The Church of England is dying out and selling up
Push open the heavy door and step inside. The sound as it slams behind you will feel loud, almost rude, in the old, cold silence. For St Torney's Church in Cornwall is very old indeed. The Normans built it. The Tudors enlarged it. The Victorians meddled with it. Daphne du Maurier immortalised it in 'Jamaica Inn'. It has outlasted the Reformation and the civil war.
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Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
'I found priceless treasure on a muddy riverbank - and there's more out there'
A treasure trove of rare artefacts unearthed by mudlarkers on the River Thames on display at London Museum Docklands reveals fascinating stories about London's ordinary people through the centuries A tiny piece of leather poking out of the shore and fluttering in the warm evening air turned out to be the find of a lifetime for a mudlarker on the banks of the Thames. Unsure of what he'd seen, Tom Coghlan got down on his knees in the mud at Wapping in East London to have a closer look. 'It was an incredibly fragile looking little piece of leather with what looked like an etching of a flower. I thought maybe it was a purse.' Knowing leather survives in the anaerobic clay of the Thames, Tom cut out a block of mud around the object, and took it home in a plastic bag to keep in the fridge until he could have it identified by Stuart Wyatt, the finds officer at the Museum of London. 'When I got home, I started to wash the mud off it. And as I did, this knight in armour appeared. That was just a really kind of extraordinary moment. This was the stuff I dreamed of as a six-year old boy obsessed with treasure hunting. 'As I washed, two knights appeared, one of whom was standing on a dragon. I thought, 'Oh, maybe that's St. George.' By that time, my heart was pounding.' Next morning Tom, 49, who lives in Kennington, South London, found a very excited Stuart waiting for him at the front door of the museum. 'The museum was able to learn a lot about the book from the wooden binding inside it. They discovered it was a cheap, mass-produced little tiny book of hours from when Caxton was starting to crank out books in real numbers during the reign of Henry VIII.' 'I imagine that somebody was reading it while being rowed back and forth across the Thames, and it went overboard and lay in the mud for 500 years until I happened along.' The Thames has been a rich source of history from the first settlers and the Romans, to the Normans and Tudors, then London in the time of the Frost Fayres, The Great Stink and The Great Fire of London. Tom's primer along with a medieval gold ring revealing a centuries-old love and a menacing Viking dagger engraved with the name of its owner are some of the beautiful yet macabre finds that have been unearthed in what is England's longest archaeological site. Poor Victorian mudlarks once scraped a living scavenging on the capital's shingle beaches, but now a treasure trove of 350 objects found by 21st century mudlarks, including a rare Tudor headdress, 16th century ivory sundial and Iron Age Battersea Shield, have gone on display at the new Secrets of the Thames exhibition at the London Museum Docklands. 'Mudlarks have made a huge contribution to archeology,' says the museum's curator Kate Sumnall. 'We are lucky in London to have this amazing tidal river environment that has preserved so much of our past.' So much of history books is about kings and queens and people with money and power but mudlarked items found at low tide on the muddy banks of the Thames tidal foreshore – which runs from Teddington in Richmond to the Thames Barrier – tell us about the ordinary people who lived in the city through the centuries. 'All the finds give us little clues about their lives,' says Kate. 'It's the potential for time travel knowing that you are the first person to pick up and touch an object since the person lost it, whether they're Roman, medieval or Victorian. 'By studying Tom's artefact we know that the leather is a cheaper leather – either coarse sheep or goat – so it's not from a library in a monastery but possibly from a home of a merchant as it was found near to the docks. 'For many merchants, it was the women who did the finances and the books for their husbands. So this primer gives a little insight into the literacy level among women in their role of teaching children how to read.' And mudlarking doesn't seem to happen anywhere else in the world. 'It does seem to be specifically a London thing because the Thames is tidal, so twice a day it exposes its own banks, and those banks are stable enough to be walked on,' explains Kate. 'The Severn in Bristol is also tidal but its banks are thick mud, so you get mired in. And at a site in the River Tees near Darlington in County Durham they are having to dive to find Roman artefacts. 'Paris has displayed its finds from the Seine but it's not tidal so they don't have mudlarking. And Amsterdam has dredged its canals and found some fantastic items, but it's all about that movement of the water and how you discover the finds.' Unlike detectorists who hunt hoards of priceless Anglo-Saxon gold and silver, mudlarkers certainly don't do it for the money. 'Mudlarking has yet to make me a single penny,' laughs Tom, 'But it's given me great spiritual riches and lots of intellectual stimulation.' Tom started mudlarking when walking along the South Bank back in 2015. 'I saw a bloke sort of grubbing around on the beach. He gave me a few pointers, saying, 'Look, that's a clay pipe from the 17th century. This is medieval pottery and this is a bit of Staffordshire slipware from 1700. 