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We're joined by Gabrielle Macbeth, Volunteer Coordinator at Glasgow Women's Library and Anabel Marsh, one of the Library's longest serving volunteers who tell Niall about their pioneering walking tours which started in 2007. We hear how the staff and volunteers have worked tirelessly to highlight women's diverse but often unrecognised impact on the city of Glasgow.
This conversation was recorded on 2 March 2023.
Keep an eye on our website glasgowheritage.org.uk, join us on social media @GlasgowHeritage and follow #IfGlasgowsWallsCouldTalk
This conversation was recorded on 2 March 2023.
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
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
KN
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:
Hello, everyone. I'm 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. Now, if you follow me on Twitter, you will know how much I enjoy walking around Glasgow. When you know where to look, there's probably no better way to connect with the history of the city and the hidden stories of the great unsung heroes and heroine's who have made it. But there's a catch, unless you know how and where to look, those hidden characters are likely to remain well hidden and not least the heroines. So in this episode, I'm delighted to be following the evidence uncovered by the wonderful Women Make History detectives of Glasgow Women's Library. So Women Make History, those three words might challenge a more mainstream view of the world and the way that we see the built environment.
For instance, and this is very much a perception issue, that cities like Glasgow appear to have a distinctly muscular and masculine look, and grand historic buildings and others that are less grand and every day were invariably designed, constructed, and almost always owned by a man, or at least that's the perception. The issue is, well, is that actually the case? So it's that whole idea that we live in this masculine environment that gave rise to Glasgow Women's Library more than 30 years ago. As their website explains, Glasgow Women's Library came into being partly as a response to the overarching masculine narratives in Glasgow's approach to being the European city of culture in 1990. A pioneering project then known as Women in Profile, set out to show that women were very much part of Glasgow's social and cultural history, and it has been a remarkable success story. So Glasgow Women's Library has grown from a small community venture in Garnethill, run by volunteers with no funding to become a nationally-respected institute. So it is the UK's only accredited museum devoted to women's lives, histories, and achievements.
The library is now housed in their splendid East End premises in Bridgeton, which is a former library which Glasgow City Heritage Trust help grant fund repairs to. It is a treasure trove of artefacts and archives with a team of expert paid staff, but there are also volunteers who work there. So volunteers are fundamental to the work of the library with its aim of empowering women in every walk of life. It's the volunteers, Glasgow Women's Library's very own Woman Make History detectives who research and lead the walks revealing and celebrating the lives and achievements of the many women who have made history in Glasgow. So to tell us how it's done, let's meet today's special guests, Gabrielle Macbeth, who is the volunteer coordinator working with the library's dedicated volunteers, and Anabel Marsh, a former librarian who after 10 years is now one of the libraries longest serving volunteers. So very warm welcome to the podcast for you both.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Thank you. Thanks for that great introduction.
Niall Murphy:
It's good to have you both on board. So first off, let's dive in with our first question for you. There's a lot of ground to cover here, and there's many years of history to look at too, but perhaps we should begin in Glasgow's West End. So in 2007, Glasgow Women's Library made history by creating the first Women's Heritage Walk, a groundbreaking walking tour, which set out to focus on women who had helped shape Glasgow's history. So can you tell us how that came about?
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Yeah, sure. So there's always lots of interest in women's history in the Women's Library. At the time, I think we were becoming really aware of people saying, "Oh, we need to do something. We need to do something that's reaching out to people outside of the Glasgow Women's Library that engages people with women's history." So 2006, 2007 was the team at that time decided, "Right, well, we're going to do something. We're not too sure what that could be," but we convened a group of women who were interested together and started to think, "What kind of activity could we offer that would highlight women's diverse and multiple contributions to the city?"
I think there were some pamphlets from the council's Heritage Walks lying around and they were picked up and it was a case of going, "Oh, well, women are really absent in these." So it was a quite logical jump to then think, "Oh, well, how about we create our own alternative version of this that forefronts women's contributions?" That's where it began, and we got together a group of women who were interested in doing some research who hadn't necessarily done much of that before but were keen to uncover it.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
So after some research and that process, the West End Women's Heritage Walk was born and it was launched in 2007 and we ran it as part of the West End Festival for quite a few years.
Niall Murphy:
Brilliant.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Then over the years, other walks were researched and developed.
