IT was with a sense of the surreal that I read your “Those were the days” feature about Woolworth’s Argyle Street store’s 1960 blaze, concluding, as it did, with reference to the earlier 1921 fire on the site (The Herald, January 5).

One of our late past-presidents witnessed the early evening drama on Saturday, July 2, 1921, at Bowman’s Economic Stores, as a young man, and my colleague’s memories were still vividly clear when he related his experience, to me, some 65 years later. Bowman’s, a drapers and house furnishers, occupied the ground floor, it seems; with Messrs Wallace and Weir, warehousemen, also affected, in their three top floors.

The city centre was hit, it is reported, by three major conflagrations that weekend; with the tragic outcome of the firemens’ deaths in Argyle Street.

Brian D Henderson,

(President, Old Glasgow Club),

44 Dundrennan Road, Glasgow.