'I thought, 'This is unbelievable. It's stuff from a museum lying in front of you. Although you do have to have a fairly powerful imagination to get it. It is essentially other people's rubbish, you know, the antiquated version of cigarette butts.' Among all the rare secrets given up by the 8,500-year-old river are also many everyday objects such as clay pipes, 18th century false teeth, medieval spectacles, 16th century wig curlers, and a Roman badge – naturally decorated with a phallus. Artist and writer Marie-Louise Plum, who has also been mudlarking since 2015, posts her finds and the stories behind them on TikTok at @oldfatherthamesmudlark. The 43-year-old who lives in West Hampstead, London, says, 'I like to find stories through alternative ways. At the time I was searching history and trying to find a more hands-on approach, which is how I came to mudlarking. 'It's a hobby but also another artistic practice for me and the three strands of writing, art and mudlarking all intertwine and inform each other. 'One of my favourite finds is a lump of old clay that has a fingerprint in it. But I have also dug up silver coins, Henry VIII coins and a medieval cauldron, and I discovered a pilgrim badge known as the Vernicle – or the Veil of Veronica – that had been bought at the shrine at the Holy See in Rome and it had ended up thousands of miles away in the Thames. 'We used to assume people just dropped things in the river by accident, but then as I started to research more about spiritual connections to the river, it could have been thrown in as an offering.' Rivers have always been considered sacred. 'Human life settles close to rivers because they're transport, fresh water and food,' explains Kate. 'Places of worship will be built near that water source, and so objects, like pilgrim badges, would have been put there at the end of their use.' Another mystery curator Kate is exploring is why there are so many prehistoric swords in the Thames. 'We don't exactly know why, but I love exploring the possibilities, and the connection with myth and legend that goes back to King Arthur and the Lady in the Lake. 'Swords are valuable items – you don't throw them away – so there is something deliberate happening. We've always had climate change – are these swords in the Thames a metaphorical attempt to fight back the waters?' Before modern plumbing, the Thames would have been an open sewer which made it a very dangerous place to scavenge. Early records of mudlarking date back to the early 1800s when London's poor would sift the foreshore for metal, rope and coal to make their living. Some of the stories of these characters are what drew writer Marie-Louise to the capital's muddy shores. 'You're constantly rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of the past. The Thames is a never-ending vault of stories and two who interest me are Billy and Charley and their Shadwell Shams – a pair of Victorian mudlarks who created forged antiquities. 'Antiques dealers paid good money for finds, but suspicions were aroused when Billy and Charley's forgeries had errors – they were illiterate so for example a legend around a coin didn't make any sense. 'But the dealers didn't want egg on their faces, so they backed the pair and they got away with it for years.' Another famous mudlarker was Peggy Jones who foraged at Blackfriars for coal dropped from barges. Kate explains, 'It would have been a very dangerous job in unclean water and in all sorts of weather feeling her way over the foreshore with bare feet for round lumps of coal which she'd gather up into a sort of special apron around her waist.' Happily the Thames is much cleaner now than in Peggy's time, and anyone with a fascination for digging up old clay pipes can join them by paying the £35 mudlark permit charge from the Port Of London Authority. Although numbers have been capped since it grew in popularity during Covid. The museum is also getting a glimpse of what people hundreds of years from now will be unearthing in the river banks. 'Many of the city's hire bikes end up in places they shouldn't,' says curator Kate. 'And if you go down to the water's edge on New Year's Day, you'll find all the champagne bottles and corks bobbing about.' • Visit Secrets of the Thames, London Docklands Museum, until March 2026
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
‘What Nazis did to Warsaw' The story of Glasgow's tragic rise and fall
Then, inexorably, it all fell apart. Glasgow was brutalised by politicians: depopulated, disregarded and disfigured; left in the state of 'blight and dereliction' we see today. It has already 'technically' become Britain's Detroit, Murphy believes, reduced to a shadow of its former self. So, the big question is: can it survive? (Image: Niall Murphy, Director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Photo: Gordon Terris /Herald & Times) Murphy is among the world's leading experts when it comes to Glasgow and its buildings, streets and architecture. There's nobody more qualified to talk about how this city came to its present state and where it goes from here. He is director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust, the independent charity which protects the city's historic buildings. Murphy has been an architect for 25 years, and co-chairs Glasgow's Built Heritage Commission. It's the perfect time to follow Murphy on a journey through time, and through the streets of Glasgow, as the city celebrates its 850th anniversary. To mark the date, Murphy's Heritage Trust is staging a special photographic exhibition beginning this weekend called 'Lens On Legacy' spotlighting Glasgow's most endangered buildings – and there are plenty of them. The sight of beautiful Georgian and Victorian buildings sprouting trees from roofs, or crumbling down, has become depressingly familiar. Origin Let's start at the beginning. 