Niall Murphy:
Okay. Can you tell me something about any of the characters that emerged from all of this research that you were doing?
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Anabel, do you want to jump in?
Anabel Marsh:
Yes. Yes, I can. Well, we've definitely got six walks that are all available in the library as leaflets, or you can download them from our website, womenslibrary.org.uk, and you can have them as audio files as well. Then in the summer, we guide the walks maybe six or so every season.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Anabel Marsh:
We've got some longer trails that we don't offer as guided walks, but can also be downloaded. So we've got two for suffragettes and one for LGBTQ history.
Niall Murphy:
Okay.
Anabel Marsh:
So there's all sorts of characters. Gabby was talking about the West End Walk, which was our first one. So you get people like Big Rachel who was part of the Partick riots, well, part of controlling the Partick riots. We start at Kelvingrove on the West End one, and we talk about how there is art by women in there, but most of the art is through a male gaze. If you look up at the top of Kelvingrove on the roof line, there are lots of images of women, sculptures of women, but they're muses, they're not real women. There are only four actual women in Glasgow named women to have statues, so we try and bring out who they are.
Niall Murphy:
Absolutely, because all of them is fascinating history.
Anabel Marsh:
Yeah, one of those is Isabella Elder, for example, who is the ... Well, if she hadn't given the money for Queen Margaret College, that would've been really difficult. She was one of the people who made higher education for women a priority. So we talk about her on the West End Walk. We talk about some of the first women graduates like Marion Gilchrist. She was the first doctor to graduate in 1894. The university had been there since 1451, but it wasn't till 1894 that they actually gave women some degrees. A very touching thing to me is that Marion Gilchrist was then the doctor who signed Isabella's death certificate when she died in 1905.
Niall Murphy:
Tell me something, I'm interested to know. Isabella Elder, 'cause it's something that really annoys me that her monument in Elder Park has Mrs. John Elder on it, which-
Anabel Marsh:
Yes.
Niall Murphy:
... to me, it really grates.
Anabel Marsh:
I think that's what Isabella wanted, really.
Niall Murphy:
Oh, really?
Anabel Marsh:
Yes.
Niall Murphy:
She did want that, okay. That's fantastic.
Anabel Marsh:
As people did in those days, she saw herself as Mrs. John Elder, and there's the Elder Park Library, there's Elder Park itself. There's Elder House.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
All these things she was really doing in memory of her husband, who was, of course, John Elder who owned the Fairfield Shipyard. So when he died quite young, she was left with a lot of money and that's how she chose to use it as a philanthropist in her own city.
Niall Murphy:
Yes, absolutely. She does enormous good works in the city, which is very interesting. There is another, it's not a statue, though, there is a rundle on a building on Govan Road, which is to Jane White Brown, which I try and point out. I've pointed it out on Twitter before, and that was Jane White Brown was really interesting because, again, she's a major Govan figure that she ran the Govan Newspaper notionally with her husband, but he again, died quite young. She had to manage that newspaper for 36 years after his death, which is why she's commemorated on that building. But you're it's absolutely right. To me, I've done a lot of work on George Square, and it comes up every time I do a walking tour of George Square, it's complete imbalance between men. There's a whole 50% of the population that's completely missing from Glasgow's story in that square, which I just think is outrageous.
Anabel Marsh:
Unless you're Queen Victoria.
Niall Murphy:
Well, absolutely, but Queen Victoria is only there because she is the monarch. That's it. Otherwise, she would not be there either. That, to me, is disgraceful. I think we have to tell that story better, and it's a whole missing aspect to our story, but the city, I think needs to address.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
It's worth checking out, Sarah Sheridan's book, which gives this fictionalised account of what Scotland would look like if streets and places were named after Women. She introduces so many incredible women who we should know more about.
Niall Murphy:
Absolutely. Yeah. Teasing out those stories is absolutely critical to me.
Anabel Marsh:
Of course, statues aren't the only thing, and we are getting a bit better at other kinds of memorials. One of the things that we pass in the East End, for instance, as the memorial to the girls that were killed and they were girls. They were as young as 14, some of them, in the Templeton Disaster. When the factory was built, the wall blew down onto the weaving sheds, and outside Carlton Community Centre, every single girl or young woman has her name and age recorded on there. So people might walk past that and not even know it's there.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
It is a memorial. It's not a statue, but that is the sort of thing that we want to bring out and draw to people's attention.
