Bill Brown and Duncan Macintyre rightly point to what can be lost when a city square is routinely "developed", such as the neat little red granite Crum Fountain on the north side of George Square (Letters, January 5).

It commemorated an outstanding south side industrial family.

The brothers Walter and Alexander Crum established a calico works in Thornliebank, outside which, until the demise of the numbers 14 and 25 trams in 1959, there stood a bundy clock.

Opposite the long-flattened works still stands Thornliebank Public Library, a charming rustic building gifted about 1801 by Alexander, and bearing on the outside a fine stone carving of his crest and motto.

Elder brother Walter recorded arms in 1868 as Crum of Thornliebank, and lived in some style in Birkenshaw House, a minor baronial chateau in the grounds of Rouken Glen Park, sadly demolished by Glasgow Corporation about 1958. A large three-part stained-glass window remembering the brothers is in the south side of Eastwood Parish Church.

To power the calico works, the Black Loch in Renfrewshire was dammed. The brothers had Crum Street named after them in Pollokshaws. Gone since 1960, this short street ran between Pollokshaws Burgh Hall and Sir John Stirling Maxwell School.

Each of these items, like the Crum Fountain in George Square, is small and intrinsically worthless. Together they recall a substantial slice of local industrial history. The Crum Fountain deserves a better fate than being the subject of yet another municipally organised vanishing trick.

Gordon Casely,

Westerton Cottage,

Crathes, Kincardineshire.

William Scott advocates that the George Square statues should be removed and replaced by a 21st century equivalent – a multi-dimensional electronic display able to reproduce any aspect of Scotland's history in one multi-sensory experience (Letters, January 4).

This sounds an interesting idea but has one major drawback: it would cost money to set up and to run, money we don't have. So presumably it would be down to sponsorship to fund it.

Statues might be seen as old, dull and static, but at least they cost comparatively little to maintain and appoint a degree of dignity to the heart of the city.

J A Boyd,

18 Stewart Drive, Clarkston.