Brickyard Road

Glebe Sugar Refinery can be found on the corner of Ker Street and Crawfurd Street is one of the last remaining warehouses that acts as a reminder of Greenock's role in the sugar industry. This once beautiful five-storey red and blonde brick warehouse was built in the 19th century to cater for the growth in sugar refining in the town, testament to an age when even industrial buildings were lovely to look at.

During the 1800's Greenock's location had allowed it to capitalise on the imports of sugar cane arriving into Britain from the West Indies. By the 1870s, there were 15 large refineries operating on the locale producing a quarter of a million tons of sugar annually and employing thousands of men. Greenock was second only to London within the British Empire in terms of the volume of trade being conducted and Greenock became known as Sugaropolis, the sugar capital of Scotland.

Irish and strangely German immigrants came to Greenock to service the refineries; however the Germans had been considered as masters of the sugar trade for some time and many came to Britain from rural North Germany in search of work. Census data shows that in 1881 there were fewer than two dozen Germans in the Inverclyde area yet, by 1891, this figure had grown to nearer 1,000 a clear indication of the size and importance of the sugar trade to this port.

One of the significant personalities involved in the industry was Abram Lyle, he bought shares in the Glebe Sugar Company as part of a partnership of local merchants in 1865, Lyle was to go on to make his fame and fortune from sugar. Later as a provost of Greenock, Abraham Lyle presided over the development of several important industrial developments, including the James Watt Dock, the municipal buildings, and the construction of the road to the Lyle Hill a significant landmark that bears his name to this day.

In 1921 some 30 years after Lyle"s death, the Tate and Lyle sugar companies merged to become the largest sugar company in the world. The abolition of duties on sugar in 1874 had a great impact on the Greenock refineries seeing an increase in output to meet the growing desire for this sweetest of products.

I remember as a child going on a school trip to see through the Tate & Lyle factory, my school friend Nikoli Mongroo's father having been seconded from St Lucia to Greenock and settling in our little village. The refinery long gone now, the little that is left of the factory derelict and subject of demolition. The Glebe refinery is itself now behind safety fencing, home to the pigeons. Heritage soon to be lost forever and I am glad to have been able to shoot it before it is allowed to consigned to history.

I liked the sweeping arc of the kerb and the symmetry of the cobbles, the derrik on the 5th floor and the modern touch of the trainers on the wire, it made me think of a set from The Wire of an American film, maybe that's just me!! Nice in Large and I hope you enjoy