Niall Murphy:
Yes, very much. Do you think that the walks have had a good impact in that regard, that you've been able to use the walks to uncover stories and get that message out to people?
Anabel Marsh:
Well, I think so. As we've done them over the years, people tend to be less surprised by some of the stories, so you get the feeling that they have heard them before. For instance, we always used to get gasps when we revealed that St. Enoch as a woman, because a lot of people didn't know that. But-
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
... Now I think that is less the case. For those that don't know, St. Enoch is another name for St. Thenew who-
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
... is possibly the earliest woman we talk about. She was a fifth or sixth century princess who was the mother of St. Mungo, so effectively the mother of Glasgow. There is a wall plaque at the back of the St. Enoch Centre that lists all the different variations of her name from Thenew to Enoch. But still, it is a surprise to some people that they've been walking through this memorial to a woman-
Niall Murphy:
And have no idea.
Anabel Marsh:
They're doing their shopping for years-
Niall Murphy:
Yes. Yeah.
Anabel Marsh:
... and they have no idea.
Niall Murphy:
Yes, I didn't know about that, that back art. I'll have to go and have a look at that.
Anabel Marsh:
Yes, it's back of the food court.
Niall Murphy:
Right, okay. Oh, very interesting. Right, okay. I'll need to look at that. Yeah, it's fascinating because to me it's this whole hidden history that needs to be teased out. I find it really objectionable that this has been concealed. Things like, I don't don't know whether you knew her at all, but Cordelia Oliver, her archive is now up in the Glasgow School of Art Archive in the Whisky Bond. She was the arts correspondent for The Herald. This was in the 1950s, she could not use her own name. She had to be referred to as the arts correspondent because they couldn't have a woman writing for the paper, and yet she's talking about all this great art in Glasgow, and she's not allowed to use her own name.
It's just bizarre. So I find those kind of things really frustrating, and I'd really like to see those stories emerging and being told that somebody who had ... She was instrumental in helping set up things like The Fringe in Edinburgh, which she always joked about because she was a Glasgow girl and the Fringe really should have been at Glasgow, but well, nevermind, it's over in Edinburgh. She was also instrumental in Citizens Theatre, and stories like that need to be teased out somehow and made clearer to people.
Anabel Marsh:
No, I didn't know about that one. But yes, there are still lots of stories that we don't know about that. The walks are always developing and growing and we add things in as people tell them about us or we change the route slightly as we find out about other people.
Niall Murphy:
Okay. Well, can you take us on a walk then or round say one of your tours and say for instance, your groundbreaking tour at the West End, where does it lead?
Anabel Marsh:
The West End? One is possibly the one that most relates to the built environment because we basically go around the perimeter of the university. When you get to the Gorbal's walk for instance, it's been flattened twice since the things that we're talking about. So you have to use a lot of imagination, whereas the West End, everything is there. As I said, we start at Kelvingrove, we go down to what was Anderston College where we talk about the higher education of women. Then we can also talk about the education of women when they were children, because there's still Church Street Primary School there. So we can compare and contrast what a working class girl would've learned there with what the middle class girls in the private school up the road would've been learning. They would've been getting achievements and refinements and piano playing and French and the other girls would be learning how to be wives and mothers, that sort of thing.
Niall Murphy:
Sure. Absolutely.
Anabel Marsh:
We talk about the suffragettes because, well, we talk about the suffragettes in two places on this walk because, oh, over 20 years ago now on International Women's Day some of the students got up early and they renamed all the buildings at Glasgow University after women, because they're all currently after men. So-
Niall Murphy:
Yes,
Anabel Marsh:
... they chose a lot of suffragettes, and we talk about that. And then we also then go past the Isabella Elder Building at Glasgow University, which was the first one to be called after a woman. It's not a very pretty building, but it is called after Isabella.
Niall Murphy:
Good.
Anabel Marsh:
We talk a lot about her. We go past the Macintosh house, so we can point out that Charles Rennie McIntosh was very famous, but Margaret McDonald, his wife was a very well-renowned artist in her own right.
Niall Murphy:
Absolutely, they're a complete artistic pairing and that should really be respected. It's not just him, and he totally acknowledges that in all of his letters to her that this was a full relationship and a full partnership.
