Westerton Garden Suburb
The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-06647, in the name of Fiona McLeod, on celebrating 100 years of Westerton garden suburb. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
I am sad to say that Fiona McLeod is unable to be in the Parliament today, for perfectly understandable reasons. Joan McAlpine will open the debate on her behalf.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament congratulates Westerton Garden Suburb on its 100th anniversary; understands that it was built in 1913 as Scotland’s first garden suburb and that its aim was to develop a cooperatively-owned housing community for working class people at affordable prices; notes that the houses were designed by the Glasgow-based architect, John A W Grant, in a distinctive and unusual style; commends what it sees as the ongoing community spirit that is still strong in the area, and notes the work of the Westerton 100 committee on producing artwork and banners to mark the occasion.
17:02
As you said, Presiding Officer, I am opening the debate in place of Fiona McLeod, who has been taken ill. She sends her apologies to you and to her constituents from Westerton who are in the gallery.
Mrs McLeod has lived in Westerton for 50 years. It is Scotland’s first and—some would argue—only true garden suburb, and this debate celebrates its centenary this year.
Glasgow Garden Suburb Tenants Ltd was formed as a housing society in 1912, with Sir John Stirling Maxwell as its chairman. The aim was to create co-operatively owned housing communities for the working classes, at affordable prices. The idea had already taken hold in England; it is an import from the south of which I thoroughly approve.
The consultant architect for Westerton was Raymond Unwin, from Rotherham in Yorkshire. He studied in Oxford and was inspired by the lectures and ideals of John Ruskin and William Morris. In 1885, he moved to Manchester and became secretary of Morris’s local Socialist League branch. He wrote articles for the league’s newspaper and spoke on street corners.
By the time he was consulted about the Westerton scheme, Unwin had designed a model village at New Earswick, near York, for Joseph and Benjamin Rowntree. He also created Letchworth, which was loosely based on the utopian plan of Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city movement, and the famous Hampstead garden suburb in north London.
Westerton came later. The Scottish architect John Alexander Grant, from the famous firm of Honeyman and Keppie, was the architect on the ground, with Unwin providing oversight and direction.
Only 81 of the proposed 120 houses were constructed, as a result of the outbreak of world war 1. The original plans envisaged more than 300 houses, with 120 or so to be built in the initial construction phase on low-lying ground adjacent to the railway station, which of course was vital for the garden suburb.
The town took its name from an abandoned farm steading and its foundation stone was laid by Lady Campbell of Succoth on 19 April 1913. By 1915, 84 houses and a shop with a flat above had been completed. Despite the disruption caused by the war, Westerton garden suburb continued to be occupied and managed on a co-partnership basis and more houses were built in the later 20th century. The tenants’ co-operative arrangement was so successful that it continued until 1988 when properties were sold to sitting tenants.
A strong community identity was fostered and is maintained today. Social events centred on the village hall and the recreation ground were a highlight for many years. The co-operative store was a focus for community activity.
On 20 April 2013, the centenary events kicked off and my colleague Fiona McLeod, along with what looked like the whole village, celebrated Westerton turning 100. There was a typical Edwardian afternoon tea and a ceilidh in the evening. Residents kept up the founding principles of Westerton co-operation by mucking in to clean up afterwards. The whole village must have turned out at some point in the day’s festivities. Many people took the time to dress up in Edwardian costumes. There was even a penny-farthing bicycle, which was the icing on the cake.
Some of the women, including Mrs McLeod, dressed as suffragettes and chained themselves to the railings. Westerton Care Home was so impressed by the festivities that it asked if it could keep one of the “votes for women” banners from inside the hall to get it framed and erected in the home. Many of the residents of Westerton are here today in the gallery and have been speaking to MSPs at their stand in the members’ lobby.
Unwin went on to design other garden suburbs and worked in America. If you will indulge me, Presiding Officer, I would like to say a little about his other main contribution to Scotland, which was in my south of Scotland region. During the first world war he was co-opted by Lloyd George, the Minister for Munitions, to house workers in Gretna. The task facing Lloyd George in those early years of the first world war was considerable. He had to find housing for 20,000 workers in the space of a few months. The munitions factories stretched right across the border and workers, many of whom were women, came from all corners of Scotland.
