessons Ed. Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work.
Cheers Bryce.
Did you know that the new bridge your on at the end of your video is nicknamed “The Jobbie Bridge” ?! 😂😂😂
Good video Ed 👌🏼
Oh no. I should have suspected as much. Glaswegians are very disrespectful of their bridges.
Hard to imagine all that heavy industry that once was don't know if I would be keen on a stand up paddle board on certain parts of the canal 😂another great documented video Ed
Hi Robert. Yes, there were some folk paddle-boarding near the water sports centre.
Loved that..Thank you .
Fascinating ed ❤
Very interesting video. I had not heard of the Pinkston tower but have probably breathed in its soot. My Glasgow secondary school in the 1960s had a science experiment ongoing on a bit of flat roofing. It was collecting soot particles to illustrate how much soot a person was breathing in per year. Glasgow's air is much clearer now.
That was really interesting and enjoyable. Thanks once again eddie. I must confess i was waiting to see what you had brought for a snack but you were just building up your appetite. Congratulations on the success of your work and thanks again. Cheers from down under.
Thanks Thomas. I generally lose my appetite when there's so much wondering to be done.
really enjoyed that,, thanks Eddy,
oh oh! the subscribers are still going up, I think the parrot needs to get on top of the situation .
Or is he wondering what is going on also?
Many thanks. Yes, the parrot's an even bigger wonderer than me.
Well done to the Wondering Wanderer👍🤓
Fantastic film Ed. Always wondered where that tower actually was located. Under the junction of Royston Rd and Castle St a part of the Monkland canal stone work can still be seen where the water was is now a walking underpass. I always thought and i have a fuzzy memory of seeing it on a programme that the canals met in front of the area of what is Baird St Police Office..but who knows !!
Thanks Steven. I'll need to check out the Castle Street/Royston Road area - that is one serious spaghetti junction of roads. I think you're not far off with the police station location.
My understanding was that the "cut of junction" joined the Monkland Canal from its Townhead basin terminal by Glebe Street/ Parliamentary Road to the Forth & Clyde at Port Dundas. It was a shared channel rather than belonging to one ore other of the canals. Obviously open to further information. The water of the Monkland still runs under the M8 & acts as a feeder to the F&C. I'd flood the motorway tomorrow& re-instate the canal. My childhood playground.
I enjoy your rambling and wondering. Kinda go hand in hand.
Will be back in Scotland Tuesday to do some rambling and wondering myself. Cheers.
Have a great wonder.
The new bridge is built with weathering steel, it's suppose to look that way.
I know. I was just kidding.
Usually with old power station sites the electrical switchyard is a legacy and still is used for bringing power in from the national grid. I suspect the pylon line behind you at Spiers Wharf would be that Grid connection
The 1st radio broadcasts from BBC Scotland used the chimneys of the Pinkston power station to hold up the aerials. The original studios were on Bath St and they used phone lines to get the signal up to the transmitter in Pinkston
Great video Ed, one thing that i always think of is how quiet things must have been back then, away from the workplaces of course.
Edit: also, did you know Burke and Hare worked on the Forth to Clyde Canal, something i learned from wikipedia recently.
Thanks Stuart. Many things to learn.
Sighthill certainly looks different to how I remember it. My gran lived on Pinkston Drive, the stench from that place filled the air for years after.
Stinky Ocean it was called, rumour there was a Animal Slaughter House for many years and the remains of manyf thousands of Animals buried there and when there was heavy rain it forced the stinky smell out.
I love industrial history and would give my life to own a time machine for a month starting with my home town of Greenock where I remember in 1974 the last time the miles of shipyards had a ship being built on every slipway. The chemical plant at Pinkston/St Rollox was the largest in the world and every time you enter the Queen Street tunnel by train you get a smell of rotten eggs from the contaminated carcinogenic land that they obviously then built thousands of council houses on 🤦♂Under Castle Street at the junction of Baird Street/Royston Road there's an interesting section of the Monklands canal still their minus the water.
Cheers Douglas. As a child, I shared my wondering between wondering what was out there in space, and how I too might travel back in time.
@@EdExploresScotland 👍👍
Hi Ed, the flour mills your map shows next to the canal, I always thought they were whisky warehouses. Probably because there were distilleries just roon the corner.
Hi Colin. Yes, I thought the same. I suspect they were used for a variety of things, and probably did store whisky for a while. But it's a long row of different buildings of varying age, and certainly the map reveals one use.
Keep wandering Ed, and keep wondering.
So much to wonder about, and so little time to do it.
