Ossian

Excellent exhibition at the Dovecot Studios. Not to be missed!

You need 5,000 words on the history of interwar concrete housing in Edinburgh? No problem, I'll have that with you this afternoon.
Oh, you want a brief 200 word introductory bio about myself? Er, give me a few weeks.

😂 cent per cent

Fullarton's Temple was built by Colonel William Fullarton on the isthmus at Troon in the early 18thC. It had an inscription on it: Baccho laetitiae datori, amacis et otio sacrum, which translates as Erected to Bacchus, the giver of happiness, for friends and for leisure.
Demolished for Troon harbour

🫤

"It’s a shame what they have done to Sauchiehall Street,” proclaims the headline. “Shuttered shops. Flashy pubs. Concrete [...] Nasty open spaces gaping like rotten teeth where the familiar buildings once stood."

This Sunday Post article was penned not in 2025, but 1975.

The handling of this property disposal is deplorable, you'd think Church of Scotland were some wee fly-by-night company the way they're going, and not going, about it. It's a travesty

Lesmahagow Old Church, 1 Church Square, Lesmahagow, ML11 0EJ Large detached church building located within the small town of Lesmahagow.

This is grim AF
Feels like a firesale of heritage assets
Yes that is the medieval Tironensian Abbey right beside it www.churchofscotland.org.uk/about-us/dep...

O/O £94k! Jesus...

Cylinder glass, Edinburgh.

A 1911 advert for Macfarlane's Castings of Glasgow showing the design of fine railings and a gate the owners have recently scrapped from a villa in Whithorn. It was just outside the Conservation Area. Sad that some don’t know what they have got till its gone.

Estate agents photo of an empty sitting room. The walls are painted white and pale green. The carpet is a bold design of brown, yellow, orange and red with a pattern like feathers

ESPC carpet ethe day

Dunlop Place and Burnside Row in Nitshill, photographed by a member the Sanitary Department staff c1920s. This would be in the vicinity of modern day Dove St.

📷 Glasgow Museums

#Glasgow

I'm sure dire at the time but what a charming wee clutch of buildings that would be today. Check the filled in shallow arched arcade on the ground floor of the tenement

Lost murals in the interior of the galleries by Henry Hornel and Alexander Roche. No photographs of these survive(?) Roche went on to paint a mural "The Finding of Queen Languoreth's Ring" in Glasgow City Chambers the following year.

That's a great article, also extolls the allegorical figures of Industry, Science, Art and Agriculture by Guthrie, Henry, Lavery and Walton in the main dome. Seems unfathomable that they'd have just binned them, you'd think hese details had some value to someone afterward...

Different feel to this, reminds me of starting work in the 90s but in offices from the 70s, got that clunky-buttoned mechanical tech feel to it, like it's supported by a whole building endlessly filling and processing paper. Can... can I smoke?

Ascog Hall Fernery Garden on the Isle of Bute is a rare Victorian fernery which houses many fern species and a 1000 year old King Fern. Built by Alexander Bannatyne Stewart in 1870, the sunken garden is carved out of the solid rock and covered with an ornate iron-framed glazed roof.

Glasgow Coat of Arms detail on James Sellars 1888 Exhibition temporary main hall that I don't think has been remarked upon since it the structure was taken down. Here's to James, delighting me all these years on, and to Glasgow on your 850th anniversary

"Where's the waen? He's fine, he's just in the communal lavvy jawbox hingin oot the windae..."

Frightening early 1900s scene shows a brick turnpike stair tower added to the rear of a pre-1860s tenement to accomodate communal toilets, each with externally mounted jawbox sink. Child for scale 🤪

The National Library of Scotland @natlibscot.bsky.social is 100 years old this year. It is, I think, the only library in the world that was funded through biscuits (founding grant from Alexander Grant, who invented the McVities digestive biscuit).

Alexander Grant of McVitie's donated £100,000 (c. £5M in 2023) towards establishing the NLS by handing over a blank cheque to the committee to be filled in as it saw fit. He told his banker it was to be paid without question. A further £100,000 followed to fund construction of the building 🍪🏗️📚

Girodet's "Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of French Heroes" of 1802.
Ossian, an epic Scottsian poem by James Macpherson (1736-1796), caused a sensation when published on the cusp of the era of revolutions. It had a massive cultural impact. @ossianlore.bsky.social

Seems a lot of my heroes are already here! Fantastical welcome, thanks for sharing