Glasgow on Film with Dr Emily Munro (National Library of Scotland's Moving Image Archive)

In our first episode of Series 2 we welcome Dr Emily Munro, Curator and Learning Officer at the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Imagine Archive for an enlightening discussion about Glasgow on film. The Moving Image Archive is Scotland's national collection of moving image and is based in Kelvin Hall in the West End of Glasgow, where they care for 46,000 items. 

Dr Munro and Niall discuss film makers in and around Glasgow, and the great change that the city has seen over the last 100 years - but also some of the continuities. They also chat about some of the ‘hidden gems’ of the Moving Image Archive and what’s next for the Archive.

Some of the films discussed:
- Great Glasgow Fires https://movingimage-onsite.nls.uk/film/1733 

- Glasgow School of Art in 1950s https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3352
- Eddie McConnell & Oscar Marzaroli later shot this Murray Grigor d. film about Mackintosh https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/2226
- Faces, 1959, d. Eddie McConnell https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/1942
- Our Transport Services, made by the Glasgow Corporation, 1949, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0057
- St Enoch Hotel and Station, 1966, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/4004
- KH-4, starring Bill Forsyth, 1960s, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3631
- Mungo’s Medals, 1961, Glasgow Corporation film about new housing developments, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/2102
- Demolition of Grand Hotel Charing Cross https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/2699 (onsite only)
- The Planner’s Approach, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/4196 (onsite only)
- Battle of the Styles, 1968, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/2319
- The Lamplighter, 1956, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/1500
- Glasgow Gets to Work, 1935, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/3246

Additional films:
- Spot the Spot, 1926, a quiz made for cinema patrons, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0863C
- Shieldhall Chemical Sundries Department, 1959, manufacturing everything from custard and jelly crystals to asprin and shoe polish https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0616
- Glasgow Takes Care of Its Old Folk, 1949, Innovative Glasgow Corporation ‘cottage’ housing development, designed to provide accommodation for the elderly and to keep elderly couples together https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0135 

- Tribute to Wartime Production, 1941, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth tour Templeton's carpet factory in Glasgow where women are making army blankets, https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/1625

This conversation was recorded on 22nd November 2022.

Keep an eye on our website glasgowheritage.org.uk, join us on social media @GlasgowHeritage and follow #IfGlasgowsWallsCouldTalk

This podcast was produced by Inner Ear for Glasgow City Heritage Trust. It is kindly sponsored by the National Trust for Scotland and supported by Tunnock’s.

Creators & Guests

Host

Fay Young

Writer, blogger, editor. Love wild woodland gardens & city jungles, song & dance (also tweet poetry, food and politics) co-editor @sceptical_scot

Host

Niall Murphy

Niall Murphy, who is the Director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust, is a conservation architect and is heavily involved in heritage, conservation and community issues in Glasgow. Niall is also Chair of Govanhill Baths Building Preservation Trust and was previously chair of Pollokshields Heritage, Planning Convener for Pollokshields Community Council and a member of the Glasgow Urban Design Panel. Between 2016 – 2018 he was a member of the Development Management Working Group for the Scottish Government’s Planning Review. Niall regularly lectures or does walking tours on architecture, heritage and urban design issues. Niall has won the Glasgow Doors Open Day Excellence Award for Outstanding Talk (2023) and for Inspiring City Tour (2017), the Glasgow Doors Open Day Above and Beyond Award (2014), the Sir Robert Lorimer Award for Sketching (1996) and, in addition to nominations for Saltire Awards and GIA Awards was nominated for the Scottish Civic Trust’s My Place Award for Civic Champion in 2015.

Producer

Anny Deery

TV Producer. Retrained Massage Therapist @glasgowholistic. Live in Glasgow. Mother of a 8 yo + three year old.

Editor

Katharine Neil

What is If Glasgow’s Walls Could Talk?

A podcast by Glasgow City Heritage Trust which focuses on the relationships, stories and shared memories that exist between Glasgow’s historic buildings and the city's communities. Presented by Glasgow City Heritage Trust’s Director Niall Murphy and journalist Fay Young, this series features guests discussing with Niall and Fay a specific area, type of building or aspect of Glasgow’s heritage, not only from a historical and architectural point of view, but also from the perspective of the community; drawing on the guests’ personal experiences, thoughts, knowledge and memories.

Niall Murphy:
So, hello, everyone. I am Niall Murphy, and welcome to If Glasgow's Walls Could Talk, a podcast by Glasgow City Heritage Trust about the stories and relationships between historic buildings and people in Glasgow. The stories of our buildings and streets can be told in words and pictures, but perhaps nothing can bring those stories to life more powerfully than a moving image. There is something magical about people and places from the past appearing on our screens today. We can walk again through doors of buildings destroyed by fires or bulldozers, ride on buses and trams on streets that no longer exist, rediscover daily events and life-changing dramas from 50 or 100 years ago.
Films connecting yesterday, today, and maybe tomorrow too. This is the stuff of the great collection of material in the National Library of Scotland's Moving Image Archive. It's an extraordinary treasure trove offering fascinating insights into the social, cultural, economic, and political history of Scotland. Home movies, documentaries, public information films, short clips, full length feature films. There are 3,000 films available to view online, so it's hard to know where to start. And in a world increasingly dominated by small screen images, might me wonder when seeing is believing. Who funded these films, for instance? And what is their message? How can we tell the public record from propaganda?
Fortunately, help is at hand. To answer or at least explore some of these questions, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Emily Munro, a curator of films at the National Library of Scotland's Moving Image Archive. Emily's job requires an inquiring mind as she finds ways of bringing Scotland's rich screen heritage to audiences in the here and now. Emily is also a talented writer and filmmaker in her own right. Her film, Living Proof: A Climate Story, released before COP26 in 2021 used footage from the library's collection, which she selected with a keen and critical eye.
The film exploring roots of the climate crisis in Scotland's industrial and economic history was widely seen and highly acclaimed. The Times called it an evocative documentary that asked difficult questions. For today's podcast, Emily has chosen a intriguing selection of films from the Archive, and we're looking forward to some stimulating questions and answers. But, let's start with a fairly simple one. So, firstly, Emily, what is the Moving Image Archive? Can you give us a brief background to the history of the National Library's Moving Image Archive? Where is it, how did it come about, what does it contain, and who is it for?