Anabel Marsh:
"I have talent, Margaret has genius," was basically what he said. Then we finish off at the Suffragette Walk at the top of University Avenue, well, Kelvin Way, University Avenue, that junction-
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
... which was planted in 1918 by suffragettes after the first women got the vote. Despite the best work of Storm Ophelia a few years ago, it's still standing because it did lose a lot of its branches and had to have a lot of attention. It wasn't entirely clear that it was going to survive, but it has.
Niall Murphy:
Great.
Anabel Marsh:
In 2015, the library nominated it as Tree of the Year, which duly won.
Niall Murphy:
Fantastic.
Anabel Marsh:
We're very proud of our Oak.
Niall Murphy:
Very good. Okay, so your walks are full of fascinating stories and there are 12 stops on each guided walk. So obviously that's a lot of background research that you have to do. So what does it take to become a Women Make History detective? How do you plot the routes and seek out the woman on each trail?
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Well, so our history detectives come from all walks of life, I think. As I said earlier, we're not necessarily looking for people who have tonnes of research experience. Each time we've developed a walk, we've put a call-out, so anyone interested, anyone from this area maybe who lives there want to come and join our team. We've always had someone who's facilitated the research and been able to guide people, so where you go and find this information. So yes, it's drawn lots of people, local women who are just like, "Oh, I've lived here all my life. I want to learn more," or, "I know lots already," people who are maybe new to those areas or new to the city who are using this as a way of finding out about Glasgow.
But the process usually yields a lot more information than we can actually include in a two-hour walk, which goes to show it's not difficult to find this information if you go looking for it. So the process always then involves a lot of pairing it down and deciding what works as a trail, as a walkable route within two hours and what are the stories that we think are going to engage audiences the most. I think there's probably some wrangling that goes on as well 'cause some people are like, "But I really want this woman's story in." It's like, "Well, we can't include everyone," so a bit of diplomatic work goes on, but that research doesn't get lost. We hold on to it.So it can be used in other ways.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, I've had similar experiences doing walking trails on the south side and there's some really interesting stories, but they are just off what would be a potential route, they're just too far away to make it feasible within a certain timeframe, and that it can be hugely frustrating that when you've got a really juicy nugget sitting there, but there's nothing you can do about it.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Yeah, it's a shame. It's an iterative process because each time the walks are delivered, the guides say, "If anyone's got any additional information, please contribute that." So we're always updating the scripts and adding new information as it comes to life, and I think audiences really value that that we're recognising their local knowledge as well and are able to incorporate that.
Niall Murphy:
So it sounds like a real labour of love. Do the volunteers make strong connections with women on the trail? Is it difficult therefore to choose whose story to tell?
Anabel Marsh:
We certainly do. As you've probably gathered from what I've talked about so far, one of my favourite women is Isabella Elder. She was the first one that I fell in love with if you like, mainly because of what she did for higher education for women, and also because she built a library, and I'm a librarian. She gave money to the engineering department at Glasgow and what became Strathclyde, and my husband's an academic engineer, so she just seemed to really speak to me. So I'm very happy that we've got her in the West End walk. We also talk about her in the Necropolis walk because she's buried up there in the Elder family tomb.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Anabel Marsh:
But she's been superseded in my heart. My favourite woman is now one called Jessie Stephen. Well, she's probably the only working class Scottish suffragette that really know anything much about. She was born in 1893, so she was quite a young suffragette.
Niall Murphy:
Okay.
Anabel Marsh:
What she did was she worked as a domestic servant, and she took part in the pillar box outrage as the Glasgow Herald put it, where the suffragettes would put ink or acid into the pillar boxes. She was able to use her working class identity as a shield for that because as she said, she was in her uniform, black dress, lace, captain cuffs. Nobody was going to look at her, much less think that she was a subversive about to attack a pillar box. I don't know, she was just an amazingly feisty woman. When she was 16, she was vice chair of the Independent Labour Party in Maryhill.
Niall Murphy:
Wow.
Anabel Marsh:
She was very concerned about the conditions that she and other servants worked with, so she set up the Scottish Domestic Workers Federation in 1913. So remember she was born in 1893, so this was when by the time she was 20, she'd done all this.
Niall Murphy:
Wow.