'There have been settlements here for millennia,' Murphy explains. The Clyde Valley was perfect for hunting, fishing and fresh water. Rome built a road here, but got no further. Legend says St Mungo founded his church on the site of Glasgow Cathedral. By the medieval era, Glasgow was dumbbell-shaped 'with a religious heart around the cathedral and a mercantile heart at Glasgow Cross'. Merchants lived safely back from the Clyde's flood plain, but close to the river that earned them their fortunes. The High Street eventually connected 'these two hearts of the city, but it took the best part of half a millennia to form'. Glasgow escaped the Reformation's ravages, gifting Scotland its 'best surviving medieval cathedral'. However, the Reformation did mean Glasgow 'ceased to be a place of pilgrimage. It had to reinvent itself. That's why you get the shift down to the mercantile heart'. The medieval merchants were smart. They knew that to make money they needed ships for trade and the Clyde was a perfect location. They hired European academics, Murphy explains, to teach 'navigation, geometry and maths so they could educate their sons' at the new university, established at the Cathedral in 1451. Ships from Glasgow could reach the 'New World' six weeks faster than those leaving London. Glasgow made strong links in the Americas. City merchants 'came up with a different system of working their markets compared to the English. They based their apprentices in early American colonies and got the people addicted to debt for fancy European products'. Until this point, most Scottish cities, including Glasgow, were built on a dense medieval 'fishbone pattern' by King David I, featuring one long central spine with higgledy-piggledy streets branching off. The Royal Mile in Edinburgh is a perfect example. Come the American War of Independence, Glasgow merchants began returning home, bringing with them the city grid system of colonies like Virgina. Many believe Glasgow 'exported the grid to America', Murphy says. 'No it didn't. Many early American settlements were laid out in grids. Those ideas are brought back.' (Image: Niall Murphy, Director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Photo: Gordon Terris /Herald & Times) It's now that the city really starts to take shape. George Square was originally 'swampland', considered only good for 'slaughtering horses'. It then became market-gardening land, before the gentry moved in as Glasgow sprouted 'new towns' around today's city centre. The Millennium Hotel is 'the last' of the grand Georgian townhouses built around the square. The square was enclosed at one point for use only by the rich – much to public anger. There were plans for a fountain called 'Le Jet de L'Eau'. It has had repeated facelifts, alterations and redesigns. 'The only constant about George Square is change,' Murphy adds. In the Georgian period, rich 'Glaswegians loved a point of view' – in other words, they liked a city laid out with architectural flair. So around what is now the Merchant city, squares sprung up with civic buildings, mansions or churches 'framing' the perspective, and townhouses built around. St Andrews in the Square was a classic example. READ MORE: 'I'm just a wee bam from Grangemouth' How Gillian Mackay aims to lead Scottish Greens Labour's taste for biological extremism is both creepy and dangerous The super-rich are lying to us. It's time we turned the tables Mob ONE such mansion, built for the MP Daniel Campbell near the Trongate, was positioned to impress anyone crossing Glasgow Bridge from the south – the main entrance into the city. Campbell taxed malt, riling 'the Glasgow mob who descended on his home and wrecked it'. The architect who built that mansion was Colen Campbell, a 'key player' in the Palladian style. Think of grand Georgian homes and you're probably visualising Palladian mansions. A perfect Glasgow example is the Tobacco Merchants House on Miller Street. Unlike many English cities then, Glasgow was built almost exclusively from stone, as two fires in 1652 and 1677 destroyed a third of the medieval timbered city. Queen Street Station was built over the old quarry which provided the materials. Another was at Giffnock. Both produced blonde sandstone, though that ran out in the 1890s. Red sandstone from places like Maybole became the replacement. For a while, these red properties were considered 'posher' than the blonde as they were new. The Georgian city was 'arcaded', with street-level archways, and shops and homes set back from the road. 'It was the civilised thing given Glasgow's climate,' Murphy adds. Walk around the Merchant City today and you'll still see archways on buildings, remnants of 18th-century arcades. Many, however, were lost 'from 1866 onwards when the Glasgow Improvement Trust' began demolishing swathes of the city. These upmarket arcaded buildings in areas like Wilson Street, Glassford Street and Hutcheson Street became Glasgow's 'first new town'. Tenements were the standard home for most Glaswegians, apart from the very rich or the very poor. 'It's a very Scottish thing,' Murphy adds. 