Old Houses, Byres Road

Footnote (11)

    The whole Byres Road district is honeycombed with old coal workings. No plan of them exists, but they sometimes make their whereabouts unpleasantly certain by the collapse of the buildings above. Below Kelvinside Free Church there is an old coal waste 60 ft. down : they chanced the church, but they stood the fine tower on iron piles. At Hillhead Church the waste is only 12 or 14 ft. deep, and the church stands on great stone piers built up from the solid rock below the waste. In Loudon Terrace across the way, less than thirty years ago, three houses suddenly cracked so badly that the households fled, and the houses had to be taken down and rebuilt with a deep found. In the old Club Skating Pond a little to the south, the water ran out as fast as it was run in, till they found it was running into the old waste, and they got the leak puddled.

    Bogle's Quarry was opened by Archibald Bogle of Gilmorehill in the lands of Donaldshill, near the present north-east corner of the Western Infirmary. It was worked out over fifty years ago, and when the infirmary appeared on the field it was a silent bush-fringed pool.

    This quarry was much in evidence in an action in 1878 by the School Board of Govan, owners of Church Street Public School, against James Aitken, owner of the contiguous Mansion House lot. It would have much improved Aitken's property for building if he could annex the old Loan, and he quietly staked it in. The Board interfered : they pled that the Loan was a public thoroughfare through to Church Street, with a right of ish and entry in their favour. Aitken pled that " the loan through the village of Byres" had bent north towards Garioch before getting as far east as the line of Church Street, and that from this bend the line eastward was merely Bogle's own private road continued through his own ground all the way to his own quarry on his lands of Donaldshill. Aitken lost his case. The Court found that, thoroughfare or no thoroughfare, he at least, depending on a bounding title, had established no right to the solum of the Loan, and he had to pull up his stakes and pay all costs. It is to be noted, however, that Archibald Bogle of Gilmorehill had had an idea of closing the Loan, and in his feu contract with Inglis in 1825 took Inglis bound in case the Loan should be closed to add the solum of it to his feu, and pay additional feu-duty accordingly. Had this been done, the place would no doubt have been long ago built over, and there would have been no old Loan and no old buildings there for D.Y.C. to sketch.