The Victorian era is linked to the 64 year reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901.
While the buildings may be imposing and awe-inspiring, they are emblematic of the exploitation rampant in Victorian Society. The labour for most of these buildings were done by exploited people too - such as Glasgow Central Station, which was heavily constructed by displaced Highlanders and Islanders who were forced from their lands and crofts by the British Empire to be used for sheep grazing during the Highland Clearances.
It would be suspiciously convenient for the standing government of the time that the cleared crofters could act as cheap labour for the industrial economy.
Working and living conditions were incredibly harsh for the lower classes in Glasgow - the stark disparity between the upper and lower classes is no more visible than in the great and terrible buildings they created. Workers in Templeton’s Carpet Factory would arrive for a shift in a workplace resembling a Venetian Palace, and then go home to a crumbling over-crowded Gorbals tenement infested with vermin without a toilet or running water.
All that being said, it’s the Victorian architecture of Glasgow that are the most stand-out buildings that define our city on the international stage.
John Betjeman, an English writer and broadcaster, was a staunch defender of Victorian architecture in Britain. Writing in ‘Pavement in the Sun’ in 1967, Jack House gave an account of Betjeman’s first impression of Glasgow.
House wrote: ”The visitor (Betjeman) was so entranced by Victorian Glasgow. ‘The headquarters of the Victorian Society shouldn’t be in London,’ he said. ‘They should be here. This is the greatest Victorian city in the world.”
As shameful as the back-story may be to these buildings, many of them remain incredible additions to the city of Glasgow and it’s people, such as the People’s Palace, Kelvingrove, and Garnethill Synagogue.
Regardless of how we all feel about our Victorian heritage, the buildings certainly tell the history of a rapidly changing and evolving city.
1. Egyptian Halls (1870-1872)
Another one of Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson’s finest works, the Egyptian Halls. There’s an entire generation of Glaswegians who will have never seen the stunning facade on Union Street, as for the last 10 years its been covered in scaffolding as part of an indefinite conservation project. The design of the halls was a deliberately different from the common Gothic Revival architecture of the Victorian era, characterised by its reliance on arches and its historical connections with Roman Catholicism (Photograph by Thomas Annan, shown in the Europa Nostra) | Glasgow City Archives
2. St Vincent's Street Church (1859)
Saint Vincent Street Church is the sole survivor of three churches designed for the city of Glasgow by Alexander Thomson. The other three churches are now long-ruined - Queen’s Park Church was damaged during the blitz in WWII, Caledonia Road Church which fell to ruin, and the lesser-known Chalmers Memorial Free Church in the Gorbals which succumbed to a fire in the 70s. Thomson designed the St Vincent Street Church in an almost abstract form of classicism following Greek models. | Glasgow City Archives
3. Templeton’s Carpet Factory (1892)
Templeton’s Carpet Factory (or Templeton on the Green as it is now known) was a purpose-built carpet factory which looks incredibly different to the industrial estate carpet factory’s we have today.It was meant to display opulence, which was a tricky thing to get right in reserved Victorian Society who preferred the imposing majesty of Gothic Revival architecture. After repeated design proposals had been rejected by the Glasgow Corporation, Templeton hired the famous architect William Leiper to produce a design that would be so grand it could not possibly be rejected, so William Leiper modelled the building on the Doge’s Palace in Venice, which was constructed in the alternative Venetian Gothic style. | Contributed
4. Glasgow Central Station (1879)
Before Glasgow Central Station, the city’s main terminal was south of the river Clyde at Bridge Street. As Glasgow boomed in the Victorian era thanks to its involvement in the transatlantic trade. It took some 25 years to build Glasgow Central however, as navigation authorities fought with trade bodies of the time to build the iconic rail bridge over the River Clyde, as merchants believed it would impact trade along the River, which at the time was full of ships either under construction or arriving with goods from American or Africa. After a stalemate for a quarter of a century the bridge was eventually built by Sir William Arrol, who would go on to build the Forth Bridge. | Glasgow City Archives