Springburn Virtual Museum

Springburn in transition

Cockmuir Street, looking east, 1920s

Old tenements built in Springburn in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were decaying due to lack of maintenance, and no new ones had been built since about 1910 as they were no longer profitable to private landlords.

After the first world war, attempts were made to try to tackle the serious national housing shortage. Under various Housing Acts passed by parliament, local authorities took a much bigger role in providing housing of an acceptable standard at affordable rents.

This picture shows some of the new four-in-a-block corporation housing built under the Labour government's Housing Act of 1924. Most of the houses were built on land acquired from the Balornock Estate, once owned by Andrew Menzies. By 1933, 718 houses had been built in all, including tenement-style flats and cottages.

Source: Glasgow City Archives