Window to the Past: Main Street, Pollokshaws

The low building with the white gable at the billiards sign has a thatched roof. Beyond Bengal Street on the left a range of low dwellings and shops are seen, of which the one with the barber’s pole also has a thatched roof. They will be demolished for the co-op building to be constructed around 1900.

Coal merchant D. Mackie’s horse and cart is passing Kirk Lane and the ice cream parlour (before they became known as cafes) with its lamp and sign.

On the right at Dick’s shop with its heavy ornate lamps is the close at number 93 where Nettie Wren, who took most of the colour slides in this series, lived with her mother in the 1950s.

Dick’s sign painted on the gable is claiming they are ‘cheaper than the city’.

The van on the right is probably Bilsland’s Bakers, with its claim that their bread is ‘machine made’.

Note the horse dung that polluted the streets up to the 1950s.

Image courtesy of Pollokshaws Heritage Group, holding weekly meetings on Mondays at 1pm in the parish hall — all welcome along.