Emily Munro:
I certainly can, Niall, thank you for that wonderful introduction. Well, the Moving Image Archive is Scotland's national collection of moving images. And the Archive itself began relatively late for a moving image archive, in the 1970s, when Janet McBain was employed through a job creation scheme to identify a collection of films that were held at the Scottish Film Council offices. And under Janet's Stewardship, alongside the technical expertise of Alan Russell, the Archive has grown over the years to a collection of around 20,000 films and videos about Scotland and its people. And as you've already said, these include professional films, amateur films, promotional films, propaganda, home videos, television, artistic films, experimental films, almost anything you can imagine.
So, Janet was the curator for the Archive from 1976 to 2011. And within, I know, she did win a BAFTA for her service. And within that time, the Archive moved from the Film Council over to the National Library of Scotland. So, in 2007, we became part of that heritage context, national heritage collection. And the Archive itself, it is for absolutely anyone. We've got an expansive online catalogue, which enables you to watch footage wherever you are in the world, and we are always collecting. So, it's not a static collection, it's something that's ever-growing, which comes with its challenges, as you can imagine.

Niall Murphy:
I can.

Emily Munro:
Yes, but, it's a really exciting place to work and to learn.

Niall Murphy:
Great. So, tell me more about your role as the curator. It's a fantastic resource, the archive, but how do you personally use it? What responsibilities does a curator carry? How do you reach out to engage new audiences say?

Emily Munro:
I feel like it's an immense privilege to work within an institution like the National Library of Scotland, but specifically in the Moving Image Archive, because I have my own personal time machine that will take me to places that I would never have gone without it. As a curator, I'm interested in stories and what the Archive tells us about ourselves. On the one hand, moving image is quite a specialist area of history, but I think most curators who work in film archives would see themselves as generalists. You need to have a wide range of interests and knowledge, historical knowledge about society and about culture. And there's certainly certain, there's areas that I gravitate towards. There's some things that are my own pet projects, things that I have a specialist interest in. But, there is so much material that honestly every day is a school day here and I'm never bored, because there's always something new for me to look at or explore.
And my role is partly about research. It's about understanding the material, the context in which it was made, but it's also about how I communicate that to the public, and also involve the public in interpreting the material as well. It's not really just for us as curators to interpret the material. There's so much in there. We couldn't possibly be experts in everything that's here. So, we really need the help of the public and from other researchers, historians, experts, to tell us the stories that are within the films. And I really like the idea of the Archive being something that people go on a journey with, and it's quite a personal journey. It's a bespoke journey, because everyone's experience is different. So, I think what's exciting about a moving image archive, particularly if it's so focused on a nation as this one is, is that you can look for your own story within it and you can find things that speak to your experience and the experience of your ancestors.
And that can be extremely powerful, because I think we need continuity in our lives. We need to feel like there is some kind of thread, particularly at times when society can seem chaotic. So, the Moving Image Archive, I think provides a little bit of that comfort. But, at the same time, as a curator, I'm always looking at things with a critical eye. So, I am also quite interested in pulling apart films and really questioning the motivations behind their production.

Niall Murphy:
Indeed, that is fascinating. When you look at the selection that you have put together for today, and I'm very interested in how you put that selection together. There's things within that that are quite fascinating, and you do wonder how much of this is propaganda in places? What is it they're trying to pitch? And then, on the other hand, you're acutely conscious, there's a whole film in there about the development of council housing in Glasgow and how Glasgow is very pioneering about it. And you look at that back through a lens where we're going through a housing crisis at the moment, and it's so optimistic. And you're thinking, if only you had some of that optimism now and foresight now.

Emily Munro:
That's absolutely true. And I would say that within the Archive, although we do continue to collect, most of our material is from the middle of the 20th century, and that was an incredibly optimistic period. So, the films definitely reflect that.

Niall Murphy:
True, absolutely. Does it then give you a sense of loss about what has disappeared in that selection? It is fascinating, particularly when you look at Glasgow now, there was one with Bill Forsyth running through Glasgow Streets, and I'm looking in the background as he goes along going, oh, there's a John Burnet Sr building, which probably says something about me. But, it's fascinating to walk along those old Glasgow streets. And, from that point of view, it's a really invaluable source of social history and condense all of these really revealing details such as the footage you supplied on the Great Glasgow Fires and the blaze at the old Kelvin Hall, or the film of the Glasgow School of Art, which was fascinating because that was 1950s, but yet when I was at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1990s, it really hadn't changed.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. And I think one of the interesting things about an archive is that you get to see those moments of continuity through time, and buildings provide that, don't they? Well, sometimes there's a rupture that changes things. If we think about the fire, Glasgow's no stranger to fires, unfortunately.

Niall Murphy:
Sadly.

Emily Munro:
But, footage of fires is relatively unusual actually. And the film that I shared with you from 1925 was an example of a fire where actually something better came out of it, I think.