I think the steel used for the bridge at the end of your video was infused with a copper alloy which protects the steel which only surface rusts. This procedure has been used extensively here in Canada and requires little maintenance although I have to admit it does not look great.
Hi Tom. Yeh, I was only kidding about the bridge rust - it's meant to be like that. Just my warped sense of humour. I think the rust definitely has a nice broon colour.
According to staff at BWB Spiers Wharf (in 1962), the Glasgow Branch ended here. The Monkland then continued as a separately funded construction, and the cooling tower took water from the canal to help evaporation. It isn’t the Forth & Clyde, that runs from Bowling to Grangemouth only. Glasgow Merchants were annoyed the canal would miss them out, so the short Glasgow Branch assuaged their annoyance - this too was seperately funded. It was coal that paid for the Monkland, serving both mining and steel works at AIRDRIE and Coatbridge. The Riddrie Incline was famous at the time as water levels initially were too creat, and boats were dry-hauled to the next stage (at Townhead).
Thanks Raymond. I've included a quote from the 1794 Statistical Account in the video description. It's very interesting, more so as it was written at the very time the canals were built and joined. It does appear to suggest that the canal branch running from Stockingfield actually only went as far as Hamilton Hill, which would mean that Spiers Wharf and Port Dundas formed part of the new cut linking it with the Monklands Canal.
@@EdExploresScotland The Stockinfield realignment added to the length of the Glasgow Branch but we rarely think about it these days. This was because the trams electrification meant the road crossings / aqueducts had to be rebuilt at a high cost - and all of similar design (at Maryhill Road (F&C), Bilsland Drive and Possil Road (Glasgow Branch). This concluded the final construction phase and start of the managed decline. Incidentally, the Kelvin Aqueduct almost bankrupted the company as it was the most expensive engineering item ever devised on the route. For a future vid - you can still walk much of the old Monkland Canal from AIRDRIE west to Easterhouse before the M8 obliterates it.
You mean the BLACKHILL incline. Was one of only two double stairway locks in the UK & also had a railway from the lowest basin to the graving dock at the top of the hill.
Lots of things about the past just doesn’t add up, for eg. The speed in which they installed the grids for the trams, the electrification done in a short period of time, then just like that in 1962 they got rid. None of it makes sense.
Hi Ed I work for Scottish Canals and can help you where the cut of junction was and where the Monklands and Forth & Clyde joined
Hallo there. I suspect I'm just confused by Peter Fleming's 1807 map which names a part of the canal west of where Pinkston Water Sports is, below Hundred Acre Hill, as the Monklands Canal, when it probably shouldn't be.
maps.nls.uk/view/74400939
James Cleland's 1832 map clearly mentions the Cut of Junction south-east of where Pinkston Water Sports is, below Broom Hill.
maps.nls.uk/view/74400937
Allan & Ferguson's 1839 map mentions the 'Cut of Junction Canal' at two locations: right at the basin where Pinkston Water Sports is now, and at the same location as given in Cleland's 1832 map.
maps.nls.uk/view/216443711
So we can clearly see where the Cut of Junction was. My main question is where exactly did it start and end? It presumably joined both ends of the Monklands and F&C canals? Did it run from the Port Dundas basin to the small basin close to Castle Street?
The 1794 Statistical Account appears to further confuse the issue by saying that the original canal branch off the main F&C Canal from Stockingfield Junction only ran to Hamilton Hill (well short of Port Dundas), and that this was only extended to Port Dundas and beyond as part of the Cut of Junction linking it to the Monklands Canal.
Any information clarifiying all this would be most welcome.
Although I have lived in Taiwan for 40 years, I still remember the sight of the Pinkston cooling tower from the train descending Cowlairs bank as I commuted from Kirkintilloch to Queen St. and on to the University in the 1960s. I also rode on the last tram of the final procession u 1962.
I have an interest in walking from Bath to London along the Kennet and Avon canals. Have you done anything about this walk? I know it is not in Scotland, but it would be helpful.
I'm afraid I know nothing about that walk, but a quick search online will bring up any number of bits of info. The following link, for example, gives some info:
www.ramblesandbrambles.co.uk/kennet--avon-canal-walk.html
@@EdExploresScotland thank you so much!
The metal on the new bridge is the metal that was salvaged from the cooling tower of pinkston electric
What ? the bridge was built nearly 40 years after demolition?
Did I miss the pie or is he aff his scragg?
It's hard to eat when there's so much wondering to be done.
Ed,the bridge was rusty when it put up
I know John. I was just kidding. Old guy humour.
@@EdExploresScotland Just checking Ed lol