The original garden suburb movement tended to rely either on wealthy patrons, such as Henrietta Barnett in north London, or on people coming together to buy shares in companies, such as the Westerton garden suburb, to provide housing for what we would now call artisan workers. What Gretna, which was built on the same principles as Westerton, showed was that if the Government set its mind to building social housing, that could be achieved. There was the incentive of wartime in Gretna but it did show what could be achieved and that working-class people could have houses with gardens and space in which to live and breathe and bring up their children in a manner that had previously been regarded as utopian.
It laid the foundations for future social housing, subsidised by Government, to replace the slums that Westerton was also designed to replace, with a decent subsidy to ensure that people who could not afford middle-class rents could live in decent houses. Westerton and the other garden suburbs provided the foundation for the homes for heroes after the war and for places such as Knightswood, which were built under the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924, known as the Wheatley act.
It is rather a shame that after the Wheatley act in 1924 the subsidies for social housing were reduced so that the garden suburb movement petered out and cheaper tenements were thrown up. To some extent, we still live with the legacy of that change today, with the social problems that it caused.
The garden suburbs, and Westerton, are a wonderful model of how communities can be planned and created and can grow organically to become real living communities in which we would all be happy to bring up families.
17:09
I am happy to contribute to this discussion and thank Joan McAlpine for opening the debate. I also thank Fiona McLeod for gaining an allocation of the chamber’s time for her motion, and I wish her a speedy recovery. I also thank the group for coming along today, for being in the public gallery tonight and for their outstanding display.
I am happy to participate for a number of reasons in the Parliament’s congratulations to Westerton garden suburb on celebrating its 100th anniversary. Westerton garden suburb borders the Glasgow region that I represent, and it is adjacent to the Drumchapel and Anniesland ward that I represented as a Glasgow councillor for many years. On a personal note, Westerton garden suburb is only a few streets away from where I reside with my family, so I could say that I am a neighbour and that I know the area well.
In addition, I am pleased to note the historical background to the area that has become known as Westerton. I am especially pleased to note that it was the first garden suburb in Scotland. The aim in building it 100 years ago, in 1913, was to create high-quality and affordable housing for the working classes. I am sad to say that that is still every bit as necessary today as it was all those years ago.
I am pleased to be able to note that the approach was co-operative. Under the chairmanship of Sir John Stirling Maxwell, there was the vision and drive to build country cottage-style housing, surrounded by open countryside, and to make Westerton for Glasgow working people. The purpose of transforming land that had a few scattered farms was to establish a community setting with housing for the working classes of Glasgow, and to provide social and cultural amenities that are essential if a community is to survive and that support it as it strives to grow. Such amenities included shops, schools, recreational and social facilities within a community setting.
I am pleased to note today that Westerton has grown and expanded, with new estates, a purpose-built primary school and social amenities, such as its own bowling green, church and new hall, all of which support the increased population that now resides in the area. There is also outstanding nursery provision, and I feel obliged to say that I have an interest because one of my friends works there.
All that development centres on 31 houses that were built with the aim of establishing a garden suburb. It is true that we can and should learn from history, particularly about the design and support that are required to allow communities to thrive and develop and be places where people wish to live.
I am pleased to wish my neighbours congratulations on becoming 100 years old and wish Westerton garden suburb every success for the next 100 years.
17:13
I begin my brief contribution to the debate by saying that I am very sorry that Fiona McLeod cannot be with us today. She would have enjoyed the occasion. The photograph of her togged up shows that she had fun celebrating the anniversary along with the other residents, and I know that she would have wanted to be here with them today.
I would like to say how impressed I was by the highly original way in which the residents were entrapping MSPs this afternoon with their rather excellent historical display at the bottom of the black and white corridor. Some members posed for photographs and some of them looked to be very much at home; there are still Edwardians among us who can enter into the spirit of the occasion. It was a terrific way of illustrating something that should be celebrated.
I was quite struck by the pre-debate briefing. I have been watching the television series “Who Do You Think You Are?” and this season opened with a profile of Una Stubbs. I sometimes find such programmes rather contrived but this one was particularly interesting because her relative, Sir Ebenezer Howard, founded Welwyn Garden City in 1919—quite a bit of time after Westerton was founded, although the same principles were at stake. Sir Ebenezer gave most of his wealth, health and life to the establishment of a community that was meant to be one in which everybody would have access to space, to services and to a community, as well as one that would be affordable. Yet several years earlier, just to the north of Glasgow, a community was established on the same basis. That is very much to be applauded.