Niall Murphy:
Indeed, yes, absolutely. It's a much better building now.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. The phoenix rose from the ashes and then some... But, it's a really interesting social document as well, because it was a film that was made by Green's Film Service. Now, Greens were a family of show people.

Niall Murphy:
Hugely important.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. A family of show people who began exhibiting films, and then saw a commercial opportunity to sell films to other exhibitors and created their own production company. And this wasn't unusual at that time, cinema exhibitors would produce films, local films, and quite often they were out there looking for news. And on this day, in July 1925, the big news was this fire at Kelvin Hall. And you can see its big news, because there are literally hundreds of people gathered-

Niall Murphy:
Absolutely. It's quite something.

Emily Munro:
... to watch that fire.

Niall Murphy:
You're seeing that smoke blow across, what is it, Dumbarton Road by that point, towards the Kelvingrove. And there are hundreds of people there, and you're thinking, you're possibly a wee bit too close to that fire. You might want to get away.

Emily Munro:
Not only that, Niall, because you can see they're set on the other side of the road, and they're all in the embankments up leading up to Kelvingrove. But, not only that, but you can see hordes of school boys running towards the area, desperate to see it. And you have civilians who are helping the firefighters. So, you actually have ordinary people, including boys, straightening out the hoses for the firefighters. It's quite extraordinary.

Niall Murphy:
It is. When you look at their equipment, you're thinking, there's no way they're going to cope with this fire.

Emily Munro:
No, and they didn't.

Niall Murphy:
It's pretty primitive. It's fascinating though.

Emily Munro:
But, it is really interesting, because it's not all that long ago, a 100 years ago. And now I'm actually sitting in the new Kelvin Hall today.

Niall Murphy:
Indeed, you are.

Emily Munro:
So, I'm speaking to you from Kelvin Hall.

Niall Murphy:
Which is a fantastic building.

Emily Munro:
It is, indeed. And, if I could go back to what you were saying about Glasgow School of Art, because we have quite a lot of footage of the Mackintosh Building, and it's so poignant now that, that footage still exists. I think it provides something different from a photograph to see people actually using the building. And that film from the '50s, which was made by Eddie McConnell, who was a great Scottish filmmaker, documentary maker, very expressive, and made when he was a student at the School of Art, and he ran a film club there. And I think what's really lovely about it is, you do get a sense of the Mac as a working building, and you get an idea of what the student experience was like. But, there's also some really beautiful details. There's footage of a cleaner washing the steps.

Niall Murphy:
That's a lovely touch, but that was what I meant, but nothing had changed. Ironically, I headed up the film club at the Mac for a year in my dim and distant past. There you go.

Emily Munro:
That is fantastic. You know what, what's interesting, we're talking about these resonances through time. And another famous filmmaker, Norman McLaren, also attended the Glasgow School of Art and made a documentary called Seven Till Five in 1934. And that was similar to Eddie McConnell's film. It was about the student experience. But, Eddie McConnell claims he never saw that film, or certainly hadn't seen that film at that time. But, I think students feel such a sense of affinity with the building while they're there, and almost like the building becomes its own personality, it's a friend. And there's a certain sense in which people have felt a need to document not just the place, but also what it might have felt like to have been inhabiting that place. And McConnell later shot Murray Grigor's film about Macintosh, alongside Oscar Marzaroli, the great Glasgow documentarian.
And, there's all sorts of interesting artistic collaborations within the Archive, but I think McConnell and Marzaroli, they're ones that, it's always worth looking at material where they collaborate. One of the films that I absolutely love, which is quite a weird, it's a surrealist experimental drama called Faces, made just a couple of years after that Glasgow School of Art film in 1959. And it was made by Eddie McConnell, but Marzaroli worked on the production. And it has characters wearing masks that were designed by Alasdair Grey. And it's a really special and unusual film.
So, I love all these, the little cliques, I guess, they're kind of cliques, film making cliques, but it's really interesting to see how people dot about productions. And you mentioned Bill Forsyth. Bill Forsyth was in there as well. So, anyway, I digress. But, I think there's definitely a link between a lot of the filmmakers that we have work in the Archive that represent their careers and appreciation for art and architecture and the City of Glasgow in particular. And also, a sense, particularly in that mid 20th century period, of just trying to get to grips with the rapid change that's going on, and holding on to some things and trying to learn how to let go of other things.

Niall Murphy:
There's a one really fascinating film that you included, which tells a story of Glasgow Corporation. This is just directly post Second War War, tells a story of Glasgow's Corporation and what they did, and all the various facets to Glasgow Corporation. There's some really good hidden gems within that. It shows the Keppochhill Tram Depot, which is now Tramway. Pinkston Power Station, which is amazing.

Emily Munro:
Can I say something about that film? Because, honestly, that footage was really startling for me when I saw it. It's actually quite a, it's the kind of film that people wouldn't necessarily look for in the Archive because it's an educational film. And you might have noticed quite a few of the films that I've suggested that we talk about are educational films, because I absolutely love them. But, this one was made by the corporation as part of a series of civic films. So, it was made in 1949. And I think there was quite a progressive viewpoint in terms of the importance of civic values and citizenship coming out of the war.

Niall Murphy:
Very much. There really was. It really comes across in that film.

Emily Munro:
And using film as the main teaching material is a really modern thing to be doing.

Niall Murphy:
Very much.

Emily Munro:
And so, you'll notice the film is silent.

Niall Murphy:
But, involves the wee boy in it, kind of [inaudible 00:18:46]

Emily Munro:
There's characters.

Niall Murphy:
The character comes across.

