Motorway link uncovers a bounty of treasures from recent history.
By Rachelle Money
AN intact pharmacy, piles of teeth, and a Yemeni prayer room are just some of the discoveries made by the UK's biggest archaeology project who are busy trying to unearth what lies beneath the controversial M74 motorway link which got the go-ahead last week.
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The five mile route which will cost £657 million, 50% more than originally estimated, will run from Fullarton junction near Carmyle to the M8 just west of the Kingston Bridge with work expecting to start in May and be completed by 2011. Glasgow City Council along with M74 project partners, HAPCA, formed by firms Headland Archaeology and Pre-Construct Archaeology, have been working with oral historians to piece together information about how people lived and worked across six different sites.
They have already excavated three sites at the Govan Iron Works, Caledonian Pottery and a buried tenement building on Pollokshaws Road. This week they will move on to three new sites - Kingston Limeworks in Tradeston, Eglinton Foundry and cotton mills and a steamie on Mauchline Street.
Hugh McBrien, consultant for West of Scotland Archaeology Service, said every site has produced surprises.
"The Caledonian Pottery was an important site because the owners were innovating firing kilns. They used gas kilns instead of solid fuel and we knew that the owners of that company, before Hartley's (Jam) took over in 1888, had a patent for firing kilns so we were looking to see what experiments were taking place on site.
"We have a photograph of the pottery and you can see there are houses in the background, unlike other potteries that didn't because of all the dark smoke they produced."He added: "We have also found details of things that have never been recorded, like a small gas works which was built inside the pottery."
McBrien said they also found five different methods of laying foundations at 19th century tenement buildings in South Laurieston including one by famous Scots architect Alexander Greek' Thomson.
"We also found out why those who said the Alexander Greek' Thomson's Queen's Terrace building couldn't be saved were right - the backwall had been built on landfill."
Archaeologists at the Greek Thomson building also found an informal prayer room used by visiting Yemeni sailors in the early 20th century, and a pile of dentures were found too where a Jewish dentists used to be.
McBrien also revealed they have just uncovered a complete pharmacy, although he was unable to say where.
"The pharmacy is virtually intact. We can't say the location because there's still a lot of medicines and chemicals in there, and we will be sending archaeologists in to further investigate the site. Someone obviously couldn't be bothered clearing it out and 1970s demolishers weren't too interested in whether premises has cleared their stuff out, they just bulldozed it."
McBrien said people don't record recent history because they consider mundane daily activities as unimportant.
"We have a floating gap of knowledge. We showed some kids a teapot spout and asked them what it was and they couldn't tell us. When we showed them the entire teapot they still couldn't tell us what it was. This generation can't recognise teapots because they've never seen their parents use one. They can't imagine what it's like to have a coal fire or cleaning out the ashes every morning. It's these kind of mundane details which don't get written down and will eventually be lost."
Alan Anderson, project engineer for Glasgow City Council, said the £4.9m archaeological dig is a "social inclusion project" where communities can develop a sense of "civic pride."
"This project isn't archaeology as people understand it to be. People think it's about digging up dinosaur bones, but this is really about filling gaps in knowledge and capturing knowledge which may seem to be fairly modern but won't be to future generations. It can provide a link between past generations and develop a sense of civic pride."
An exhibition has been set up at Scotland Street School Museum which also has a simulated dig where school children can learn about archaeological processes. The public are also regularly invited to open days, lectures and masterclasses on archaeology, and provide testimonies for the oral history project, headed by David Walker, Scottish Oral History Centre at Strathclyde University.
Walker said his work into the lower English buildings at Govan Ironworks (also known as Dixon's Blazes because of the furnaces lit up the skyline) has been the most interesting.
"The owner William Dixon built houses for workers who had to be brought up from England, but we have never seen a photograph of them. A man from Penbrook, Massachusetts, Arthur McIntyre, approached us to say he had been born in the lower English buildings and had a photograph of his family from 1925 outside the building.
"This is a great picture because initially you count the number of people in the picture and if you look at it closely you can see an old man, inside the house peering through the curtains. He's the grandfather of the house. He was called Jigger Ne'er because he loved dancing.
"Archaeologists had to make assumptions about what the buildings would have looked like but it was through talking to people we managed to get hard evidence."The announcement last Thursday that construction of the M74 had been given the go-ahead by ministers came as a blow to environmental campaigners who have fought the Scottish government since the then Executive went ahead with the proposals against the advice of a public inquiry. Environmental groups challenged the decision at the Court of Session, but it was abandoned because of legal costs.
Patrick Harvie, Green MSP said: "While it's definitely worth studying the communities that used to live in the southeast of Glasgow, our priority is to keep fighting the M74 and trying to protect the people who live there now. If we don't succeed, future archaeologists will be picking through the tarmac and wondering why anyone would have built this road."
Dr Dan Barlow, acting director WW it was "ironic" that the dig was part of a social inclusion project.
"There are communities which will suffer as a direct result of the M74 and in many ways will be detrimental. There are genuine concerns about air pollution and implications of climate change of any road scheme on this kind of scale. It is really disappointing that this project is going ahead especially when a public inquiry's recommendation was not to proceed. It's a shame that determination from the community has ran out."
The exhibition and oral history project will run until Spring 2009.
To get involved in the project email m74dig@glasgow.gov.uk or phone 0141 418 2840
