Tenement House, Glasgow

What do you think of when you think of Glasgow. The wet weather, the incomprehensibly strung accent, the obsession with football or the fact that it can be a rough industrial working class city? Part of this makes me think of the tenements that I studied in my Scottish history degree. Those blocks full of cramped conditions, bad sanitation and breeding grounds for TB that were so fondly beloved of the Glaswegians. Those slum tenements may have long been cleared away to be replaced by the equally bad high rise flats on far flung council estates but the better class of tenement still survive ... more

When we spent our annual vacation in Scotland last summer, one of the highlights was our visit to The Tenement House in Glasgow. Although this special museum is just a tiny tenement flat with two rooms, kitchen and bathroom, we actually spent more than one hour there. It is absolutely lovely. What you will find on the first floor is a typical Victorian tenement flat of 1892, in its original state as it was used in the first half of the 20th century. It was the home of Miss Agnes Toward , an ordinary Glasgow shorthand typist, who lived there for more than 50 years, and it retains most of the ... more