Emily Munro:
Exactly. So, the wee boy or wee boys appear in a number of these civic series films. There was a school textbook that went along with it as well, an illustrated textbook. And the idea is that the film would be shown in the classroom and the teacher would narrate it in some way. So, there would be teaching materials that would go along with it. So, with this film, it's about transport in Glasgow, it's called Our Transport Services. And so, you see various forms of public transport, and you see the coal-fired power station that was generating power for the trams and the underground, and before the big cooling tower was built. And what's so lovely about it is that, the building was camouflaged during the war. So, it was painted in camouflage paint. And it's really camp.

Niall Murphy:
It is. It's quite something. It's a shame it's in black and white., because I'd love to have seen the colours of that and what they actually did. Because, it's quite, you look at that and you think, wow, there's pop art for you. And it's like, all the things that come after, Pink Floyd using Battersea Power Station and all that. You can see where that comes from and the whole language or the visual language of The Beatles, and the various albums. It all comes from that. You can see what that is.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. It's so fascinating. I love that film. And like you say, the footage from the tramway, seeing the trams being built, or repaired and cleaned.

Niall Murphy:
They're incredibly modern, the trams.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely.

Niall Murphy:
It's really interesting to see them. They were pretty slick.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. And I suppose there's a sense in which, I don't know, I watch it and I do feel a sense of loss. Obviously, this wasn't a period that I lived through, but you do get a strong feeling of the civic pride and of that effort in society to move towards what progress looked like at that time. And, I just think it's a really special little film.

Niall Murphy:
It was fascinating. For me, I was lucky because I was brought up in Hong Kong, and ironically Hong Kong I think got some of Glasgow's trams, because Hong Kong still has trams. And so, it's just on the island. There's a big long line of trams, and it's kind of has a loop either end that allows you to go backwards and forwards. And then, it loops around Happy Valley as well. But, the trams were, they were really fantastic. And so, when I see images of Glasgow in the 1950s with all these trams, I actually think it's pretty progressive. At what point did you get rid of them? They worked so well in a compact small city. It's a great way of getting people who wouldn't be able to afford a car about.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. And I think 1949, we're just at the cusp of that time where the motorcars, it's about to have its moment, big style, but at that point, 1949, public transport was still the way to get people around. And so, you get a sense of investment in that.

Niall Murphy:
And it is ironic, particularly this kind of where the next question's going to go when we're talking about demolition and dislocation. It's ironic when you see other films like the Battle of the Styles film, which kind of made me laugh, this architectural film on the development of styles and architecture, which is a great wee film. And then, at one point it goes, and here we are at St. Enoch's Station. It's got this kind of terribly 1950s voiceover. Here we are at St. Enoch's Station. This is the finest of Scotland stations. And then, you're thinking, oh, oh, a decade later it's toast. It's people toast. And you're like, what are you thinking? And there's a separate film on St. Enoch's and you're thinking, what a fantastic facility. Why would you want to get rid of it? Completely bizarre. And yet it's part of that white heat of technology and we need to move on from all of this kind of thing. It's such a shame.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. And that period, we're getting into that period now of that redevelopment. And you think about how devastating in a lot of ways that was, and the dislocation that created. You mentioned the film with Bill Forsyth, and it's a film, it's a drama about a young artist who goes into the city of Glasgow as it's being demolished, and is really trying to get to grips with what is this place?

Niall Murphy:
Absolutely.

Emily Munro:
It's a dystopian film.

Niall Murphy:
Very much. It may made me think of Lanark, Alasdair Gray's Lanark, it's like this is Lanark on film.

Emily Munro:
And I'm sure there's definite connections there-

Niall Murphy:
There must have been.

Emily Munro:
... with Alasdair Gray's work. And I think, you see this artist in his studio and he's painting these classical motifs, Corinthian columns and things. And then, he wanders out into the city where all of that kind of classical architecture is being destroyed, and is just surrounded by plumes of smoke, pollution or dust. And those young artists at that time, you do get a feeling, gosh, not everyone was like, great. We're moving forward. This is progress. There was some real devastation going on. And people must felt quite powerless actually at that point, really just to have to accept what was happening. And a lot of the films that we have about that time period, which are films made by the corporation, they're really about justifying the decisions that were happening.

Niall Murphy:
Very much. The one St Mungo's medals talking about the various awards that the corporation was getting for social housing work. And some of the buildings are very good to get produced out of that. But, looking back at it now with jaded Generation X eyes, and you're thinking, particularly when they're getting to the outskirts of the city and these garden cities that they're developing there. And we know all of the floors of that now, the kind of great Billy Connolly phrased, deserts wi' windaes. And you're looking at it and you're thinking, the incredible irony that they thought they were doing absolutely the right thing, getting people out into the air and the greenery. And yet it wasn't enough. It didn't work.

Emily Munro:
And I think Glasgow really has suffered from a slightly myopic viewpoint where the housing is seen as the cause of social ills rather than the symptom of what's going on in society. So, rather than thinking about inequality and lack of opportunity, looking at houses and saying, oh, this house is falling down, so need to provide people with somewhere nice to live, and then everything will be fine. And, of course, we know that that's not the case. Of course, everyone deserves to live in a nice environment, but it doesn't take away the social problems. And, it is interesting. We've got so many films that show the demolition of Glasgow, some extraordinary things. One of the demolition of the Grand Hotel in Charing Cross, I think-

Niall Murphy:
Which is something else.

Emily Munro:
... you can see men standing on the half ruined building at the very top, just kind of chipping away.

Niall Murphy:
It is extraordinary. Lack of health and safety.

