The past beneath the pavements

Isn't it a bit weird to do a major archaeological dig on twentieth-century remains? That's a question that Hugh McBrien gets a lot. McBrien, site supervisor overseeing the excavation of Victorian, Edwardian and pre-war remains lying in the path of the M74 extension, agrees that your typical archaeologist is usually looking for prehistoric pottery, not Edwardian jam jars.

He admits that the M74 excavations were "largely an experiment", driven partly by consideration for future archaeologists. But he insists it has been worthwhile - McBrien believes this huge £4.9m projectis the largest single archaeological dig ever undertaken in the UK. What was daily life like in an Iron Age broch? We'll never really know for sure. But we do know what it was like living in the shadow of Govan Iron Works, later known as Dixon's Blazes. We know that women in the tied cottages, known as Lower English Buildings, had to put their washing out in sulphurous fumes. We know that they slept in box beds. We know that the six huge blast furnaces fired 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And we know all this because there are still plenty of people around who remember. "Everyone of 70 or over will remember that the south side sky was red every night," says McBrien. "It's part of the city's history."

Recording that history - before it's too late - was the driving force behind the M74 dig. Three main sites were selected - Pollokshaws Road tenements; Dixon's Blazes; and Caledonian Pottery - plus several smaller locations, such as Kinning Street Engine Works. Glasgow has such a prolific architectural legacy from the Victorians, it might seem absurd to worry that their importance could be overlooked. But the very fact of being so steeped in the recent past has caused complacency, and regret, before, particularly the decision to demolish so many tenements in the 1960s.

Where the modern archaeologist rails against the Victorian gentleman "vandals" who destroyed the footprint of previous generations in the name of progress, the M74 dig team didn't want to fall into the same trap. "We don't know everything about the recent past," says McBrien. "The mundane, the everyday, doesn't get recorded and then a couple of generations later, it gets forgotten."

To mark the dig's end, Uncovering Industry: The M74 Dig exhibition opened yesterday at the Scotland Street Museum. It tells the story of life in industrial Glasgow, using recovered artefacts and the memories of former residents.

A tenement block by the great Glasgow architect Alexander "Greek" Thomson was one of the sites excavated. Queen's Park Terrace, built between 1857 and 1860, is described by the Alexander Thomson Society as Thomson's "largest, finest and most influential block of tenements". By 1980, though, it was unstable and was demolished, despite being listed category A.

That prompted some to speculate that in the back courts, away from the impressive frontage, the quality of the construction was less than it could have been. Not so, says McBrien - his team found that before the tenement block was built, the area had been used to quarry clay for bricks. The hole in the ground was then backfilled with waste from the Clyde and from industry. "The back of the building had very good sandstone foundations and superstructure. It was falling down, but that was because of the quarry underneath." Greek Thomson can rest in peace, his reputation on that point restored.

Mackinlay Street tenements were built in the mid-nineteenth century, in an area then dense with businesses, pubs and churches. The street and surrounding buildings were cleared from 1960 to 1980. Among those who remember the area bustling with life is Thomas Wilson, 80, who now lives in East Kilbride. Wilson, who worked for Customs and Excise before retiring, moved into Mackinlay Street as a baby and lived in a two-room flat with his mother and father, who had a dairy there, and his younger brother, Jack.

He hadn't been back in decades when he read about the excavations and decided to attend a dig open day. Just seeing the excavated ground brought back vivid memories of the street. "I knew where we had played, where the back court was," says Wilson. "I was struck by how small everything was."

His family had to share the outside loo with another family, although the upper flats had their own toilets. In the flat, there was the kitchen and "the room". "My mother was quite a forward- looking person," says Wilson. "She went for bed-settees very early on." There was one in the kitchen and one in the room for Thomas and his brother. There was no bath; as babies, the children were washed in the sink and later went to Calder Street (Govanhill) baths. There were no mod cons. "Butter in the summer was a pain. We kept it in cold water," says Thomas.

Since seeing the dig, he's found himself recalling things he hadn't thought of in years. Without the opportunity to share them with the dig historian, "those memories would go with me", he says. And, like many others, Wilson has found himself regretting the loss of community, describing the triangle between Eglinton Street, Pollokshaws Road and Cumberland Street as "our area".