Anabel Marsh:
Then she was headhunted by Sylvia Pankhurst during the First World War, went off to work for her in London and never really lived in Glasgow again, but she grew up here. She's one of ours. She's just amazing. I think she gives an interesting contrast to Isabella in terms of the built environment because with a rich woman like Isabella, she's pretty much in control of her legacy. She's left buildings, her house is still there.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
She's on the gates, the commemorative gates at Glasgow University. She has a statue. There's a portrait over her in Kelvingrove. She's obvious.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
But Jessie, you have to more tease out her relationship with the city, but she's still there because you can identify, I know two of the houses that she worked in as a servant. From that, I've become a bit obsessed with post boxes, so I've been looking around what post box could it be that she used?
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
It's an amazing amount of Victorian and Edwardian post boxes still about the place, and there's one-
Niall Murphy:
Indeed.
Anabel Marsh:
... just opposite one of the houses that she worked. So I post my letters in there and think, This is where Jesse stood."
Niall Murphy:
That's amazing. Which houses did she work in?
Anabel Marsh:
Well, she worked in the West End. I don't want to give addresses particularly, but this one is one of the terraces off Great Western Road, and there's a post box just on the other side of Great Western Road.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Okay. So what happened to Jessie? Obviously she went off down to London. What happened to her? How did you manage to find her history?
Anabel Marsh:
Well, as I say, she's one of the few, if not only Scottish suffragette that we know anything about, but she has actually been quite easy to find out about because she left record. She wrote her own autobiography. It was never published, but it is now available online through the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester. She was interviewed in the 1970s by Spare Rib and also by a man called Brian Harrison, who interviewed as many surviving suffragettes as he could find. There are several hundred of them actually, which is quite surprising, but she's one of them. So there's about two hours of Jessie talking right online through the Women's Library in London.
Niall Murphy:
Oh, that's fantastic. You can hear her.
Anabel Marsh:
Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
That's amazing.
Anabel Marsh:
So she wasn't difficult to find out about and also because she never married, so she didn't have the responsibility of her husband and children. So she wasn't as reticent about getting caught or being very opinionated.
Niall Murphy:
Yes. Yes. She had less to lose.
Anabel Marsh:
She was a counsellor in several different places. She toured North America lecturing about socialism and the labour movement and-
Niall Murphy:
Oh, that's fantastic.
Anabel Marsh:
She never became an MP, but she mixed with people like Barbara Castle and Tony Benn who were at funeral.
Niall Murphy:
Hugely respected then.
Anabel Marsh:
An amazing person, but not that much known about.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, no, that's fascinating to hear. Handily enough, it brings me on to my next question, and it's something of a theme for this podcast that we look at housing issues in Glasgow. So one of the things we're really interested in is the rent strikes in 1915 and how Glaswegian Women helped to change the history because that was a national event that started in Govan and then spread right across the UK and resulted in as government at the time stepping in. So is that something that you explore in the Heritage Walks?
Anabel Marsh:
We do. We don't go to Govan. We don't have a walk there, but we do have a section on this in our East End walk, and we go to Glasgow Green 'cause of course, Glasgow Green has been the site of hundreds, thousands of protests over the years. So we talk there about the suffragettes rallied there, the Glasgow Women's Housing people that you're talking about, people like Mary Barbour, Helen Crawford.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
But they also were part of the Women's Peace Crusade as well in 1917, so we link all that together. So we talk a lot about activist women and not just the very historic ones. There are other women in the later part of the 20th century that we talk about. We've got people like Betty McAllister in the Carlton who was an activist there and who famously told Margaret Thatcher when she came to visit that she could stick the poll tax where the sun don't shine. Betty Brown, who was the leader of the community council in Garnethill in the '80s and '90s, and so took the place by the scruff of the neck, and both of those women working class women, Betty McAllister worked in a fish shop. Betty Brown was a cleaner at STV, but they created such a lot for their own communities, and both of them were actually named Scot's Women of the Year in different years. So they were acknowledged and we tried to acknowledge them in our walks as well.
Niall Murphy:
That's fantastic. Okay, next question then. Glasgow and the city, it's obviously always changing all the time. So after more than a decade of doing Women's Heritage Walks, are you seeing any signs that Glasgow is becoming a less masculine city?