Emily Munro:
It's like something from another, it is from another century, but another century before that. And you also get these quite painterly images, almost like a grand civilization and decline, which I think are really poignant. But, with the corporation films, they're obviously going to take a particular viewpoint, and for a critical view we need to look elsewhere. So, we need to look at things like the KH-4 film with Bill Forsyth, or there's a film called The Planners Approach from 1968, which was made within Jordan Hill College of Education. And in that film, I think a student probably was interviewing the chair of the new Glasgow Society at that time, who was Mr. Jarvis, an architect.

Niall Murphy:
Geoffrey Jarvis. I knew Geoffrey. So, he was on the Glasgow Open Design Panel, or as it was called before it became the Urban Design Panel, the amenity panel and the council. And he was a really interesting guy. He looked like Abraham Lincoln. He was a fascinating guy. And when you hear about the launch of the new Glasgow Society, and they put an advert in the paper, he was like, anyone's interested in going walk for a walk around the city centre and discussing some of the things happening at Glasgow, and I think 500 people turned up. There's such demand for it.

Emily Munro:
That's amazing. And really, so it's quite a, you get this idea of a divided city, because you do have people at that time who were really starting to advocate strongly for the retention of some important buildings, Victorian architecture. And on the other hand, there's this kind of understanding that there needs to be change and there needs to be, things need to shift somehow. And when Mr. Jarvis is interviewed, he has really quite well-formed ideas about the riverfront. So, the riverfront of the Clyde that it should be picture postcard. I think he says it should be the equivalent of what Edinburgh Castle is for Edinburgh, the riverfront should be for Glasgow. So, that's the vision.

Niall Murphy:
Which is a very unusual view for the time when you consider how industrialised the river had been.

Emily Munro:
Well, absolutely. And it came later, of course, that focus on river fronts came 20 years or even more later. But, he also had plans to redevelop the St. Enoch's Station site, which included a concert hall, a international hotel, and perhaps, and this is the one that always makes me laugh, the new Strathclyde Region headquarters could be there with the whole area pedestrianised.

Niall Murphy:
Fascinating.

Emily Munro:
It is fascinating. And, I guess, we did get some kind of pedestrianisation in the form of the shopping centre.

Niall Murphy:
Which unfortunately turns its back on that kind of, it's the thing that blocks the city centre actually getting to the river, ironically. And in some ways, St. Enoch's Station actually handled all of those things better than the current shopping centre does, which is one of these ironies. What he was reacting to was there was this plan to basically deck over the river at that point and put a bus station on top of it. And which seems completely mad, and yet this did happen. That was a very American vision, and happened in places like Providence and Rhode Island, and they've later undone that. But, it did happen in various places. And they're like, thank God avoided that in Glasgow.
But, it's funny, because we're still dealing with all of those issues now. And one of his great proposals, which sadly did not go anywhere, was to get the Royal Britannia back to Glasgow, and tuck it into the Graving Docks in Govan, and use that as a huge visitor attraction, and basically retain the Glasgow Garden Festival as Tivoli Gardens for Glasgow, which would've been such a fantastic, would've given an amazing regenerative boost to that part of the city. And yet it was in this Thatcherite era, because that was reliant on the public purse to make it work. It was rejected in favour of a private scheme to put it in Leith. And you're like, but it came from Glasgow originally. It should be back in Glasgow. And a real lost opportunity.

Emily Munro:
That would've been incredible. What a lost opportunity. And you were still talking about, there's still buildings that we've lost recently along the riverfront, which it's a real shame, and we're still making the same arguments, about retaining some of the architectural heritage that we have.

Niall Murphy:
Yes, we very much are. It's an interest, that whole film, The Battle of the Styles is very enjoyable.

Emily Munro:
I was going to mention actually, about that film, because the film shows this tension between the gothic styles and the classical revival in Scotland. And I don't know if it's the best, it's not the best film that we have on architecture in Scotland. I think maybe Murray Grigor's film for the Scottish Civic Trust, Raised From Stone, is a really special one. But, I like the Battle of the Styles, again, because it's an educational film, so it's interesting to imagine school pupils being taught about architecture. And the education advisor for the film was someone called Louise Annand, who also made films and worked for Glasgow Museums for many years, and was really interested in architecture and heritage within the city. She made a lovely film about the history of lighting, and one very atmospheric film about Monkland Canal in the 1960s, which was filled in, was concreted over.
So, I wanted to bring that in because I think sometimes there's an inclination to look at the big films, the big commercial films, or the promotional films, because they're professionally produced and they look very beautiful. But, actually someone like Louise Annand contributed a lot in terms of documenting parts of the city, and its art and its architecture, and communicating that to a different audience, which was an audience of young people. So, I think there's a lot to be said for those educational films and how they speak to younger people about what's happened in the past, and the changes that were happening at that time.

Niall Murphy:
Well, I thought it was a really interesting film because she captures Kirkland's Warehouse on Miller Street, which is one of Glasgow's great lost buildings. And it's a fantastic story that David Walker tells about this, and how he tried to persuade the planning committee not to let the building's owners demolish it. And he won his case, and he managed to get the Scottish office. It was the first time the Scottish office had put money into a Victorian building., because this is one of the reasons why Edinburg's better preserved them Glasgow, is because they would only put money into something that predated Victoria's reign. And so, it was the first time they were going to put money into something post the start of Victoria's reign. And the owner of the building was so incensed by this and the fact that one had been pulled over on him, that he blocked up every sink in the building and turned on the taps and flooded it so badly that the damage done outweighed the value of the grant that they were going to get from the Scottish office.
And so, the planning committee reversed their decision, decided on demolition. But, when you see that film, and it talks about what a fabulous building this is and the sculpture on the building, and how this is just for a warehouse, but look at the beauty of the sculpture on it, and that this is actually taken from Sansovino's Library in Venice, and you're looking at it with its courtyard in front, which this guy hated because he said that the vans and the drivers using the vans, it was too posh for them. And they kept on bumping into the corners and smashing their vans off the corners, and he hated it for that reason. And you think, what a snob. And so, Glasgow lost something that was really amazing, and we've ended up with, I think it's the back of C&A, it ended up being, and it's just this most awful. It's directly opposite where the Tobacco Merchants has his, and you're thinking, what a lost opportunity. It would make the most fantastic little courtyard space. Really stunning building.