"The school was there, the doctor's, the shops - it was like a village in itself," he says. "When they put up those flats in the Gorbals, they got rid of the dreadful tenements, but Mackinlay Street was a good, ordinary, respectable street. The buildings were well-maintained. The chap next door was a bus driver, another neighbour worked in a men's clothes shop. Pre-war, for us kids, it was a great place. The street was a community and the tenement was a community within it."

Several of the other dig sites record industrial growth and change. At Govan Iron Works, the first iron works in Glasgow, founded by William Dixon in 1837, the diggers discovered an old foundry which was covered over after 1870. It was like opening a "time capsule", says McBrien. They found cast beds and the arrangements for flues for hot gases. The blast furnaces continued to operate on the site until 1958.

As a cache of simple everyday objects, the site of the old Caledonian Pottery was a treasure trove. Dating from the 1870s, when it was used to make a range of stoneware, the factory was taken over by Hartley's jam-makers of Liverpool in 1898, going into administration in 1928.

In a vast 72,000 square metre waste dump, the team uncovered tens of thousands of stone jam jars, ginger beer bottles, Rutherglen Rockingham teapots, acid jars, ceramic hot water bottles, water purifiers and, to their surprise, piggy banks in a range of animal shapes including bears and kittens. There's a Barr's ginger beer bottle and an evolving series of Hartley's jars.

Some items appeal just for their pointless decoration, such as acid bottle stoppers with patterned inlays, but they also have historical value. The team found bottles bearing company insignias from the Far East, Africa and the Americas, as well as all over Scotland and England.

Rutherglen Rockingham teapots were so popular in the Victorian era that they are used by colonial archaeologists everywhere from Thailand to the Australian outback to date sites to the nineteenth century.

"Up until this project, interest in recent history has not been great," says McBrien. "But this is the first project that's looked through the industrial conurbation that's about trying to find out about people's lives."

The project work was a joint venture between Headland Archaeology Ltd and Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd, HAPCA. They were contracted by Transport Scotland, along with Glasgow, Renfrewshire and South Lanarkshire councils. One of the requirements was that local people should be involved as much as possible, through open days, onsite interpretation and exhibitions of the artefacts.

Thomas Wilson feels that the dig's benefit has been in getting people to remember and re-evaluate. He welcomes the opportunity to put another side of the story of tenement life, one of a happy, secure childhood without any "horrors".

"As far as I'm concerned, it was a good time," he says. "We had Santa Claus, we got a holiday. I don't want to use the term deprived' because deprivation is relative. By today's standards, we probably were, but we didn't know it."

The legacy of a Scots genius
Alexander "Greek" Thomson (1817-1875)

Born Endrick Cottage, Balfron, Stirlingshire (the building survives in an altered form). When he was first nicknamed Greek Thomson is not known, but his style became increasingly recognisable as "a modern interpretation of pre-Roman classical architecture", according to the Alexander Thomson Society. His influences were Greek, Roman and Indian. He created whole streets of tenements in the 1850s and 1860s, especially in the south side of Glasgow. Many have been demolished, and some even disappeared before his death, but in recent years, greater efforts have been made to preserve Thomson's legacy.

Significant Thomson buildings include:

Caledonia Road United Protestant Church (1856-7). Imposing neo-classical church that has suffered a great deal from neglect. It was burned in 1965 and partially demolished. It has since been stabilised and at one time there was talk of moving it. Repairs were announced in 2000 as part of the £10m Crown Street Regeneration Project (CSRP) and it was later floodlit, but while that raised hopes of full restoration, it remains in serious disrepair. One of three churches designed by Thomson (Queen's Park Church was destroyed during the Second World War).

St Vincent Street UP Church (1857-59). His only surviving intact church. A £1.85m restoration of the church was announced last year.

Egyptian Halls, Union Street (c1871-72). Considered the pre-eminent example of a commercial Thomson building. In May, a £5m refurbishment was announced.

Holmwood House, Netherlee Road (1857-58). Regarded as Thomson's finest villa. Now owned by the National Trust for Scotland.

Walmer Crescent (1857-62). One of Thomson's least ornamented designs.

1-10 Moray Place (c.1859-61). Superb terrace of 10 townhouses houses, chimneys shaped like lotus flowers. In 1861, Thomson himself moved into number one, where he died in 1875.

Grosvenor Building in Gordon Street (1858-59). Commercial building with elaborate facade. Bought by Resolution Asset Management UK Property Fund in 2006.

Buck's Head Building, Argyle Street and Dunlop Street (1863). Curved corner building with shops below. A £650,000 renovation in 2003 included restoration of the cast-iron columns.