'Scottish cities don't expand in the same way as English cities as they're under attack at various points. So you get these more compact settlements. Rather than spreading out, the only way to go is high.' Some Scottish tenements reach 14 floors, among 'the tallest buildings in the world at that point'. 25th September 1956: The Surrey Lane entrance to Nicholson Street flats, in the Gorbals, the notorious slum district of Glasgow Class IN Glasgow's tenements in the 1700s and 1800s, 'the richest lived above the shop on the first floor. The further up you got the poorer you were because the higher you had to climb'. That style of living continued, to some degree, into the 20th century. Go to The Glad Cafe in Glasgow's southside to see a good example of an Art Nouveau tenement where social classes lived together. This mix helped foster Glasgow's egalitarianism, Murphy suggests. 'The tenement encompassed the entire social strata, and Glasgow became a tenement city par excellence.' However, that didn't mean Glasgow was utopia. Down by the Trongate, there was a grand building called the Tontine Hotel, next to the Tollbooth which was effectively 'the original city chambers'. This was where merchants gathered to drink coffee, read newspapers and cut deals. 'It was like an early stock exchange.' Beneath the arcades was what was known as the 'plane stanes' – Glasgow's first pavement. 'Tobacco lords cloaked in red velvet like Venetians walked up and down, and if they thought you weren't the same social class they'd sweep you into the gutter.' As Glasgow entered the Victorian era, 'wealth became more expressed through buildings'. Financial distinctions were also hardening and 'social classes more stratified on a neighbourhood basis'. So slums grew. 'But the idea of a tenement just being for poor people alone didn't exist.' Look at Victorian banks or merchant offices and you'll see carvings of ornate symbols like the goddess of prosperity, or luxury goods like bananas and pineapples. It was a form of bragging. By the mid-19th century, the first of 'Glasgow's tragedies' begins with a wave of 'urban clearances'. The lust for eradicating historic buildings and whole neighbourhoods reached crazy proportions in 1911 when fire destroyed the Tontine Hotel and the council voted to demolish the adjacent Tollbooth. The Tollbooth steeple only stands today as it was saved by one vote. City fathers felt it 'got in the way of traffic. It's astonishing that they seriously contemplated demolishing something which stood since 1627'. Industrialisation saw the population boom, and city fathers became worried about 'hygiene' in the wake of epidemics like cholera. In Glasgow, unlike Edinburgh, it was decreed that all tenements would have no doors, to aid ventilation. Glasgow tenements were among the first in Europe with running water. 'Glasgow was ahead of the curve,' says Murphy. 'Municipal socialism here was tremendous.' Glasgow sent delegates to Europe who were captivated by the work of architect Baron Haussmann. He'd broadened Paris streets creating the city's distinctive boulevards. Swathes of old Glasgow were demolished around High Street. Edinburgh was dealing with similar issues like overcrowding and sanitation but chose 'conservation surgery. They're much more careful, preserving much more of the medieval fabric of the city. Glaswegians sweep it all away and decide they want a brand new city instead'. Slums AT the time, Glasgow slums were described as 'dung hills' with 20 people of both sexes and all ages sleeping in one room. The High Street's population density exceeded 1,000 people per acre, Murphy says. Compare that to the most densely populated parts of Hong Kong, one of the most overcrowded cities on Earth, which has 562 per acre. As part of the demolition work in the mid-to-late 1800s, Glasgow University moved from its original site to the west end. 'Those were the finest collection of post-medieval buildings in Scotland before they got demolished,' Murphy says. Glasgow city fathers bought up huge areas around places like Saltmarket and levelled them, but in an early act of municipal mismanagement they failed to notice that fashions were changing and developers were now more interested in the west end. The demolished sites 'just ended up as wasteland for a long time'. Then the City of Glasgow Bank collapsed in 1877, the biggest UK banking collapse before Northern Rock. 'It does massive damage to the city's economy, causing a depression in Glasgow.' That too slowed redevelopment of demolished areas. It's not until the mid-1880s that the economy improves. Building the City Chambers became a 'pump-priming exercise' to kickstart the city again. 'They spent in contemporary terms the best part of half a billion. It's a lavish exercise – that was the point. It's spend, spend, spend to get the economy firing on all cylinders.' The city centre certainly benefited. Come the 20th century, the centre of Glasgow was being described as 'a Beethoven symphony' thanks to its grid system and the vistas down wide, long streets. But places like the Gorbals and Govan were about to undergo Glasgow's second 'great tragedy' in the post-war period with more slum demolition. Populations had grown in these neighbourhoods as Glasgow became the empire's engine room. After the First World War, however, political focus centred on London. That really hasn't changed, Murphy adds. It meant Glasgow struggled to get going once more, and there was another effort to use building to drive the economy. An 'enormous Bank of Scotland on St Vincent Street' went up. It's still there and 'you could dump an Empire State Building on top of it', says Murphy. It and many other buildings in this period copied the architecture emerging in New York. 