Emily Munro:
That is so sad. And we've lost a lot of those spaces, or it's the privatisation of those spaces as well that is problematic. And in a way, the Battle of the Styles is kind of, it's almost like a battle of values. It's aestheticism versus functionalism or something like that. I don't know. But, we seem to be having the same battles-

Niall Murphy:
Very much.

Emily Munro:
... over and over again.

Niall Murphy:
The other film I enjoyed too, which I've seen before, is the Larry the Lamplighter one, which is 1956. So, and astonishing to think that somebody was still doing that in 1956, but it makes you realise just how much in need of modernization Glasgow was by that point, because the infrastructure just hadn't been invested in. But, it's so evocative at the same time of what the city was once like.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. It's a Robert Louis Stevenson poem that's been adapted. So, it's already nostalgic for that reason. But, I think not long after, we have a film that shows the scrapping of the gas lamps, the removal, and the scrapping of the gas lamps. And so, they were disappearing at the same time. And maybe that was why the film was made, was to evoke those childhood memories, I suppose, for the person who made it.

Niall Murphy:
The irony is, it's actually incredibly contemporary, because there is a battle going on in Kensington in London at the moment to save its gas lamps. Because, I think its council wants to replace them with LED lighting instead. And people are really offended by this, because it's still the original, there's only a handful of them and it's like, come on. And you could save them because they are still evocative of that period. But, it's weird to think that's survived into the 2020s.

Emily Munro:
It is really weird, but it's a lovely thing that they have. When you see that film about the scrapping of the gas lamps, you see some beautiful iron work being just chucked out. And I grew up in Edinburgh in the 1980s, and I remember the concrete street lights were being removed and being replaced with, they were evocative of Georgian but more kind of Victorian looking lamps, things that seem to be more in keeping with the conservation areas. And it's just incredible that we're still having discussions about scrapping things like that. It's lovely that we still have some lamps in Glasgow, the provost lamps and things like that, that we can still look back on those. And actually, I don't mind that they don't work.

Niall Murphy:
They're just beautiful objects.

Emily Munro:
They're just beautiful to look at, absolutely, and kind of unexpected and evocative.

Niall Murphy:
There's the beautiful Alexander Greek Thompson one on Queens Drive, which is wrecked-

Emily Munro:
I love that.

Niall Murphy:
... sadly, but I love walking past it.

Emily Munro:
Me too.

Niall Murphy:
It's so evocative. There's another one buried in the hedge in Strathbungo too, so at least they have somehow clung on. And it's funny, because you can see on the Ordnance Survey map where the others were, and it's just these last fragmentary survivors, but they're really beautiful artefacts.

Emily Munro:
That's it. My dad talks about visiting his grandmother in Shawlands and the gas lamps flickering, and he says that as a child, he was terrified of being sent out. John, go to the fish and chip shop. And he was terrified, because it was so spooky being in those dark, close's with the flickering gas lamps. It's something that I can't imagine what that must have been like. But, there are people who still remember that.

Niall Murphy:
That would be incredibly evocative, wouldn't it? Quite terrifying at the same time. Fascinating stuff. Another strand in these films is all about how people in Glasgow got to work and the kind of this fascinating integrated traffic and transport network that we had of trams, trains, buses, and ferries, and how it all meshed together. So, I thought that was really interesting too. And other footage too, which I thought was amusing when they were talking about how awful the Gorbals were. And, yes, when you look at it, children playing in bin stores, not a good thing, but when you look at the streets, I'm looking at them nowadays and thinking, oh look, there's a low traffic neighbourhood.
And it's like, it's 15 to 20 minute neighbourhood as well, because everything's in the street, everybody's playing in the street, people are really congregating in the street, and the traffic is so much lower than it is nowadays. And it's really interesting to see how that is a active city that you could walk around or take the tram around. And if you really needed to jump on a train to somewhere more remote actually functioned. And the lessons that we can learn from that nowadays when obviously we're thinking about carbon footprints and obviously COP26 happening in Glasgow and what's just happened with Egypt as well with COP27, how we basically have to shift back towards that idea of a city. I think that's really fascinating.

Emily Munro:
It's so interesting, isn't it, that we've gone through this cycle of feeling like the city's overpopulated and that we need to push people to the margins. And then, now we're like, oh, actually we need people living in our city centre, because otherwise it's barren. So, let's bring people back.

Niall Murphy:
Post COVID in particular.

Emily Munro:
Exactly that. So, yes, these cycles that go on. And in some ways, I think actually the new towns were more successful than the city development areas because-

Niall Murphy:
Yes, they were.

Emily Munro:
... at least there was an idea of what was required to make a functioning community, that people needed to be able to get around. That the car was going to be important, because it was at that time and people needed to get to work, but actually there needed to be spaces for pedestrians as well. And there was less of that less density, that high rise thing. Cities in the sky, there was less of that.

Niall Murphy:
And a child of the tower block.

Emily Munro:
Well, some of those schemes were relatively successful and actually well-loved, but others, of course, were not. I'm thinking about the Gorbals and the Hutchesontown Block E, which I think survived only a few years and then was demolished because of damp.