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Like Anabel said, I think some of the things that our tour guides reveal get slightly less of a gasp than I think the women's libraries played a role in highlighting women's roles. But I don't think we can take all the credit. I think there's generally a better understanding of how much women's history has been overlooked and sidelined. But there are clearly so many more stories to be uncovered. It's been said that only I think, now 0.5% of recorded history is about women, right?
Niall Murphy:
Yeah.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
There's still plenty to uncover and record. I sometimes think our tour guides and our history detectives sometimes rescue information from literally dropping off into the abyss and then it's lost forever. There are things that are fragile. So-
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
... there's definitely a need to be continuing to do this work and to do it with a sense of urgency. So it's great to see other groups doing really great work as well. The protests and suffragettes group have done a huge amount of work, obviously focusing on the suffrage movement. We've also worked with a group called Thistles & Dandelions, which is a Heritage project.
Niall Murphy:
Yes. Yes, I know them. Yes.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
They look specifically at unearthing and making visible the stories relating to ethnic minority women in the city. So there's still definitely a lot to be done, but I like to think that well, less masculine sides of Glasgow are becoming more visible and we're getting a more rounded view of-
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
... who's made the city and contributed to it.
Niall Murphy:
Yes, absolutely. I did three walking trail leaflets of Pollokshields, and one of my big regrets as part of that, 'cause it covered both the east and the west sides of Pollokshields on the south side of Glasgow and also who had developed the whole area. But my big regret was I always intended there to be a fourth walking trail leaflet, which was about Asian experience of Pollokshields, because obviously it's one of the most multicultural areas in Scotland and neighbouring Gover Hill and a voice hoped that somebody at some point would begin to tell those stories because they're a core part of Glasgow's story as well. So that diversity is so important-
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Absolutely.
Niall Murphy:
... in capturing that too.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Yeah, absolutely.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah. Everyone has a right history.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Yes. That's it, and there's so much missing from the mainstream.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
... narrative.
Niall Murphy:
But it's about empowering people to be able to tell that story. You can't go out and tell it for them because somebody asked me, "Why didn't you do it if you felt so strongly about it?" It was like, "Because it shouldn't be coming from me." That wouldn't be appropriate.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
I think that's true. I think that's what we loved working with the Thistles & Dandelions group. They actually came on three or four of our walks to get a sense of how we do it and had chats with various tour guides. But it's just so great to see them thinking, "Well, we have our story to tell as well," and having pride in that and sharing it with more people.
Niall Murphy:
Very much.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
I think it's very heartening when we see men come on the Women's Heritage Walks, because I feel really strongly that this isn't just women's history that's aimed at women. I've had to learn about men's history my entire life, so-
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
... and that's never been questioned. I think the same as our responsibility as a white person to learn about the history of Black and minority ethnic people in our city.
Niall Murphy:
Absolutely. This is a wee bit funny, though. It was back in 2017, I helped out with as a leaflet woman war in the West End, and it was sponsored by various funders. A part of it was there had to be a walking tour for it and they couldn't find anyone to do the walking tours and eventually, asked me. I was like, "Okay, well this is slightly awkward, but if you're really struggling I'll do it for you." It was really fascinating learning the history about that. Again, I just think it's obviously my mother brought me up the right way, but I think it's really important to know that because it gives you a proper rounded view of the history of the place, not just the one-sided one or whoever was on top at a particular time. Okay then. What is next view on the horizon for the Women's History Detectives, and is there anything you would like to develop and what gives you the most pride so far?
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Wow, multi-part question. Well, on the horizon, so we're continuously reviewing our trails, so that's ongoing work. We recruited seven new volunteer guides last summer-
Niall Murphy:
Wow.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
... which, yeah, it was great to see that so many people were keen to get involved and lots of young women as well.
Niall Murphy:
Good.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
So yeah, they're learning the scripts and learning the ropes, and we'll be delivering those walks from April onwards. We've got a few walks planned for the next few months. We're working in Denniston and we're not necessarily going to develop a Women's Heritage Walk in that area because it depends what the group wants to do. But we've just started a series of workshops there to uncover the hidden histories of women in that area and that's a year-long project. So looking forward to seeing who we uncover and what becomes of that information. I heard murmurs of a Women's Heritage Walk, it's very early days, so I don't want to commit any of my colleagues to doing that. Anabel, I don't know, do you want to answer the question about that?
