East End Walk

By John Barry, Sofya Mikhaylova, Craig Redshift, Maria Savva and Olivier Julien

The East End of Glasgow is one of the oldest parts of the city, with buildings dating back to the 1400’s. Home to the Glasgow Necropolis and one of Glasgow’s most famous institutions, The Barras, over the last 30 years, the East End of Glasgow has seen the closure of many markets and highstreet shops. This walk takes you past what were once some of Glasgow’s most lively spots such as Paddy’s Market and The Riverside Club. Examining what came before, The Bellgrove Meat Market and what still remains, The Barras. With the added impact of lockdowns and restrictions, what lies in store for markets and the highstreet?

Paddy’s Market:

‘One evening, whilst leering through the gates that seal off the now defunct Shipbank Lane a passer-by stopped. He told me about the street, and his memories of Paddy's famous market. He said it was home to traders who moved here after the first potato famine and when they weren’t hawking. they had sought shelter in underground lodgings at Glasgow station. Paddy’s Lament speaks to the subterranean, recreating the feeling of an eventual emergence to the above. Like walking up the club’s stairs after a night out and seeing the cold light of day and feeling grief wash over you.’

Bellgrove Meat Market:

‘I am reading from the book, ‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang, which deals with speciesism and how the slaughterhouses are a method for genocide'.

The Riverside Club:

‘I wanted to create a piece in two parts; capturing the danger and the edge of an inner city saturdaynightout followed by the blearyeyedstarstruckafterhourslatebuzz when fabulous turns to trashybutstillfabulous and the early morning churchgoers recoil in horror at the queers and the freaks trying to quench their thirst from the holywaterfont at the local cathedral. Someone told us the jesus water had homosexual properties. They may have meant homeopathic, I don't know; it's late, and you've caught my eye, and i want to spend my life with you, either forever or until the pills run out, whichever is sooner.

I miss you all, but most of all, I miss me.’

Paddy’s Market:

The audio to accompany this stop is generated from two photographs of Paddy's Market; one from the 1950s and another from today. The reverberations of place are interrupted by ghostly voices, who convey only intent detached from meaning.

Olivier Julien

Maria Savva

Craig Redshift

Meat Market, 23 Bellgrove Street

The Meat Market opened for the first time on 3 October 1911 and consisted of a huge complex of buildings enclosing the greater part of Graham Square, Moore Street and Armour Street. The Meat Market was one of the last remaining markets in the country and closed in the 1980s. There are now plans to turn the land into flats.

Barras Market

The Barras is a main street as well as an indoor weekend market. The original building opened in 1934 in a mercantile area east of Glasgow's city centre. Barrowland is sometimes used to describe the district where the market is located, which is actually officially known as Calton. The Barrowland building includes large street-level halls used for the weekend markets, with a dance hall above. The front of the building is decorated with a distinct neon sign, welcoming you inside.

Paddy's Market, Shipbank Lane

Written by Craig Redshift

The less famous and slightly less glamorous sister of The Barras, Paddy's Market was active around various locations in Glasgow for some two hundred years before its final closure in Shipbank Lane in 2009. The market was, for many years, an essential destination for the poor and impoverished of Glasgow to find cheap clothing, household goods and other essentials ordinarily out of reach. There were no pound shops or Primark, and the plush department stores and tea rooms of Buchanan, Sauchiehall and Argyle Streets were generally out of reach and populated only by the middle classes and the denizens of the west end.

The Riverside Club

Written by Craig Redshift

The Riverside was home to many underground club nights in the city, from Melting Pot to Utter Gutter, from Salt Lick to Traxx, the venue attracted everyone and anyone from the demi-monde right up until it's closure in the early 2000's. What was unique about the club? Well, for a start, every Saturday night from 7-11pm they held a Ceilidh for the "older crowd". This was a real "working person's club" sort of feel, so every Saturday night there would be a spilling out into the street of punters "of a certain age" high from birlin' round The Dashing White Sergeant and The Gay Gordons, and there they would encounter the other Gay Gordons, and Craigs, and Stevens and whoever else you were that hallowed Saturday night, resplendent in crushed velvet, cuban heels, Gaultier, Sobranie Cocktails, ecstasy, and one of yer mam's earrings.

And so, these two tribes merged into Fox Street, each incapable of understanding the other.

Once inside, it was a working men's club all the way, with tartan wallpaper, the world's smallest bar, black mould, a sticky floor and love and disco melting from the roof. They had a fan for the heat.

Your company for the evening; users, losers, substance abusers; pimps, pushers, prostitutes; the old skool, the new skool, the art school; freaks in handmade, freaks in designer, freaks in not much at all. They were you, they were me, they were who you'd love to be. They were the people I loved. They were my people. I never even knew your name but our eyes met at the urinal and we knew then we were bound together, forever. Some of you are respectable now; you have jobs and shit. Some of you are dead; forever bound to the ground and the sound. I remember you.

Whoever you are, and wherever you are, we made it beautiful for a few hours at a time. It wasn't everyone's beauty, but it was ours; always changing, never the same.

The audio in this piece was constructed entirely from field recordings and the above photographs, which were used to generate audio sequences. The only other sounds are a sine-wave for da bass and some snatched latenite voices.