DEEDEE CUDDIHY on a tenement testament that pulls no punches
IT'S often claimed that kids these days are out of control and have no
respect for their elders, but according to a new exhibition at
Springburn Museum in Glasgow, it has always been that way.
The Tenement Folk examines a boy's life in Springburn during the
period 1911-1926 when youngsters were expected to make their own
entertainment.
This was a challenge that Andrew Lillie and his pals apparently rose
to with gusto. Now aged 84, Mr Lillie spent the first 15 years of his
life in Springburn and had such happy memories of the place that on his
retirement from Glasgow Corporation, where he worked as an architect, he
decided to make a meticulous record, in words and highly detailed
watercolour paintings, of his Springburn youth.
The paintings and manuscript along with lists of what had been sold in
local paper, toy and sweetie shops, lay undisturbed in his south-side
home until Eileen Gordon of Springburn Museum heard about them and
decided to investigate.
''I was stunned when Mr Lillie showed me his work,'' she recalls.
''There, in a corner of the sitting room, were the makings of an entire
exhibition -- including the title, The Tenement Folk, which is what he
had called the project.''
A year later, Andrew Lillie's childhood has come to life in the museum
in Atlas Square, where a selection of his watercolours plus accompanying
descriptions has been complemented by a tenement kitchen (including an
aspidistra plant ordered specially for the show), a ''cludgie'' and a
classroom, re-created from the museum's own collection of period
objects.
In The Tenement Folk, Mr Lillie doesn't gloss over the fact that while
he may have been willing to go a message for his pipe-smoking old
granny, he was no angel when it came to the rough and tumble of everyday
Springburn life.
The exhibition recalls schoolbag bashing; the chucking of stones,
clods of earth and snowballs at a variety of targets including girls,
rival gangs and the school;attacking ''the enemy'' using a battery of
weapons fashioned from lumps of wood and metal umbrella spokes; the
constant lighting of bonfires; spitting water at adults; kicking muddy
footballs into clean washing and what Mr Lillie fondly refers to as his
first ''jellie-nosed, black-eyed'' fight.
And you thought your kids were badly behaved.
A series of workshops where people of all ages can have a go at making
their own wally close tile -- as once found in superior Springburn
tenements -- is being held at the museum this month. Contact Eileen
Gordon on 0141-557 1405 for details.
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