Introduction
Glasgow Story Collective was established several years ago by a group of individuals who came together after being dismayed at the amount of Glasgow's heritage that was being lost. Many of the group's members all have experience of working with grass roots voluntary organisations, and all have experience of working with heritage projects. They are all deeply passionate about preserving our heritage by whatever means are possible, from working with archaeologists and building preservation groups, to recording the past through memory, photography and digitisation.
The idea for ‘Glasgow’s Highstreets: An oral history of stores, shopping, and spectacles!’ came about through casual chats, followed by more focused discussions, about the issues facing today’s highstreets and the decline in both shops and footfall. Hoping to capture something of Glasgow’s past heyday, when most people shopped in the city’s stores, boutiques and markets, Glasgow Story Collective successfully applied to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for funding to deliver this project.
The project, in part, explores the highstreet phenomenon of department stores that emerged during the latter half of the 19th century, in the midst of the industrial revolution. As ‘Second City of the Empire, Glasgow was well placed in terms of wealth and department stores and were opened in that Dear Green Place and its outlying conurbations. Often built on the success of former drapery businesses, as was the case with Glasgow’s Watt Brothers, which recently went into administration after over 100 years in business, these department stores offered a new kind of shopping experience that offered mass produced, ready-made items, such as clothing, linens, jewellery, hardware, and furnishings. Department stores encouraged a hitherto unknown culture of ‘browsing’ as shoppers were encouraged to meander through the many departments which brought together different and varied goods under one roof. Purchasing was not compulsory in these shops, which was an innovation at the time. Women were finally able to shop safely without the company of men to guide them safely through the streets. Levels of customer service were high. Shops were sometimes fitted out like miniature palaces. There were home delivery and clothes alteration services. Crèches for children were often available, along with reading and writing rooms for men to amuse themselves whilst their wives shopped. Stores had restaurants, cafes, and sometimes roof gardens, and musicians played in the stores. On occasion, fashion shows and art exhibitions were on offer. There were travel agents and bridal departments. Window dressing drew people into the departments stores throughout the year, most notably on special occasions like Christmas, with windows being decorated with lavish displays that included moving figures. One respondent’s late father was an electrician at Copeland and Lye, an opulent department store selling Paris fashions, amongst other things, which was open from 1878 to 1971 on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. The electrician would delight in setting up model railways in what was described as “fabulous window displays for Christmas!” Another respondent remembers visiting the famous Selfridges in London in the mid twentieth century and finding it to be like a “bargain basement store” in comparison to what she saw as the more glamorous department stores of Glasgow, such as Daly’s, Wylie and Lochhead, Copeland & Lye, and Pettigrew & Stephens, to name but a few. Another respondent remembers being required to walk with a book on his head as part of his training for one of the big Glasgow department stores in the 1960s. These testimonies offer tantalising glimpses into how Victorian levels of customer service and theatre were maintained in these stores well into the twentieth century.
We have been supported by some wonderful organisation and individuals to create the project’s oral history archive, which contains unique interviews with visitors, shoppers, and staff, and provides a wonderful reminder of what our highstreets used to be like, and some forthright suggestions as to what would entice people back to our towns and cities.
Browse through this website to learn more about Glasgow’s highstreets of the past, and to hear some of those fascinating memories...
