Byres Road is a

street A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, ...

Hillhead Hillhead ( sco, Hullheid, gd, Ceann a' Chnuic) is an area of Glasgow, Scotland. Situated north of Kelvingrove Park and to the south of the River Kelvin, Hillhead is at the heart of Glasgow's fashionable West End, with Byres Road forming th ...

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

, Scotland. It is the central artery of the city's West End.

Location and history

Byres Road is a mixed commercial, shopping and upmarket residential area consisting largely of traditional sandstone

tenements A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

with retail premises on the ground floor and three floors of residential flats above. Its proximity to the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

has meant that the surrounding

West End of Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated p ...

has a large student population. Murals painted by the notable Glasgow artist

Alasdair Gray Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, ''Lanark'' (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and ...

adorn the Ubiquitous Chip, the

Oxfam Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International. History Founded at 17 Broad Street, Oxford, as the Oxford Co ...

Bookshop, and the Oran Mor bars. Stretching from Great Western Road at the

Botanic Gardens A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

in the north to Dumbarton Road at

Partick Cross Partick Cross is a major road junction in Partick, in the west end of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The junction is the meeting point of Dumbarton Road, Byres Road, Partick Bridge Street and Coopers Well Street. History Riots took place on th ...

in the south, the road originally ran through a relatively rural area called the

Byre A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals and livestock. There are many different types of stables in use today; th ...

s of

Partick Partick ( sco, Pairtick, Scottish Gaelic: ''Partaig'') is an area of Glasgow on the north bank of the River Clyde, just across from Govan. To the west lies Whiteinch, to the east Yorkhill and Kelvingrove Park (across the River Kelvin), and ...

(also known as Bishop's Byres). The oldest pub in the area is the 17th century Curler's, originally sited beside a pond used for

curling Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding ...

and, legend has it, given a seven-day licence by King Charles II. During the period when

and

were independent burghs, Byres Road was known by its original name of Victoria Street. By the time Hillhead was annexed by Glasgow on 1 November 1891, there were four different Victoria Streets in the expanded Glasgow area. All these streets were subsequently renamed with Victoria Street, Hillhead, becoming Byres Road. The burgh of Hillhead was created on 14 May 1869 and the Burgh Chambers were established in Victoria Street in 1873,Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1873 on the site of the present day Hillhead Library. Nearby lanes and byways have benefited from the business of Byres Road and now contain a variety of small businesses from tapas bars to second-hand record stores. The most famous of these is

Ashton Lane Ashton Lane is a cobbled backstreet in the West End of Glasgow. It is connected to Byres Road by a short linking lane beside Hillhead subway station and is noted for its bars, restaurants and a licensed cinema. Overview The Lane was not always ...

, which contains bars, restaurants and a cinema.

Transport

The northern end of Byres Road is served by Hillhead station on the

Glasgow Subway The Glasgow Subway is an underground light metro system in Glasgow, Scotland. Opened on 14 December 1896, it is the fourth-oldest underground rail transit system in Europe after the London Underground, Liverpool's Mersey Railway and the Budapes ...

, while the southern end is closer to Kelvinhall on Dumbarton Road.

References

External links

*
Byres Road : A Short GuideGuide to Byres Road
at ''Pat's Guide to Glasgow West End'' {{Transport in Glasgow Streets in Glasgow Partick Hillhead