Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
lowering the perceived space to create a degree of intimacy. Forbidding wrought-iron
work gives the sense of a Highland castle, while half-hidden alcoves with unexpected
windows look out over the city. Below this is the school's most spectacular room, the
glorious two-storey
Library
. Designed to give the sense of a clearing in a forest, sombre
oak panelling is set against angular lights, hanging in seemingly random clusters. he
dark bookcases sit precisely in their fitted alcoves, and the most unusual piece of
furniture is the central periodical desk, whose oval central strut displays perfect and
quite beautiful symmetry.
he
Furniture Gallery
, reached at the end of your tour, shelters an Aladdin's cave of
designs - numerous tall-backed chairs, a semicircular settle designed for the Willow Tea
Rooms, domino tables and a chest of drawers with highlighted silver panels.
5
The Tenement House
145 Buccleuch St • March-Oct daily 1-5pm • £6.50; NTS •
T
0844 493 2197 • Cowcaddens underground
Just a few hundred yards northwest of the School of Art - on the other side of a sheer
hill - is the
Tenement House
. Glasgow's tenements were originally conceived as a
convenient way to house the influx of workers to the city in the late 1800s, though it
didn't take long for the wealthy middle classes to realize their potential. Rising three to
five storeys, they have two or three apartments per floor; important rooms are picked
out with bay windows, middle storeys are emphasized by architraves or decorated
panels below sill or above lintel, and street junctions are given importance by swelling
bay windows, turrets and domes.
his is a typical tenement block still lived in on most floors, except for the ground
and first floors, where you can see the respectable if cramped home of
Agnes
Tow a rd
, who moved here with her mother in 1911, changing nothing and throwing
very little out until she was hospitalized in 1965. On the ground floor, the National
Trust for Scotland has constructed a fascinating display on the development of the
humble tenement block as the bedrock of urban Scottish housing, with a poignant
display of relics - ration books, letters, bills, holiday snaps and so forth - from Miss
Toward's life.
Upstairs, you have to ring the doorbell to enter the flat, which gives every impression
of still being inhabited, with a cluttered hearth and range, kitchen utensils, recess beds,
framed religious tracts and sewing machine all untouched. he only major change since
Miss Toward left has been the reinstallation of the flickering
gas lamps
she would have
used in the early days. Tenement flats were home for the vast majority of Glaswegians
for much of the twentieth century, and as such developed a culture and vocabulary all
of their own: the “hurley”, for example, was the bed on castors which was kept below
the box bed in an alcove off the kitchen.
National Piping Centre
30-34 McPhater St • Museum: May-Sept Mon-Fri 9.30am-4.30pm, Sat 9am-1pm, also Sun 10am-4pm May-Sept • £4.50 •
W
thepipingcentre.co.uk • Cowcaddens underground
Behind the hulking Royal Scottish Academy for Music and Drama, a short way east of
the Tenement House, the
National
Piping Centre
prides itself on being an international
centre for the promotion of the bagpipe. Equipped with rehearsal rooms, performance
halls, conference centre, accommodation (see p.206), museum and a café, it is a
meeting place for fans and performers from all over the world. For the casual visitor,
the single-room
museum
is of most interest, with a collection of instruments and
related artefacts from the fourteenth century to the present day. Headsets provide a
taped commentary with musical examples at relevant stages and the museum shop
contains a stack of related material.
