Скачать или смотреть TINDERBOX CITY - Just Another Glasgow Fire

In the 1960s there were that many devastating fires in Glasgow that the city got the nickname Tinderbox City.

But in fact Glasgow has experienced such fires throughout its existence. In 1652 the city suffered a Great Fire in which one third of the city was burned to the ground and around one thousand families made homeless. And that was fourteen years before The Great Fire of London in 1666. So if there was a competition for such disasters, Glasgow would come first.

But Glasgow's Great Fire of 1652 wasn't the city's only Great Fire. There was one in 1600, one in 1677, one in 1749 in the Gorbals area when 150 families found themselves out in the street, and one in 1909 when an 80-yard stretch of Ingram Street was raised to the ground.

But even that's not the full picture. Between 1875 and 1898 Glasgow suffered 26 Great Fires, although the definition of 'Great' in this instance was for a fire where the loss or damage amounted to over £20,000, which is perhaps something like over three million pounds in today's money.

Back in 1657, with just a few Great Fires under its belt, the citizens of Glasgow started thinking that maybe buckets of water were no longer up to the job of tackling a city so prone to catching fire. So, in that year, Glasgow got its first fire engine. And they certainly needed it. For some twenty years later, in 1677, as we've said, another Great Fire saw 136 houses and shops destroyed, about seven hundred families made homeless, and the Tolbooth clock catch fire!

But Glasgow's nickname of Tinderbox City was earned not just from fires that destroyed property, for in the 1960s the city experienced what can really only be termed disasters. Cheapside Street in 1960 saw 19 men - firemen and salvagemen - die when tackling a bonded warehouse blaze that came to be known as the worst peacetime fire in British history. And just 8 years later in James Watt Street another fire in a furniture factory ended in tragedy when 22 workers perished. They were unable to escape because of locked fire exits and metal bars on the windows.

But it didn't stop there. In 1972 a fire broke out in a warehouse owned by the Sher Brothers in Kilbirnie Street. While tackling the fire a fireman became trapped inside. Six of his colleagues entered the burning building to rescue him, but sadly all seven died in the blaze.

Theatres in Glasgow were particularly prone to bursting into flames. The City Theatre in Jail Square burned down in 1845, just 5 months after opening. The Theatre Royal was destroyed by fire in 1879, rebuilt, then caught fire again in 1895. Of course, in Glasgow it is not unusual for buildings to catch fire more than once. The Glasgow School of Art is but one example, and that's in recent times.

And every time a fire breaks out in the city, you think to yourself, yup, just another Glasgow fire.