The Fifties was a decade that was mainly focused on the recovery from World War Two with Glasgow being far from an attractive place with slum housing conditions being visible across the city.
Health remained poor in the city with Glasgow launching a mass X-ray campaign aimed at, and largely successful in, eradicating tuberculosis in the city with thirty-six mobile units being used, and in five weeks over 700,000 people were x-rayed. It wasn’t an easy decade to grow up in but those who did still look back on it with fondness.
It was a decade that saw the true birth of rock and roll with figures such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly becoming recognisable with the dawn of the Cold War and the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II.
The following 25 pictures aim to show Glasgow life during the Fifties and the changing landscape with many of these buildings still being recognisable today.
1. Gorbals (1956)
Children play in a yard in Coburg Street, in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. The Gorbals tenements were built quickly and cheaply in the 1840s, providing housing for Glasgow's burgeoning population of industrial workers. Conditions were appalling; overcrowding was standard and sewage and water facilities inadequate. The tenements housed about 40,000 people with up to eight family members sharing a single room, 30 residents sharing a toilet and 40 sharing a tap. By the time this photograph was taken 850 tenements had been demolished since 1920. Redevelopment of the area began in the late 1950s and the tenements were replaced with a modern tower block complex in the sixties. | Getty Images
2. Gorbals (1958)
A Gorbals housewife going shopping with her two children. The tenements which had formerly occupied this area were among the worst slums in Britain and there had been campaigns calling for redevelopment for many years before work finally began in the late fifties. | Getty Images
3. Renfield Street
Shoppers head down Renfield Street in 1958. | Virtual Mitchell
4. Govan shipyard (1955)
Young apprentices learn their trade at the Govan shipyard in Glasgow in 1955. The Clydeside shipyards were the biggest employers in the area and produced most of Britain's mercantile shipping output before there was a slump in the industry and many yards were forced to close. | Getty Images