Children playing near miners' cottages in the North Row, Knightswood Rows, c 1920s.
This photograph was taken by a member of Glasgow Corporation's Sanitary Department. Knightswood had originally been a mining area. When Hugh MacDonald went there in the 1850s he wrote: "Red Town... is the name given to several ranges of colliers’ houses, which are quite as plain, unattractive, and uncomfortable in appearance, as such edifices generally are. We are rather surprised, however, with one adjunct to the Red Town, namely, an extensive and somewhat elegant school... We were gratified to learn, from a little fair-haired girl, whom we overtook with a couple of pitchers, returning from the well, that there were "a gey wheen o’ scholars in the schule baith on ilka days and Sundays."
North Knightswood became part of Glasgow in 1912 and South Knightswood in 1926. In the 1920s Glasgow Corporation purchased land there and built Glasgow's largest housing scheme.
Reference: 670.84.124
Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Museums
Keywords:
children, Knightswood Rows, miners' houses, miners' rows, Red Town, Sanitary Department