'That's one of the reasons why Glasgow has such an American feel.' Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who lived until 1928, 'loathed American classicism' as it eclipsed the 'Glasgow style'. Glasgow was still struggling to boom again when the Second World War broke out. That 'masked' the many problems besetting the city. 'Once the war is out of the way, you just begin to get collapse,' says Murphy. Municipal 'mismanagement' meant 'everything that could go wrong, goes wrong'. The old Glasgow Corporation was desperate to 'hang on to its population', but ongoing concerns around overcrowded slums were the focus of the Scottish Office. 'Glasgow falls between these two stools.' (Image: Niall Murphy, Director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Photo: Gordon Terris /Herald & Times Stalin A PLAN developed to effectively 'demolish the whole city centre and start again'. If fully enacted, Glasgow would have become a 'Stalinist city'. Buchanan Street would have been 'lined with 20-storey tower blocks and everything else demolished – City Chambers, Central Station, the School of Art, everything. It was completely laughable'. It displayed 'self-loathing', says Murphy. 'In some ways, we've never really moved away from that since then.' The scheme didn't advance, but when plans were developed 'to disperse Glasgow's population to New Towns' like East Kilbride, 'this was where it came from'. The intention was to 'deliberately reduce' Glasgow's population from 1.3 million to 750,000. Many warned this would 'massively impoverish the city, which is exactly what happened'. Glasgow, however, still saw itself as 'a world city – which it had been for two centuries', but it was being whittled away. Council delegates to America returned with plans resulting in the M8 slicing through the city and 'sterilising whole swathes of the centre'. It could have been worse. There were plans for a motorway 'bigger than the Kingston Bridge' over Glasgow Green, with a 'mast through the centre for a revolving restaurant at the top'. Post-war, city fathers began eyeing the Gorbals for levelling. 'They see it as a slum with 90,000 people. Yes, the conditions were dreadful, but it didn't need to be this 'bulldoze everything' approach.' When the Gorbals finally came down so did some 'great Georgian tenements'. The site of what's now the St Enoch Centre was bulldozed and for years was 'wasteland'. Glasgow's famed tenements were in dire disrepair by now. Ironically, Mary Barbour's rent strike helped the deterioration. Addressing high rents, made it difficult to afford factors in tenements for maintenance. Unlike most Scottish cities, Glasgow tenements were factor dominated. Tenements were owned by the middle-classes – like 'unmarried daughters of Victorian families' – who rented them out. The costs of factoring meant that, by the 1950s, tenements were dilapidated. That led to individual flats being sold. 'This fractured ownership', says Murphy, makes it 'really difficult' to collectively attend to repairs like leaky roofs. It took until 2004 with the Tenements (Scotland) Act to fix that problem. Today, Glasgow has about 77,000 tenements. That sounds a lot but, says Murphy, thanks 'to the urban clearances of the 1960s and 70s, we demolished 110,000'. Nevertheless, Glasgow still has 30% of all Scottish tenements. Housing associations often intervened to 'save Glasgow's tenements from demolition'. Another saviour of Glasgow's tenements was 'Annie's Loo'. Annie Gibbons from Govan campaigned in the early 1970s for an inside toilet. Clever architects worked out that the bed press and coal bunker in flats could be adapted to install toilets. Without Annie, many more tenements 'would have faced the bulldozer'. READ MORE Yes to Flamingo Land, no to National Parks: what is the SNP playing at? The rubbish the wine bar fakes like Farage talk about the working class makes me sick SNP will be the winner as Reform outflanks Labour from the left Devastation IT was one positive story amid 'all the devastation in the late 1960s and 70s and the loss of population'. Sandblasting was another good news story. It brought colour back to blackened Glasgow streets and helped lead to an upswing in tenement living as old flats became more desirable. Come the 1980s recession, and deindustrialisation under Margaret Thatcher, Glasgow 'was massively thinned out'. At its lowest, Glasgow's population shrank to 570,000. Today, it's 640,000. Murphy describes what happened to Glasgow in the post-war period as 'urbicide, trying to kill a city'. He knows it's provocative, but isn't afraid to equate Glasgow's fate with what 'happened to Warsaw in the Second World War – the Nazis trying to destroy the Poles' spirit'. The Polish Resistance drew maps of Warsaw so that after the war architects could rebuild what was destroyed. 'They recognised the value of their city's heritage. We didn't until it was too late and whole swathes of the city were taken away.' Up to 'a third of the Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian city was bulldozed. We lose 90-plus per cent of our industrial buildings'. He adds: 'The difference is that while in Warsaw the motives were evil, in Glasgow the motives were good.' Murphy also evokes Chairman Mao, saying Glasgow's leaders tried to enact a 'Great Leap Forward. 