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#kelvingrovepark

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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!