Скачать или смотреть SPRINGBURN - From Riches to Rags

In Springburn they once built one quarter of all the steam locomotives in the world. Today, Springburn is one of the most deprived areas in the UK.
What happened?

In this video we chart the growth of Springburn, from a place that did not exist before the middle of the 19th century to a thriving mecca of heavy industry that sat at the very heart of the world's railway industry.

A number of factors led to its fall from grace. It lost all its heavy industry, for one. They don't make trains in Springburn any more. But it wasn't just that. In the 1980s a major road realignment scheme saw the town decimated, with whole streets, along with tenements, shop, pubs and churches raised to the ground. The result was a Springburn that today is unrecognisable from its former heyday.

The four main locomotive builders were the Cowlairs Works, the St. Rollox Works, the Hydepark Works and the Atlas Works. There were other industries, but these were the main ones concerned with train building.

We visit the location of the Cowlairs Works, and the Hydepark Works, and find the exact location where a famous photograph was taken. It shows a locomotive emerging from the main gate of the Hydepark Works in Ayr Street, and making its way along Vulcan Steet, past the library and old lodge, to make its way through the streets of Glasgow and on to the docks for export somewhere in the world. Cranes like Glasgow's Finnieston Crane - which still stands - lifted these huge metal beasts aloft and onto ships bound for all over the world.

At the old location of Springburn Cross we stand awhile and wonder where it all went wrong. They moved the drinking fountain to the new shopping centre. And the existing tenements that used to have shops at ground level no longer have shops, so folk probably visit the shopping centre or Tesco, the latter which sits in the grounds of the old St Rollox Works where they once built trains.

Along the way we search longingly for lost pubs, but find to our disappointment that, like most things in Springburn, their remains lie buried under that '80s road realignment and are nowhere to be found. Even churches were bulldozed to make way for all those new roads. But it was probably when they tore down Springburn Public Halls that the end was reached. Springburn was no more.

One of the many significant losses in the area was the Cowlairs Railway Village, built in a baronial style in the 1860s and demolished in 1967. The word 'scandal' does not even come close.

Then there's Springburn Park, gifted to the people of Springburn by James Reid, one-time partner in the Hydepark Locomotive Works. The park is now an unkept disgrace. The once magnificent Winter Garden in the park sits lost and forlorn, a huge rusting skeletal beast dwarfed by multi-storey housing that is typically bland and uninteresting in appearance.

Springburn was quite simply raised to the ground in the biggest act of architectural vandalism this country has ever witnessed. It wasn't just the loss of industry that destroyed Springburn. For this need to improve and regenerate housing invariably ends in demolition and the utter change in character and appearance of a place.

They destroyed Cowlairs Railway Village. They destroyed Springburn Park's Winter Gardens. They - whoever 'they' are, destroyed Springburn and a whole community.