Niall Murphy:
Actually, a comprehensive disaster. It was a construction system that came from the south of France and it just was totally unsuited to Glasgow's climate. And ironically, when you look at it nowadays, it's got these fantastic super graphics on you thinking, wow, that looks really cool. But, it just didn't work. It was never going to work in our climate.

Emily Munro:
You're right, absolutely. You appreciate the aesthetic. But, actually, to just take something from the south of France and put it in the west of Scotland, now, gosh, we've got real challenges on our hands with the amount of rainfall for new buildings as well as for the old buildings. And that's something we're going to have to grapple with for years to come.

Niall Murphy:
Very much. It's something that we look at when we're looking at tenements. We ask people to check the size of the rainwater goods that they're actually, they can cope with that increased capacity. And that's having been involved in other schemes where nobody has checked, and then suddenly you're getting water ingress in a newly conserved building. You're thinking, ah, this is exasperating. Somebody should have checked those things, and how we then work with that. That's part of the thinking behind the Avenues project in the city centre. That's the main motivation for it. It's not actually that it makes those streets look prettier. That's a handy side effect of it. It's tackling the drainage problems in Glasgow because of stormwater runoff, and it's slowing all that down and making it more manageable, and thereby releasing sites which can't be developed at the moment because the system has been at capacity. It's about building a capacity so those sites can be properly developed and brought back into the city once more.

Emily Munro:
Some of the films that I love, absolutely love with all of my heart are the New Town films, because of that utopian imagining of what society could look like. And there's one film in particular about Cumbernauld, and in part of that film, there's a wee boy on roller skates, and the camera follows him going through the neighbourhoods on his roller skates, just flying down hills with ease, going through underpasses and things like that. And sometimes I look at that and I think, wow, when I'm able to go around Glasgow in my roller skates, I'll know that we've cracked active travel.

Niall Murphy:
Absolutely. That would actually be, I used to do a lot of roller skating as a teenager, and I don't do it anymore. And it's one of these things you kind of think, that'd be quite fun to revisit it and actually do it in the streets rather than in a roller rink somewhere. But, if you could do that and you could enjoy it without worrying that you're going to be mowed down by a car in the next five minutes, that would be a real sign that things have moved on and progressed, that streets are for everybody and not just for one class of person who happens to have access to a car.

Emily Munro:
I think so.

Niall Murphy:
Very much. What next then for the Moving Image Archive? We're living in an era where everyone has a smartphone. We can all be filmmakers. Tell us about your kind of plans for, where you're going to go in terms of outreach and engaging with citizen filmmakers? I presume you're really enthused about this, so tell us all about it?

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. We never stop collecting, and those smartphone films are going to become part of the Archive. Not all of them, but some of them will be. And I think it's more important than ever that we take a critical look at our past as well as how our media is produced. So, there's a role for film archives to play there in thinking about both of those things. I want to see people enjoying history and to have the same privilege that I do to step into the time machine and observe lives past, see old streets and buildings that have disappeared, fashions that have all but vanished. And to that end, I think what we want to do is to keep having conversations with people about the collections in all sorts of different ways. And sometimes that might involve a co-curation exercise where we're working with community to pull out the things that really matter to them. In other cases it might be actually working with the community that we haven't worked with before and who are underrepresented within the collections too.

Niall Murphy:
Sure.

Emily Munro:
Because, while it's easy for me to say, oh, well, the Archive is for everyone, not everyone is well represented within the collection at present.

Niall Murphy:
Sure. I can completely appreciate that.

Emily Munro:
So, we really have a bit of work to do on that front. We hold regular events at Kelvin Hall and they're free. So, please come along to some of our events to find out about the collections and talk about the collections. Next year we're going to be doing a special focus on the history of broadcasting, which is going to be a lot of fun. I've been doing some research into community television production in the '70s, the first community television experiments, one of which took place in Leith in Edinburgh in a high rise here that no longer exists.

Niall Murphy:
Fascinating.

Emily Munro:
And another one that took place in Vale of Leven, which was part of the quality of life experiment set up by the government at that time, which was a big cultural experiment in certain deprived areas of the United Kingdom. So, it's a really interesting story. So, there's lots of possibility. I've definitely got plans for things that I'd like to explore myself. I'm really interested in whether we can use the Archive to envisage a future. So, can we look back and look at how people were imagining futures then, and what can we learn from that that we can bring forward into the future? I'm quite interested in that, and doing some work around that. And I always say to people, I'd love to do a project on the M8 and I say this all the time to people and some people roll their eyes, but actually maybe this is the moment for that. I would love to do a project looking at the M8 and the communities that are cited along the M8 and the footage that we've got about that story. I think it's a really interesting focal point for lots of different reasons.

Niall Murphy:
It is. It's very fascinating. We talked to the Scottish Motorway Archives last year about that and that actually, and having been to some of their talks as well, completely changed my perception of the motorway. I'm still not a fan of it, but it was the whole thinking about how it was designed as this scenographic trip through the city and how they were lining up vistas on it. And they really thought through it in this very, as though it was a film. It was what you were seeing at speed as you drove through the city, and how they lined up things like the Park Circus Towers, how you went over the Clyde, all of it was actually quite carefully thought through. Still, it was pretty damaging to the city, but it was fascinating. And there was a recognition that you had to accommodate the car somehow, and that was the thinking of the day.

Emily Munro:
Absolutely. We've got films that completely reflect that point of view. In my film, Living Proof, I took the opportunity to do a montage sequence, which starts with the Kingston Bridge and really tears apart a promotional film that was celebrating the opening of the Kingston Bridge, and interweaves pictures, footage of the demolition of the city at the same time. And there's this very pompous music that was in the original footage, and it was great fun to play with, extremely cathartic, I have to say. Being able to tell those two viewpoints in one short sequence.