Anabel Marsh:
Well, I was going to say, I think the pandemic made us look at everything in a different way. Again, we had to find a different way of still engaging with this material and people that wanted to know about it. So we did a series of Twitter walks. We did all our walks on Twitter.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Okay.
Anabel Marsh:
Not literally. This is one I prepared earlier because it's quite tricky to get meaningful information into a tweet, but two of us, myself and another volunteer, Louise, we divided them between us and they were really popular.
Niall Murphy:
Good.
Anabel Marsh:
They went down very well. Another volunteer, Melody, made some trailers for the walks. So we used the time that we couldn't take people out actually into the environment by doing it virtually.
Niall Murphy:
Sure. Yes. I did one or two of those myself. Yeah, it's quite good fun.
Anabel Marsh:
As Gabby says, we're always revising and changing the routes. Again, it's pandemic related, but the Friends of Glasgow and Necropolis have renovated three historic stones to nurses and as a tribute to the NHS, we did that after the pandemic. So now we are looking at our route to how we can redesign that to take maybe one or two of those in. So that's another project to just make sure we don't get bored.
Niall Murphy:
Who comes on your walks in terms of, is it people from outside of Glasgow with people within Glasgow? How does that work?
Anabel Marsh:
Both. It's a mix. Yeah. I think the furthest I can remember having somebody is from Australia. Quite often we get people who are just here on holiday or visiting family or something and they come on the walks, but we'd say it's mostly fairly local people. But we do get quite a lot of people from other countries, which is nice that they're going to go home with this view of Glasgow.
Niall Murphy:
You get good feedback at the end?
Anabel Marsh:
Always. Yes. Yes. The negative ones are things like, "Well, we could have had a cup of tea," but we just don't have time to get a cup of tea. No. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that most people enjoy it and they're very complimentary about the guides, which is nice. That makes you feel quite good about it.
Niall Murphy:
When I did the Women, War & The West End once, we always ended in the pub, so it was in Webster's Theatre. There's a pub at the back of Webster's Theatre on Great Western Road. So that was really nice 'cause it was round about the time and so they've got fantastic roaring fire in there and you could end up with having a really good chin wag with folks you wouldn't otherwise ordinarily meet, so really, really enjoyable experience. So I find doing walking tours really rewarding 'cause it's not just you telling people the stories, you're getting their opinions and their stories too out of it. So really, to me, it's a brilliant educational tool in both directions.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
We've done tours for closed groups as well, and we sometimes get asked to offer a tour as part of someone's conference. So they might have a gathering of feminist academics visiting, coming to a conference and we are offering them a tour. I love the idea that those people are leaving the city having had a real women's focus on the city, and that's what they're coming away with.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
People really engage with it. Our guides are brilliant at presenting the information in ways that are accessible to people who might have quite a lot of background in Glasgow and Scottish history and then adapting that for people who don't 'cause sometimes, I suppose we do assume that people know who St. Mungo is if we're talking about St. Enoch. We've also started offering shorter walks because our walks are typically two hours long, but we recognise that that can feel like a long time for some, so we trialled a one-hour walk the East End last summer and we're planning on doing that again and offering it in two shorter sessions.
Niall Murphy:
Yes, I did that one year for Doors Open Day rather than doing long walking tours, which I had been used to doing. I did half-hour lunchtime tours instead throughout the week, so in just around little parts of the city centre. The idea was to give somebody who was stuck in the office a chance to get out and go for a break and see a bit of the city while we're at it and explain the city while we're at it. So those were quite popular, which was quite interesting. Okay, so this is the final question then, and this is a completely loaded question because we ask, everybody who comes on our podcast this, which is, what is your favourite building in Glasgow on or off Women's Heritage Walk, and what would it tell you if its walls could talk?
Anabel Marsh:
Who goes first? I'll go first. I'm going to go off the Women's Library walks because I also have a Women's Heritage Walk in Maryhill-
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Anabel Marsh:
... that I do out at Maryhill Burgh Hall, so I'm going to choose it as my favourite building.
Niall Murphy:
Nice choice.
Anabel Marsh:
I think what it tells is also the developing role of women because its unique selling point is the set of 20 stained glass windows that were made for the opening in the 1870s, Stephen Adam.