'Unfortunately, once the vision encountered reality it failed as Great Leaps Forward tend to do'. Working-class communities 'bore the brunt of this brutal reshaping of Glasgow'. By the millennium, 'Glasgow had more tall buildings over 20 storeys than even Moscow'. Today, a 'donut of dereliction and blight… encircles Glasgow's city centre'. The destruction was ongoing into the early 1980s. There were even discussions in the 1970s to pull down the building where the Tron Theatre stands. Junior staff to Glasgow's head planner 'worked behind his back' to save the building. 'Glasgow's decline was precipitous,' Murphy adds. He blames a desire to imitate America by officials who 'genuinely thought that was the future and they were doing the right thing'. Instead, he says, they were 'sacking the city. What really breaks my heart is that you could have solved the problems without destroying the whole fabric of the city'. Ironically, planners copied American developments which had deliberately demolished black neighbourhoods for seemingly racist reasons. 'People were scattered to the four winds. There's a moral to that story.' The same destruction was inflicted on the Gorbals, Cowcaddens and Townhead. Communities disappeared – the city 'lost its soft connections'. Studies have shown links between city demolition, population resettlement, and death rate spikes and drug use. Clearances MURPHY says the 'Glasgow Clearances' of the 1960s and 70s could be linked to the Glasgow Effect, which sees Glaswegians experience lower life expectancies than other European citizens. 'If you sweep away everything that has informed somebody's life, you can destroy their spirit, which is exactly what the Nazis were trying to do with the Poles. We ended up doing it to ourselves. You look at these areas and there's nothing left.' Murphy often stages Glasgow walking tours and has seen elderly people returning to visit the city cry in places like the Gorbals when they can find nowhere they recognise. 'It really is Glasgow's tragedy.' The irony is, he notes, that Glasgow emerged mostly unscathed from the Blitz. We still see the consequences of this depopulation today. Part of the grand old India Buildings on Bridge Street collapsed recently. 'What do you expect?' Murphy asks. 'We removed the best part of 90,000 people. The buildings no longer had purpose. It's basic cause and effect.' Similarly, 'Glasgow turned its back on the Clyde'. Unlike many cities, Glasgow's river is underused and underdeveloped. Why? Because once again the populations which lived there were removed. To make matters worse, the back of the St Enoch Centre faces the Clyde creating this 'huge dead frontage which kills that whole section of Glasgow'. Depopulation caused many weird anomalies. The little-used West Street subway station sits in an area which was once thriving until 'the tenements of Tradeston were swept away'. To rebuild Glasgow's population, the city must bring people back to these 'wastelands' south of the Clyde which are infected with 'blight'. The part of the Broomielaw known as the International Finance District is 'horrible, you just get huge call centre footprint buildings, with little active frontage. People don't want to hang out there. We're a social species – why would we hang out in grim places?' Covid and homeworking have hurt the city. Central Station sees 33,000 fewer passengers daily, 'roughly two Helensburghs. That's why shops are shutting in the centre'. Glasgow, in the 1950s, had 700,000 people 'within a mile radius of the city centre'. Today, it's 28,000. Cowcaddens, before it was cleared, had 18,000. But Glaswegians shouldn't get too hung up on the current state of Sauchiehall Street, Murphy believes. The work will benefit the city in the long run. The 'avenue-isation' is just part of what's going on. The really important work is underground fixing decaying Victorian infrastructure like sewers. If these problems aren't addressed the city centre's population cannot grow – and that has to happen. Murphy says the council must 'improve their communications' – telling that story in a better way to Glaswegians would reduce how fed up citizens have become. Buchanan Street bucks the trend. 'It's a success story.' That's because it has two huge shopping centres at either end and large numbers of pedestrians walking between Central and Queen Street Station. It's a lesson in what good city design does. Murphy considers himself a 'critical friend' of the council. He says the current crop of councillors do understand the problems facing the city, but their hands are tied due to lack of funding from central government – in both Edinburgh and London. There's 3.3million square feet of empty space in Glasgow city centre, often in vacant upper floors. Decay GETTING that space back into residential use is key to changing the city's fortunes. But it's a chicken and egg problem. Who wants to move into decaying parts of town? Perhaps, Murphy suggests, artists could be encouraged to move in as was done to reinvigorate dilapidated Manhattan in the 1970s. However, that led to 'gentrification hell' and crazy prices. Compulsory purchase of abandoned buildings is another option. The Lion Chambers on Hope Street is an example of one of the city's most beloved buildings going to ruin. However, it's owned by multiple shell companies based in the Virgin Islands, Murphy says. That makes it almost impossible to trace the owners and serve them with compulsory purchase orders. Some lanes in Glasgow, which should be vibrant, are just dead space, used for commercial bins. In other cities like Amsterdam, lanes are freed up by storing bins underground. Today's councillors are 'hamstrung by the legacy of the past which