What strikes me in the photographic montages that I have seen is the sheer class of the design. This was affordable social housing that had style. In fact, many would envy it if they were to see it replicated today. It was designed to be affordable social housing but not perfunctory—there was not a lower standard of expectation. It allowed people to enjoy a much higher quality of life. How disappointing it is that that did not continue. For decades thereafter, in essence I suppose because of the rush and the need for housing, that model of planning was perhaps lost. Westerton survives 100 years on, while many examples that were built much more recently have long since been demolished and are gone.
Is there hope? I think that there is. I was very pleased to be able to tour—as I know other members have—the Commonwealth games village that has now been built and which of course is designed to be very much an affordable social model. When people go round that village, they see the opportunity for a whole new community—not dissimilar to Westerton—with facilities and with access to open areas around it. It is of a standard that I think will inspire families to enjoy life rather than simply having a roof over their heads. That is one of the things that, from back in 1913 to now, we should celebrate.
Sir John Stirling Maxwell obviously had a personal commitment to the project and it is interesting that, subsequently, Sir John donated Pollok house, his home in the south of Glasgow, to the National Trust and Pollok gardens, now Pollok park, to the people of Glasgow as a green lung, so opportunities for the public to participate in a community that offered so much more extended way beyond Westerton. We should celebrate its example and be proud of the fact that it is ours.
17:17
It is a great pleasure for me to celebrate Westerton and the fact that it is the first of its kind in Scotland. It is a proud moment for me because I have always been very keen to promote all that is good in Scotland and this is a prime example of that. It shows the commitment that people had over a century ago. Mr Carlaw mentioned the quality of the buildings—the quality of the example that is in front of us, which is not like the matchboxes of today. He is absolutely right. I remember the Gorbals flats being opened by Her Majesty. I was there; I took photographs. I went back to Queen Elizabeth square to take photographs of the flats being demolished.
I agree with Mr Carlaw about the quality that was laid down in Westerton. People cared about people—they cared about Glaswegians, they cared about their country, they cared about the city. Sometimes I think that that is an example to promote to our citizens today—they ought to be thinking in those terms.
Sir John Stirling Maxwell also made a huge contribution to society and there are many examples of people making huge contributions in days gone by. When I first passed the display this afternoon, I was impressed. Impressed by what? I was impressed by the commitment of the people who are engaged with Westerton, even today. I was impressed by the quality of the construction and I was impressed by the fact that we were celebrating 100 years of Westerton being there.
These are small chapters of our history that we need to be proud of and that we need to celebrate more often. We miss many opportunities by not promoting such achievements from our past.
One of the things that delights me is to look at all the constructions from the past in our cities. When one looks up at or goes into buildings such as those of some of our city councils, one sometimes says to oneself, “My God, this is a beautiful piece of engineering. This is a beautiful building—a strong, sturdy, honest-to-God building.” That is what we made in times gone past, and we need to be proud of that. We should celebrate that more often in relation to all the buildings as well as all the various organisations that were set up to support communities such as the one that we are celebrating today.
Up until I saw the display outside the chamber—I took a photograph there as well—I had not intended to speak in the debate. The reason that I was drawn to that display is that it shows the commitment that some people made such a long time ago. Sometimes we do not praise such people while they are alive and we realise how much they did for us only when we have lost them. We are always looking at ways of bringing people down rather than lifting them up, and I think that we need to start reversing that trend. I genuinely believe that, having seen how the housing association contributed to society and what it was trying to achieve by bringing in new ideas and concepts. That is wonderful. I am proud that we can celebrate that today.
I hope that we will encourage more people to come forward to be represented in this way so that we can celebrate them. We should put on record that we have celebrated all that those people achieved in the past. I had not realised that being a city of parks was unique to Glasgow. I have learned something today—something that has really made me happy—and I wanted to share that with members in the chamber and with everyone else in Scotland. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
17:21
I, too, give my best wishes to Fiona McLeod. She is clearly passionate about Westerton. I thank Fiona McLeod for lodging the motion, Joan McAlpine for so ably introducing the debate and all members who have contributed to it.
Scotland’s conservation areas are important social and cultural assets that reflect our long-standing tradition of town planning and place making. In this country, we have an internationally celebrated heritage of castles and country houses, of historic cities and towns. We have many important individual historic places, but we have also specialised in building entire new towns and creating new communities. That stretches back to the medieval burghs of David I, to our Georgian new towns and to the 19th century tenements. In places as far apart as Edinburgh, Inverary, New Lanark and St Andrews, we can celebrate places that are valued for their interest as set pieces of urban design, which were built with a clear vision in mind.
