Sighthill is a neighbourhood in the Scottish city 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 popul ...

. It is situated north of the

River Clyde The River Clyde ( gd, Abhainn Chluaidh, , sco, Clyde Watter, or ) is a river that flows into the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. It is the ninth-longest river in the United Kingdom, and the third-longest in Scotland. It runs through the major cit ...

and is part of the wider

Springburn Springburn ( gd, Allt an Fhuairainn) is an inner-city district in the north of the Scottish city of Glasgow, made up of generally working-class households. Springburn developed from a rural hamlet at the beginning of the 19th century. Its indu ...

district in the north of the city. It is bordered to the north by

Cowlairs Cowlairs is an area in the Scottish city of Glasgow, part of the wider Springburn district of the city. It is situated north of the River Clyde, between central Springburn to the east and Possilpark to the west. Administratively, in the 21st ...

, to the east by the Springburn Bypass road and the Royston neighbourhood, to the west by the

Glasgow to Edinburgh via Falkirk Line 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 ...

(running into Queen Street Station) and to the south by the

Townhead Townhead ( gd, Ceann a' Bhaile, sco, Tounheid) is an area of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated immediately north-east of Glasgow city centre and contains a residential sector (redeveloped from an older neighbourhood in the mid 20th ...

interchange of the M8 Motorway. The district is primarily residential and from the mid-1960s consisted of a

housing estate A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex or housing development) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Popular throughout the United States a ...

split into two sub-areas – Pinkston to the south and Fountainwell to the north – each with five 20-storey 'slab'

tower block A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently ...

s, plus seven 5-storey

maisonette An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are man ...

blocks and five rows of tenements in between. Most of these buildings were demolished during the early 21st century and replaced by new housing with associated infrastructure and landscaping.

History

Plaque on site of former St Rollox Chemical Works - geograph

Sighthill formed part of the Springburn Comprehensive Development Area (CDA), and was one of the 20 CDA's around the city where slum housing was completely demolished and replaced by new concrete housing estates based on contemporary architectural practices. Designed by Crudens Ltd, the housing scheme was built by Glasgow Corporation Housing Department between 1964 and 1969 as part of the city's housing replacement programme – the existing housing in the area itself, consisting of tenements on Springburn Road and just off it at Huntingdon Place, was demolished in the process. Much of the land used for the Pinkston sector was known as the ' Soda Waste', derelict ground on which the

United Alkali Company United Alkali Company Limited was a British chemical company formed in 1890, employing the Leblanc process to produce soda ash for the glass, textile, soap, and paper industries. It became one of the top four British chemical companies merged in ...

's St. Rollox Chemical Works, founded by

Charles Tennant Charles Tennant (3 May 1768 – 1 October 1838) was a Scottish chemist and industrialist. He discovered bleaching powder and founded an industrial dynasty. Biography Charles Tennant was born at Laigh Corton, Alloway, Ayrshire, the sixth of thi ...

and at one time the largest chemical manufacturer in the world, used to dump waste chemicals (particularly

hydrogen sulfide Hydrogen sulfide is a chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless chalcogen-hydride gas, and is poisonous, corrosive, and flammable, with trace amounts in ambient atmosphere having a characteristic foul odor of rotten eggs. The unde ...

, a byproduct of the

Leblanc process The Leblanc process (pronounced leh-blaank) was an early industrial process for making ''soda ash'' (sodium carbonate) used throughout the 19th century, named after its inventor, Nicolas Leblanc. It involved two stages: making sodium sulfate from ...

) until its closure in 1964. The Chemical Works was located on the north bank of the

Monkland Canal The Monkland Canal was a canal designed to bring coal from the mining areas of Monklands to Glasgow in Scotland. In the course of a long and difficult construction process, it was opened progressively as short sections were completed, from 177 ...

, immediately east of Port Dundas. The Fountainwell sector was built on a farm of the same name, to the south of Sighthill Cemetery which opened in 1840. Within it stands the memorial to John Baird and Andrew Hardie, the leaders of the 1820

Radical War The Radical War, also known as the Scottish Insurrection of 1820, was a week of strikes and unrest in Scotland, a culmination of Radical demands for reform in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which had become prominent in the earl ...

otherwise known as the 1820 Insurrection. William Mossman and his sculptor sons are buried here. The Pinkston power station, which had supplied power to the city's tram system and the Subway, was closed in 1975, and its signature

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and ...

which dominated the city's skyline was demolished in 1977, with the rest of the complex being removed the year after. The Sighthill estate later suffered from stigma, as high-rise living went out of fashion. It suffered from low demand since the mid-1970s, despite its proximity to the city centre. Because of its low occupancy rate, Sighthill (along with nearby

Red Road Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...

