SINGLE END

A SINGLE end is described in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as “a one-roomed house”. For a non-Scots speaker this must conjure up a strange image. However, it’s just the word used to describe any dwelling, whether an actual house or a tenement flat.

Not many of us will have lived in such a home but the term is still in use and it was already well established in November 1897 when the Edinburgh Evening News advertised: “House, single end wanted; Home Street or Tollcross district.”

Single ends were often unsanitary. The Lanarkshire Upper Ward Examiner of November 1890 reported a baillie’s statement: “14 days ago a man was brought before me charged with keeping lodgers in a single end. I fined him 2 shillings and 6 pence."

Nevertheless, large families lived in single ends. “Football was the Saturday afternoon respite from work. And to create a football stadium all you needed was vacant ground. ‘When you lived in a cramped, damp single end in the Gorbals it was a relief to get outside and stand in the rain,’ says Bob.” (Evening Times April 2002)

Not all memories of these past times were bad. The Daily Record of September 1994 recorded: “Pensioner Mary Watson reckons there’s nothing to beat a cosy cuppa in a good old-fashioned single end. Trouble is, where do you find a single end in 1994? Two artists painted a lifelike 3-D mural at the old folk’s home where Mary, 76, and her pals live, to remind them of their younger days.” I hope Mary enjoyed her tea.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.