has done enormous damage to Glasgow. So much of the economy was diverted away. What did people expect would happen? It was going to end up in collapse because you cut off the lifeblood'. He adds: 'Glasgow is one of the powerhouses of the Scottish economy and it isn't firing on all cylinders. We cannot have this degree of vacancy and dereliction. We now have nearly 150 buildings on the at-risk register. That puts people off investment.' The law needs tweaked, Murphy suggests, to empower councillors. The council is legally obliged to set aside money for statutory duties, around issues like education. That inhibits the council committing to spending money to fix the city. Even so, just repairing Glasgow's rundown tenements would cost £3 billion. Why not build our way to success, Murphy suggests, like America did during the Great Depression? Meanwhile in London,'it's gold-plated infrastructure'. The UK needs to 'invest in its other cities and stop running them down'. He talks of investors arriving in Glasgow at the turn of the millennium, exiting Central Station and wanting to leave. 'It's because of the blight. Why would you want your workforce among all this blight?' Why not tree-line rundown Union Street, for example, he says. It has extensive, empty upper floors, so making it more attractive would encourage people to 'move back' into the city centre. Though if people do move back, that will require the state to build schools and GP clinics. Murphy's biggest fear is that 'the decline into dereliction continues, the blight increases, and the rot just carries on spreading'. Is he predicting a future like Detroit? A ghost city? 'Technically, Glasgow is kind of the Detroit of the UK in terms of deindustrialisation and the buildings at risk. But our city centre isn't like Detroit. I really hope we can avoid that. We'll see.'
The Independent
5 days ago
- The Independent
The best hotels in York for a history-filled city break
Few cities in Britain marry heritage and hospitality as seamlessly as York, which draws visitors not just to see it but to inhabit its history – a layered past shaped by Roman rule, Viking settlers and Norman conquest. Though pilgrims have journeyed to the site of the Minster since 627 AD, we have the Victorians to thank for putting it on the modern map; they brought the steam trains which opened the city up as an interesting, cultural and architecturally beautiful place to visit, and built the grandiose station hotels which played a significant role in accommodating wealthy travellers. Over time, York's evolving tourism has enabled historic buildings to be repurposed as hotels, allowing visitors to stay in authentic medieval coaching inns, beautiful Georgian townhouses and arresting grand dames with traditional five-star service. Additions such as spas and romantic restaurants have upped the offerings. And of course, this being York, there's always a ghost or two. For a characterful stay in one of Britain's most charming cities, here are 10 of the best hotels in York. 1. No.1 By Guest House York In a leafy area just down from Bootham Bar, this charcoal-hued regency townhouse is the place for rest-induced relaxation with an amusing sense of fun and soupçon of locomotive theming. The design leans towards playful luxury, with a toy train circling overhead in the attractive Rhubarb bar, in-room minibars set in dolls houses, and pantries of help-yourself treats (jars full of retro sweets, cans of soft drinks, popcorn) on each floor. Enormous four-poster beds, towering sash windows and Crosley record players add to the joy. Elsewhere, salty charred steaks in the distinctly romantic Pearly Cow are eye-rollingly good (as are the famous beef fat chips). If you're arriving by train, staff will greet you at the station to collect your luggage – so you can get straight onto exploring the city. 2. The Grand hotel Old school luxury service runs through the heart and soul of The Grand, one of York's most luxurious hotels just a liquorice-whip from the station. Once the headquarters of the North Eastern Railway Company, the hotel fires on all five-star cylinders: top-hatted doormen greet you at the door, a concierge plans your evening, waiters show you to your seat in the elegant 1903 bar where piquant French 75s transport you to another era, fine-dining Legacy, or atmospheric restaurant The Rise. Rooms are stylish, spacious and made for comfort. The spa, which is currently closed for a refurb (due to reopen in 2026) is set in the former vaults, and there's an on-site cookery school if you fancy sharpening up your culinary skills. 3. Clementine's Guest House hotel Clementine's Guest House plays a fun and fruitier tune than your typical townhouse hotel. In lovely suburban Clifton (but within easy reach of the walls, roughly 10 minutes), the wonderfully flamboyant style runs through all 27 rooms which span two handsome redbrick townhouses on St Peter's Grove, with no two the same. Think vibrant, Morris-style wallpaper in all manner of jungly patterns, unique bed frames, and a healthy dose of quirk in furnishings and decorations, from solid antiques to neon signs to feathery lampshades. There's no restaurant but the grassy garden at the back is a lovely spot to enjoy drinks or afternoon tea. 4. Malmaison hotel Behind the brutalist block that York's Malmaison calls home is a mix of smartly designed rooms (think modern lines with De Stijl influences), a vast co-working space on the ground floor, a gym and two restaurants: Chez Mal serving modern British food with French elements and rooftop Sora for pan-Asian tapas. But it's the brilliant cocktails that make this latter eyrie stand out – sipping lemongrass-infused Tograshi Margaritas and foamy Umeshu Sours to views of the York Minster is a fabulous way to enjoy a pre- or post-prandial drink before you head into the city for some fun. It's also in a great location, just a hop from the train station and a few minutes' walk from Micklegate. 