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Anabel Marsh:
Unlike when you normally get stained glass windows, it's religious scenes or classical scenes or whatever, it's of ordinary working people going about their lives, doing their jobs, and of those 22 show women.
Niall Murphy:
Right
Anabel Marsh:
Now, okay, Stephen Adam just showed what he saw. That's fair enough. Then you look, they have display a picture of the original opening of the halls and it's just this sea of men everywhere-
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Anabel Marsh:
... rows and rows of men. Then next to it they've got the picture of the opening after the halls had been renovated in 2012, and it's just such a lovely mix. There's lots of women involved there. So I think that you can see that that is showing the progression of women and our increasing role in society. I have to say, I thought when I was asked to do a Women's Heritage Walk there, I thought it might be quite difficult to turn up stories, but it wasn't. They're there if you look, and you've just got to think a little bit laterally and tease them out.
Niall Murphy:
What about you then, Gabrielle?
Gabrielle Macbeth:
I've chosen to talk about the building the houses Glasgow Women's Library. I spend a lot of time there and I do love it, and I love turning up to work. Some mornings it's even more beautiful than others. For those who you haven't visited, it's in Bridgeton and it's a Carnegie Library, so-
Niall Murphy:
Yes, it's beautiful.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
It is beautiful. We've been there almost 10 years and have done a lot of work to make it fit for our purposes and to look after it as well and done quite a lot of repairs to the roof and the stonework. We're now working towards making it-
Niall Murphy:
We helped out with the stonework and the roof, so.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Yes. Yes.
Niall Murphy:
Being up the a scaffold is fantastic except the carvings are really beautiful, aren't they?
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
But you also appreciate how much the pollution in Glasgow must have damaged the building because obviously it's all been stone cleaned now and it looks lovely, blonde sandstone now, but some of it is really badly weathered because of all that pollution.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
There was damage, but to me, I think it's if the walls could speak, they would talk of the importance and the power of public libraries and of free, accessible public spaces. It's been at the heart of Bridgeton for 120 years almost, and it's now home to the Women's Library. It's a really wonderful dynamic and loved and cared for space that offers opportunities for women and others to come and learn. We have a beautiful new sign by an artist called Rabiya Choudhry.
Niall Murphy:
Oh, I'll have to go and see that.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Yes, please do. It's brand new and it's part of a wider project by the Common Guild, and the sign it's borrowed the flame motif, which was Carnegie's emblem and it has the words of an African American civil rights activist called Ella Baker, and it says, "Give light and people will find the way." I think that's-
Niall Murphy:
That's beautiful.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
... a really beautiful phrase, but the project is, it's got, there's four other artists who have been commissioned as well to reflect on public libraries and the importance of public libraries past and present and future.
Niall Murphy:
Right. I loved your previous sign as well, by the way. I was a real fan of that too, but that is very nice, and I must go make the visit to see it. Completely agree with you, Anabel, about that, Maryhill Burgh Halls and Stephen Adam's stained glass, which is really superb. He was a really good artist and how he manages to capture the woman's role there as well is incredibly important. That reminded me of a story Dr. Nina Baker tells about the City Chambers. She does a really good talk about the City Chambers, one of which was how badly designed it was from a woman's point of view, which was when they held the opening, a banquet and dance. All of these men obviously brought their wives along too.
The toilet provision for women was next to non-existent. There was one toilet in the basement and everything else was for men and they're like, "Uh." It sums up Victorian because nobody planned for that kind of thing at the time. You're thinking, "How did you not know to anticipate this that you wouldn't design for 50% of the population?" Really shocking. But it's all of these spaces end up getting adapted over time for everybody. That's the key thing, and it's teasing out that history so everybody's history is recorded. What's so important about this. But thank you very much. That was a really enjoyable talk.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Thank you.
Anabel Marsh:
Thank you.
Niall Murphy:
Yes. I'm so glad to meet people who really enjoy doing walks as well, as much as I do, so it's fantastic. It's a really rewarding thing to do. It's a thing I enjoy the most.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
Well, so do we.
Niall Murphy:
Well, thank you very much for your time. It's much appreciated.
Gabrielle Macbeth:
No problem. Thank you very much.
Niall Murphy:
Our pleasure.
Katherine Neil:
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 at 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.