Niall Murphy:
And intertwine them. It's a great kind of unwinding of the city at the same time, that there's this new vision of the city overlaid on top of it. It's one of the things I really enjoy about Glasgow is, it's not like Edinburgh where you got one city, then another city built next door to it, and Glasgow was super in position and layering up of different cities. So, you can appreciate, it's how two very different visions of the city end up getting butt spliced together, actually it's quite enjoyable.

Emily Munro:
I agree, Niall. Actually, I really do. And I think what I admire about Glasgow is seeing the beauty in the everyday, and that unexpectedness. And in a way it's a bit like the films in the Archive, because you're getting these glimpses and it can be a bit frustrating at times, because it's always a partial viewpoint and films, that's exactly what it is. It's always a partial viewpoint. You never get to linger long enough. It isn't like a still photograph where you can really gaze upon something. And Glasgow as a city is a bit like that. It's full of these wonderful, extraordinary, beautiful things, but up against some really ugly, brutal things. And it's surprising and it's frustrating, but that's part of the appeal of the city, I suppose.

Niall Murphy:
Very much. I suppose it makes me think of Christopher Isherwood when he talks about himself as I am a camera, when he is documenting Berlin, and that's how he sees himself as this narrator. It's the glimpses of the city, and then how it all stitches together to tell the story of the city at a point in time. And that's really what's fascinating about your Archive, is you've got all of these different kind of visions of what the city was like in particular moments. And it's seeing all that together in one place is fascinating. Well, in conclusion then, this is the question we ask everybody and it's completely loaded. So, lovely to hear this one from you. What is your favourite building in Glasgow, whether on film or not, and what would it tell you if its walls could talk?

Emily Munro:
Niall, this kept me awake last night. There's so many possibilities. The more I thought about it, the more confused I became. And maybe it's just me, I don't know, but it's like if someone asks me as they often do, what's your favourite film in the Archive? And I'm like, what? It's like, well, for a start, I haven't seen all the films in the Archive, but also are you talking about my favourite film this week? My favourite film today?

Niall Murphy:
This is me to a tee. I can't make the mind up because I'm like, oh, but I really like that one. And then, oh no, that meant I couldn't choose this one then.

Emily Munro:
Totally. So, today I love the ambition of some of the commercial buildings in Glasgow, and especially the Victorian obsession with light and glass. So, I'm going to choose Gardner's Warehouse on Jamaica Street.

Niall Murphy:
Good choice.

Emily Munro:
It was built in 1855 to '56 by John Baird, and is really unusual in that it's got a cast iron structure inspired by London's Crystal Palace.

Niall Murphy:
That's right.

Emily Munro:
So, I think it's that sense of a temple to trade, and I guess I just love the ambition of it and the story of how it was built. For someone who's an environmentalist it's perhaps bizarre that I've chosen what is probably one of the least energy efficient buildings you could conceive of. It's metal and glass, but I always get pleasure when I look at that building.

Niall Murphy:
It's a lovely building, and it's the predecessor to the skyscraper, so it's the first applications of the technologies from the Crystal Palace in a commercial building in the world. So, it's really important from that point of view. And it's also on Jamaica Street, Union Street access. It's a rare survivor, because we used to have dozens of them down that street, and they're hardly any left now. And one of them is on, very sadly, is on the buildings at risk register just around the corner where Tower Records used to be, which is by the same design team, which is a great shame because it is, that's a cracking wee building as well. And, of course, there's still the Ca d’Oro, the House of Gold up on the corner, which is-

Emily Munro:
I love the Ca d’Oro.

Niall Murphy:
... fabulous. But, there were more. So, where that car park is, directly opposite Gardner's Warehouse, there was a whole series of them there, and I think they were taken out in a fire in 1988. So, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who's the great American architectural historian of the 20th century, he regarded Glasgow's collection of cast iron warehouses as up amongst the best in the world, an equivalent of New York and Chicago, and we've really lost so many of them and they're actually really important. So, it's fantastic that Gardner's Warehouse still survives and is in fantastic shape as well. It's really a beautiful building.

Emily Munro:
It looks to be in great shape, and I've actually never been inside it.

Niall Murphy:
Have you not?

Emily Munro:
I've not.

Niall Murphy:
Oh, you should go.

Emily Munro:
There's a business which I don't need to name.

Niall Murphy:
I hesitated there.

Emily Munro:
So, it's possible go in?

Niall Murphy:
It still has its original lift inside it as well, which is, it's one of the first Otis lifts I think, in Europe. So, it's really important from that point of view as well. So, that's why I went inside it. I don't think I ever, it used to be Martin and Frost's furniture shop, but I don't think I ever went in then. So, there you go. But, great building, very good choice, and thank you very much, Emily. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.

Emily Munro:
This has been great fun.

Niall Murphy:
And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Emily Munro:
I certainly have. Thanks so much, Niall.

Niall Murphy:
Thanks for sharing all your images. It's really very fascinating. And it was quite poignant, look back in time to some of the things that we've lost, which are actually really special when you look at them now. It's much appreciated.

Speaker 3:
Glasgow City Heritage Trust is an independent charity and grant funder that promotes the understanding, appreciation, and conservation of Glasgow's historic built environment. Do you want to know more? Have a look at our website at glasgowheritage.org.uk and follow us on social media @Glasgow Heritage. This podcast was produced by Inner Ear for Glasgow City Heritage Trust. The podcast is kindly sponsored by the National Trust for Scotland and supported by Tunnock's.