5. Hotel du Vin Occupying a Grade II-listed Georgian mansion just outside the city walls, York's Hotel du Vin stays true to the formula the brand is so popular for: smart and sophisticated interiors with a bistro restaurant and an emphasis on good French wine. You'll find it packed on race days with chipper folk dressed to the nines on their way to Knavesmire, while on quieter days it's a peaceful enclave owing to its slightly out-of-the-way leafy location just down from Micklegate Bar. That's not to say you're miles from the action; you can reach both Micklegate and Bishopthorpe roads, each with their slew of trendy independent bars, cafes and fantastic restaurants, in seven-10 minutes on foot. 6. Guy Fawkes Inn hotel Steeped in character with a raffish undertone, Guy Fawkes Inn is one of the most significant hotels in York for its history and – like most, if not all of the historic buildings in the city – is said to be haunted (book the Belfry Suite if you're open to an apparition or two). The infamous plotter is said to have been born on the site in 1570 and was baptised in St. Michael Le Belfrey just opposite. Thirteen rooms, a shadowy restaurant and a small bar serving a good pour of real ale are all big draws, but one of the things that most sets Guy Fawkes Inn apart is the complimentary guided walking tours that takes place daily (one to two hours) – a great way to get acquainted with the city if it's your first time visiting. Just don't count on any Bonfire-night themed extravaganzas on November 5 – any buildings formerly owned by Fawkes and his family are 'prohibited' from celebrating it. 7. The Milner hotel You can practically throw your suitcase from the train to the doorway of this grande dame station hotel, which can be accessed directly via Platform 3 at York. The affordable prices are generous given the unbeatable location; it overlooks landscaped gardens – noticeably fragrant in bloom – with views to the York Minster, and you can walk to the centre in a few minutes, along the wall which runs alongside should you wish. A muted, beige colour scheme runs throughout with original features like the sweeping iron staircase, soaring columns, and panelled walls in the Oak Room creating a lasting impression from the days it was created to house aristocracy and rich industrialists. And yet it doesn't feel pretentious. The Garden Room is a lovely place to enjoy a pot of tea. 8. Middlethorpe Hall An impressive William III country pile in 20 acres of sprawling manicured gardens and parkland on Bishopthorpe Road near York Racecourse. It's a couple of miles from the centre but what it lacks in proximity it makes up for in its countryside surroundings and riverside location. One of the National Trust's three Historic House Hotels, the property dates back to 1699 and was once the home of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an English aristocrat, famous diarist and discoverer of smallpox inoculation. In today's incarnation as a hotel, visitors and overnight guests can enjoy dinner in the two-AA-Rosette restaurant, spa treatments by Aromatherapy Associates, afternoon teas, and classic rooms, as well as events like garden tours, presentations and photography workshops. 9. Hotel Indigo York Riffing off York's chocolate history, this Indigo on Walmgate displays subtle references to Rowntree's and Terry's confectionery heritage throughout its rooms and public spaces – old photographs on the walls, cocoa tones throughout the decor, sweet-themed cushions, chocolate martinis in the bar – as well as residing in one of its oldest areas. It's in a quieter part of town, just down from the trendy independent brunch spots of Fossgate, but also within easy reach of some of York's most famous attractions (Jorvik, York Castle Museum and Clifford's Tower, for instance, are all less than 10 minutes' walk away). Enjoy craft beer and cocktails as well as food by Pasta Evangelists in the on-site restaurant, No.88 Walmgate. 10. Grays Court hotel With just 12 rooms and a triple-Rosette restaurant, The Bow Room, serving expertly crafted tasting menus featuring ingredients grown in the kitchen garden, Grays Court combines boutique and luxury hotel factors to create a unique, star-quality hotel in the middle of York. The property, located in the Minster Quarter, stands on the site of an old Roman fortress. It was originally built in the 11th century as the official residence of the Treasurers of York Minster, hosting visitors on royal, state and church business as well as kings and noblemen. It's also the only building to have private access to York's City walls and boasts beautifully tended lawns bordered by flowers and trees. Why trust us The hotels featured in this list have been carefully selected by The Independent's expert travel writers, each with a deep knowledge of the destinations they cover. Our contributors either live in these locations or visit frequently, ensuring a personal and informed perspective. When picking which hotels to include, they consider their own experience staying in the hotels and evaluate location, facilities, service and all the other details that make for an exceptional stay for all types of traveller.
