The Lord Roberts Monument in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow against a blue spring sky.
The Lord Roberts Monument in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow against a blue spring sky.
Good morning, Glasgow. It's a wonderful Spring day outside today with clear blue skies, and even a little bit of warm with in the sun when it hits your skin. Almost taps aff weather (but not quite!).
The Prince of Wales Bridge in Kelvingrove Park in the West End of Glasgow. Built in 1894, it's named after Queen Victoria's eldest son, Prince Albert, who'd later go on to become King Edward VII. This bridge has some rather wonderfully carved versions of the city's coat of arms on it spandrels, which are only really visible from the river's edge.
For the duration of the festival, this model village complete with traditional black houses, was inhabited by gaelic-speaking highlanders employed specifically for this purpose. The site of this villiage was alongside the River Kelvin, just upstream of the Prince of Wales Bridge, and it's still marked to this day with a memorial stone carved with the name An Clachan and the date 1911.
The toilets closed in the 1980s, and fell into disrepair before being saved and converted into a cafe in the early 2000s. The name of the cafe, An Clachan, means village in Gaelic and comes from the model highland village set up as part of the Scottish National Exhibition that was held in park in 1911 (about the same time the building itself was first constructed).
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If you're familiar with Kelvingrove Park in the West End of Glasgow, you're probably familiar with this cafe, but did you know that the building itself started life as a public toilets? Built in 1913 as part of improvements to the park, it was designed to serve kids playing in the nearby playground, with the arched doorway on the right leading to the boys' toilets, and the one on the left to the girls'.
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Also a couple of sadder ones for #ThickTrunkTuesday from #StormEowyn
While the statues which were also blown from the bridge into the river were retrieved and replaced once the war was over, the ornate parapet was replaced with the much plainer one you can see today and the debris from the original one was left where it fell.
Remains of the original parapet of the Kelvin Way Bridge in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow lying on a gravel bank at the side of the river that passes beneath it. The bridge was built in the 1910s, and was badly damaged by a bomb dropped during the Clydebank Blitz in March 1941.
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The main buildings and Gothic tower of Glasgow University as seen from the neighbouring Kelvingrove Park. Designed by George Gilbert Scott, these buildings were constructed in the 1860s, although the tower, with its distinctive spire, wasn't completed until 1891, some thirteen years after Gilbert Scott's death.
Today on Kelvin Way in Glasgow. Luckily, this is the only one of of the many large, mature trees which line it that was lost to Storm Eowyn.
This type of compass was later installed on a number of admiralty ships, including the RRS Discovery, the ship Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton took on their first expedition to Antarctica in 1901, known as the Discovery Expedition.
If you are familiar with Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow, you'll almost certainly be familiar with the statue of the scientist, inventor and former Glasgow University professor Lord Kelvin. But did you know that behind his seat are a group of scientific instraments, including a Kelvin Compass, an improvement on the traditional mariners' compass invented by Lord Kelvin to ensure it would work more accurately on ships made from iron rather than wood.
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If you're passing through Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow today, stop by the Lord Roberts Monument and look out towards the University. Here in 1911, installed for the Scottish National Exhibition of that year, stood a dirigible gondola ride which would take you across the valley below to the far side of the River Kelvin. How fun does that look?
The picture of the ride comes from Glasgow's Great Exhibitions by Perilla Kinchin and Juliet Kinchin.
The Lord Roberts Memorial in Kelvingrove Park in the West End of Glasgow.
In between, he was involved in laying the first transatlantic telegraph cables, he served as the University's Professor of Natural Philosophy, he helped define the lowest possible temperature in the Universe, he created one of the first houses in the world to be fully lit by electricity and became the first scientist to be ennobled and so enter the House of Lords. Not bad for a young lad from Belfast!
A statue of William Thomson in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. Thomson was Glasgow University's youngest (in 1832, aged 10) and oldest (aged 75) matriculated student.
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Something really weird I noticed today: the gates at the southern entrance to Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park appear to feature the moustache of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the city's greatest architects.
In 1924, it was purchased by Forth District Council to be installed in the newly created Alexander Hamilton Memorial Park. In the same year, the current bandstand was constructed in Kelvingrove Park to replace it.