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<\/a><\/p>\nCastlemilk acquired its name from the Stuarts, who bought the lands known as Cassilton of Carmunnock in 1460 and whose Dumfriesshire estate and castle was close to the River Mylk. Before his death in 1938, the last Stuart Laird of Castlemilk sold the land to Glasgow Corporation, whose plans to develop housing were delayed until the mid-1950s, by which time the concept of top-down town planning as social engineering gained traction and was put into practice in the schemes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to grasp how only decades ago life was bereft of convenience. My first visit to a high-rise took place in Castlemilk, in a three-apartment flat on the 15th floor of Dougrie Place where, during the 1960s into the 70s, my Auntie Mary raised a clutch of cousins. Futuristic it may have seemed back then \u2013 with lifts, bathrooms, underfloor heating and stupendous views and at least there were roads and buses but how else could the labour force be transported to its daily grind with car ownership in single parts per hundred?<\/p>\n
Asbestos-ridden schools, churches and chapels were built in haste but little else by way of community amenities was. Public houses were anathema thanks to Corporation and parliamentary moralisers who designated almost the entire southside of the city \u2018dry\u2019 – in a climate of extreme Calvinist dogma, underwritten by the likes of Teddy Taylor, the local Tory M.P. whose constituency, ensured by the ‘bought’ householders in Croftfoot and King’s Park, included Castlemilk and officially became Commander of the Gulag. Hard to believe now that one man stopped 50,000 from going down the pub.<\/p>\n Shops too were scarce in this pre-Tesco era \u2013 a local Co-op maybe, or a Galbraith’s or a Cooper\u2019s Fine Fare. But unlike other schemes, Castlemilk, due to its high concentration of high-rises, escaped the concept of the retail van. In Pollok, vans did the business. Coal. Potatoes. Paraffin. Milk. Meat. I recall Dalziel\u2019s Bakery \u2013 with its horse legend and motto – \u2018a good roll does satisfy\u2019. But Dalziel’s couldn\u2019t begin to compare with the converted double-decker operating as a supermarket, patrolling the scheme, where the purveyor of bread and loose potatoes traded his goods for sexual favours and was eventually scandalised in the tabloids. By the 1980s, drugs were dealt from ice cream vans, resulting in the notorious ice cream wars<\/a>, and culminating in the murder of six members of the Doyle family and their friends on April 16th 1984.<\/p>\n I\u2019m heading to a place that no longer exists \u2013 Castlemilk House, built on the site of a thirteenth century castle, Cassilton Tower in the mid 15th century. Again \u2013 a recurring theme here \u2013 legend has it that Mary, Queen of Scots spent the night before the day of the Battle of Langside. Talk about sleeping around. But it seems Castlemilk was populated long before the Stuarts arrived. Bronze Age graves, an Iron Age dug-out boat and Celtic cairns have been unearthed in the area and evidence of a Pictish camp was discovered on the 13th green of Cathkin Braes Golf Club \u2013 another of Harry Bell\u2019s prehistoric sites. But as with so many buildings of historical note, Castlemilk House was demolished by Glasgow Corporation in 1969. Not that I was aware of its existence when visiting my grandparents\u2019 first-floor flat on Ardencraig Road.<\/p>\n My abiding memory of Castlemilk is – an understatement – not pleasant. In the mid-1960s, at the age of five, maybe six, while playing in the woods opposite Ardencraig Road I was approached by a large, stocky, dark curly-headed man wearing a light coloured coat. After some benign small talk about whether or not I thought I was a good girl and did I ever pray, bizarrely the man encouraged me to sing, of all things, Jesus Loves Me<\/em>. But as I sang, my feelings of confusion gave way to a terrible dread and the knowledge that something unspeakable was about to happen.<\/p>\n To this day it\u2019s an episode so vivid I play and replay it, propelling myself back to the past towards the worst possible conclusion. Fortunately, trusting my instinct I ran. Years later, reading Gordon Burns\u2019 Happy Like Murderers<\/em>, a chill ran through me on learning that in the mid-60s Fred West worked as an ice cream van vendor on the southside of Glasgow. He even lived in the same street as my great-grandmother. Coincidence? Sadly I\u2019ll never know, just as the terror I experienced on that overcast Sunday afternoon will never be erased. I never told anyone what had happened because thankfully nothing did.<\/p>\n The weather\u2019s glorious \u2013 great pillows of cumulus and sunshine. I make the trip from my house to Castlemilk Drive, stopping at Machrie Road. Of course, with Castlemilk House long gone all that remains is a grassy gap site and judging by the number of new-builds, the area is ripe for redevelopment. More impressive is the view stretching for miles northwards across the city and the distant hills. I have no idea whether Harry Bell ever visited this site or if he merely relied on his maps and ruler to create this branch line \u2013 not even a true leyline \u2013 since it\u2019s the only site on this one alignment plotted to the Necropolis.<\/p>\n As I set up my shots a few passers-by ask what I\u2019m up to. Not for the first time it\u2019s assumed I\u2019ve something to do with housing development. One cheery woman, laden with plastic shopping bags, stops to enquire. When I explain \u2013 or try to \u2013 she tells me how her kids took part in a photography project funded by the charity Comic Relief and how much they enjoyed themselves. I watch a man, evidently taking pride in his patch of garden. However this portrait of peace and normality belies the fact there are more CCTV cameras in Castlemilk than I\u2019ve seen in any other scheme having counted at least 30 on a small patch around Castlemilk Drive and Dougrie Road alone and leading me to wonder – how much crime is committed here, or do these cameras act as a deterrent? I don\u2019t doubt bad things happen to unlucky people, but all the same I\u2019m shocked at the level of surveillance.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n