Dumbreck Heritage Walk

Thanks to Gillipaw for inspiring me to find something interesting on the Glasgow Open Doors programme. Sadly I missed Scottish Ballet, which was yesterday, but I found a heritage walk fairly locally and went along. It was round Dumbreck, a very nice area not far from where I live, and full of lovely old houses. We started at Craigie Hall, then headed along past a variety of lovely old sandstone houses built by George Hamilton, one of the folk who both lived in and shaped this area, having the characteristic details like crow steps, basses and rope work in the beautiful sandstone. We also had Bill Struth's house pointed out, one of the greatest Scottish football managers ever (he managed Rangers for 34 years from 1920 to 1954, winning 18 league championships, 10 Scottish cups, 2 league cups, 7 war time championships and a whole host of other footballing honours) and the house where Gordon Brown lived his first 3 years before his family moved to Kirkcaldy. We ended up around Hazelwood conservation area, Hamilton in his later years went from beautiful old sandstone buildings to modern, arts and crafts influenced 'electric houses', with wonderful little touches, built in what was the grounds of Hazelwood House, now a Roman Catholic Retreat Centre, beautifully restored over the last few years. One of the guys on the tour was a local community councillor, and lives in one of the electric houses, so had all kinds of extra details to share, which was fascinating. They were designed and built in the period from 1914 - immediate post WW1, and have curtain details in their stained glass windows to mean that people didn't have to buy curtains! I wish I could post more than one picture! A collage wouldn't give you enough detail to see all I'd want to show, but will post some on Flickr at some point soon and direct you there.

Edit: See photos here.