That tradition carried right through to the 20th century. In Westerton garden suburb, we see a brand-new type of development for Scotland that was based not on an ensemble of tenements and terraces but on small-scale picturesque ideas and principles closely associated with the arts and crafts movement in architecture around the turn of the 20th century. The multipane windows, half-timbered roofs and roughcast walls were all a world—though only a train journey—away from the tenements that working people had been used to. Instead, the new residents were offered quiet leafy streets, which were a feature linked closely with the emerging garden city movement.
The architect for the Westerton garden suburb, J A W Grant, consulted Raymond Unwin, who was one of the key figures in the garden city movement that was flourishing against the backdrop of long-standing concerns about the housing conditions of working people. This was a new way of thinking about housing, both in the form and layout of the village and in its ownership. The Glasgow Garden Suburb Tenants society was a pioneering co-ownership scheme—developed long before the idea was popularised in the 1970s or again more recently—to help people into the property market.
It is entirely right that we should celebrate the 100th anniversary of Westerton, which was Scotland’s first garden suburb. Westerton made a clear link between our housing and our health and happiness and is a marvellous example of the garden suburb movement. The suburb was created prior to the important housing legislation of 1919 that provided for the building of council houses. In fact, the style, materials and layout of Westerton became the basis for the pioneering housing schemes that the Glasgow Corporation laid out at Knightswood, Riddrie and Bellahouston. In that sense, Westerton proved to be a test bed for the new social housing.
Celebration of places such as Westerton garden suburb is important not only for those who live locally, but for all of us, as it provides the opportunity to recognise the important social and cultural role that the built environment plays in our lives. Following the First Minister’s recent announcement of the themes for future focus years, Hanzala Malik will be pleased to know that, in 2016, we will have a further opportunity to celebrate places such as Westerton garden suburb—alongside some of Scotland’s many other great achievements in the built environment—as that year is set to focus on innovation, architecture and design. That should be not only a celebration of our famous and high-profile architecture, but an opportunity to recognise the value of our everyday places. Those are the places where we spend much of our time and they are of real significance to us as individuals and communities. They are the places that reflect who we are and how we live. Places such as Westerton garden suburb will continue to play an important role during 2017, when the focus year will celebrate history and heritage.
I am pleased that the young people of Westerton have been able to take part in activities that were organised with the input of Architecture and Design Scotland and which allowed them to creatively learn about the ideas that informed the planning and design of the place where they live. We can still learn from Westerton today. For example, we can learn about the importance of making real connections between the design of a place and the community that it supports; the need to take a long-term view and the pioneering involvement of residents in the management of the estate; and the importance of green space and the creation of walkable neighbourhoods. Those are just a few of the lessons that continue positively to influence our thinking on housing settlements today.
Parallels can be drawn between Westerton and many of our recent Scottish sustainable communities initiative exemplar projects, which aim to be the conservation areas of the future. That is why I was pleased to launch Scotland’s first historic environment strategy for consultation earlier in the summer. It sets out a vision for Scotland’s historic environment that is rooted in the values that that environment provides to communities and individuals such as those in Westerton, as well as in the foundation that the environment sets for people’s sense of place by being the backdrop to where they live, work and play.
Likewise, in “Creating Places”, the revised architecture policy for Scotland, we make it clear that place is not only the physical environment but the people who live and work there and the activities that are supported. It is clear from the enthusiasm with which the community has celebrated its centenary that Westerton is a truly successful place from which strong social bonds have emerged. I was intrigued to hear about the penny farthing, which must have been of great entertainment for many.
The foundation stone for the new village was laid on 19 April 1913, and I am delighted that Westerton continues to thrive today. The Glasgow Garden Suburb Tenants prospectus of 1913 stated that the Westerton project was founded on
“a sound commercial basis and merits the support of every public spirited citizen who is desirous of seeing a system of housing arise in our midst which makes for better health and improved moral and social conditions.”
It went on to state the ambition to create a place where
“the worker finds a home in beautiful and healthful surroundings, where ... his family enjoy better health and in consequence become better citizens.”
Those ambitions have stood the test of time and, alongside the physical place that they created, are worthy of celebration 100 years on.
The banners and fun activities related to the centenary celebrations are a wonderful testament to the power of place and of community. The founders of this great place would have been rightly proud. I add my congratulations on 100 years of Westerton garden suburb.
Meeting closed at 17:28.