) was selected in the late 1990s as a temporary housing location for refugees and asylum seekers. As a result, the neighbourhood had one of the most diverse ethnic makeups in Scotland. In 2005, letting was suspended in the Fountainwell side of Sighthill as new landlords,

Glasgow Housing Association Wheatley Homes Glasgow (formerly Glasgow Housing Association or GHA) is the largest social landlord in Scotland with 40,000 homes across Glasgow. Wheatley Homes Glasgow is a not-for-profit company created in 2003 by the then Scottish Executive ...

considered the estate's future. The decision was eventually made that Fountainwell should be demolished. The first two blocks were demolished in July 2008 with the three remaining blocks following in November 2009. Sighthill Primary School was also demolished after the tower blocks due to an arson attack shortly after it closed. The fate of the five remaining Pinkston blocks was debated further. After a campaign by local residents, at least two of the blocks were to be retained and refurbished by Glasgow Housing Association, with three being demolished or sold to private developers. However, Glasgow then bid for the

2018 Youth Olympics The 2018 Summer Youth Olympics ( es, Juegos Olímpicos de la Juventud de 2018), officially known as the III Summer Youth Olympic Games, and commonly known as Buenos Aires 2018, were an international sports, cultural, and educational event held ...

and were added to the hosting shortlist, but the successful city had to have its Athletes Village prepared – this resulted in the total demolition of Sighthill's towers to accommodate a new low-rise revelopment. The bid was lost, but regeneration continued. The Sighthill 'Transformational Regeneration Area' includes a new school campus, landscaped green areas, enhanced pedestrian bridge to the city centre and better connectivity to the

Forth and Clyde Canal The Forth and Clyde Canal is a canal opened in 1790, crossing central Scotland; it provided a route for the seagoing vessels of the day between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde at the narrowest part of the Scottish Lowlands. This allo ...

, in addition to approximately 1,000 new housing units for sale, private rental and social rental (much of it marketed as 'NorthBridge' by developers

Keepmoat Keepmoat Homes Ltd is a housebuilding company in the United Kingdom that provides private homes for sale. Its headquarters are in Doncaster. History The company was founded in Rotherham by George Bramall and Dick Ogden as Bramall & Ogden in 1 ...

). There is also an active

Community Council A community council is a public representative body in Great Britain. In England they may be statutory parish councils by another name, under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, or they may be non-statutory bodies. In ...

consisting of several committed residents who aim to deal with issues affecting the Sighthill neighbourhood.

Sighthill stone circle

Sighthill hosts the first astronomically aligned

stone circle A stone circle is a ring of standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being built from 3000 BC. The be ...

built in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

for 3,000 years, guided by

Duncan Lunan Duncan Alasdair Lunan, born October 1945, is a Scottish people, Scottish author with emphasis on astronomy, spaceflight and science fiction, undertaking a wide range of writing and speaking on those and other topics as a researcher, tutor, critic, ...

. Built at the highest point of Sighthill Park, the stone circle has a vantage point over the surrounding areas. There are 17 stones in the circle – with 16 forming a circle across, and the largest four-tonne stone in the centre. The Sighthill megalith was intended as a tribute to both the ancient megalith builders and the scientists who discovered their significance. It was renovated in the late 2010s along with the rest of the district.

Tower blocks

Each block contained 228 flats (i.e. 2,280 residences in total across the 10 blocks); essentially each block was two towers, each with 19 habitable floors of six flats in a mirror-image of the other and a separate communal entrance, joined together at a central wall. They were tall.

Fountainwell

In order of Demolition *Eagle Heights (2-4 Fountainwell Place) Cruden 1 (demolished: 13 July 2008) *Barony Heights (16-18 Fountainwell Place) Cruden 2 (demolished: 13 July 2008) *Tennant Heights (37-49 Fountainwell Avenue) Cruden 3 (demolished: 29 November 2009) *Phoenix Heights (6-8 Fountainwell Square) Cruden 5 (demolished: 29 November 2009) *St. Rollox Heights (2-4 Fountainwell Terrace) Cruden 4 (demolished: 29 November 2009)

Pinkston

*Parson Heights (16-18 Pinkston Drive) (demolished June 2013) *Huntingdon Heights (17-19 Pinkston Drive) (demolished September/October 2013) *Pinkston Heights (3-5 Pinkston Drive) (demolished April 2014) *Crawfurd Heights (31-35 Pinkston Drive) (demolished March–June 2016) *Hartfield Heights (32-34 Pinkston Drive) (demolished July–October 2016)

References

External links

Sighthill Stone CircleSighthill Community Council (on Facebook)Website of St Rollox, the local churchWebsite of St Mungo, the local chapel
{{Areas of Glasgow Areas of Glasgow Housing estates in Glasgow Springburn