Niall Murphy:
Hello, everyone. I’m Niall Murphy. Welcome to If Glasgow’s Walls Could Talk, a podcast by Glasgow City Heritage Trust about the stories and relationships between historic buildings and people in Glasgow.
Today, we’re venturing into an intriguing new area. Buildings don’t just tell stories. Over the years, many of them often seem to develop their own characters and personalities, a mood or atmosphere, maybe. Something you can sense as soon as you walk over the doorstep. But is there more to it than that? Have you ever entered a room or a building and felt that someone or something unseen is following you? Those footsteps on the stairs, shadows in an empty room, whispering voices. That’s all part of a good night’s work for our next guest who can tell us fascinating stories about investigating paranormal experiences in Glasgow buildings.
In this episode, we meet Jan Murdoch-Richards, who founded Lanarkshire Paranormal with her husband Steff almost 14 years ago. In fact, Jan has been interested in the paranormal since childhood, when she used to watch her mother reading tea leaves for families, friends, and neighbours. I’m told she could predict the future with uncanny accuracy. However, Jan spent the first part of her working life in the down-to-earth setting of a Glasgow bar and restaurant where she managed events. Then 15 years ago, she met the man who would become her husband and business partner. It sounds as if the turning point was their first date, an outing to a haunted house.
Now their not-for-profit company runs paranormal investigations across the UK. In Scotland, their clients include the National Trust for Scotland, among other owners of haunted stately homes and castles. But there are also spooky happenings in much-loved places, deeply rooted in Glasgow life. Before the pandemic, the company was booked up for a year or two ahead. Now, as they ease back into a paranormal life, Jan and Steff are once again opening up a programme of real-life paranormal investigations. So what does this all mean? Let’s investigate with Jan.
Jan, first question. Perhaps we should start by checking out the meaning of paranormal. What is a paranormal investigation, and what are you looking for?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
A paranormal investigation is basically we go into a building, it usually starts 9:00 PM until 3:00 in the morning, and it’s pitch black, no lights on at all, and we are looking for evidence. If people say, “Oh, this is haunted,” we are looking for the evidence of that, and it’s very interesting.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Okay. How did you first become interested in paranormal experiences? What switched you onto this?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
As I said, my mother, I was fascinated watching these lovely ladies coming to my mother’s house and her reading these tea leaves, and I would meet them maybe a few weeks later, and they’d be like, “Oh, Jean. You know what you said?” And I was like, “Wow, how does that happen?” And then I used to watch TV programmes. Then, I met my husband, and he used to run a team in Manchester. And then when he moved up with me, we talked about it, and thought, “Yeah, we’ll start one up here.”
Niall Murphy:
Great. Good. Where was the inspiration for Lanarkshire Paranormal? Can you tell us a little more about the first date, which I understand, was an outing to a beautiful haunted house, Bowling House?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Bowling. Bowling Hall.
Niall Murphy:
Bowling Hall?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Bowling Hall. Bowling Hall.
Niall Murphy:
Bowling Hall in Yorkshire. And how did you react to it?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Well, when he first said to me about it, I just looked at him and I thought, “Are you mad?” Because I had never done anything like that before. And I was like, “Are you crazy? No way.” He was like, “No, no, no. Come on. It’ll be fun.” And I’m like, “Fun? Are you mad?” I went anyway, and I think it was all part of his plan because I clung to him the whole night, didn’t let him go at all. But after an hour or so, I calmed down and I loved it. It was just so interesting. I got a lot of names in my head, a lot of dates. And then we spoke to the historian. It was true, the names of the people, the lords and the ladies who stayed there, and the dates. And I was like, “Wow.” It was just fascinating.
Niall Murphy:
So you’re sensitive to all this stuff, and you can pick up that information-
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
I think so. Yeah. My mother was-
Niall Murphy:
… just from the environment?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
My mother and my grandmother, they were both like that. Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Fascinating. So there’s some kind of a… Right, okay. That’s really interesting. The next question is quite personal to me as well, but we’ll get onto that. Your first investigation as Lanarkshire Paranormal was in Govanhill Baths. Now, with one of my other hats, I’m the chair of Govanhill Baths Building Preservation Trust. What we’re doing at the Building Preservation Trust is we’re trying to restore the building at the moment, but that would’ve been Govanhill Baths Community Trust, which I was chair of for about five minutes before I moved over to the Building Preservation Trust. But obviously, I absolutely love Govanhill Baths, so I’m intrigued to know how you got involved in all of this.
Now, I’ve got a good story to tell you about this as well. But there’s been a very long community campaign to restore the baths, this great Edwardian baths complex. And I just wanted to know, how many times have you been in and out of the building, and what was it that you discovered? Because I’m fascinated by this because it’s really intriguing for me. Go on, tell us all about it.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Well, what I did was I stay in Pollokshields. I don’t stay too far away. And I used to take my kids to Govanhill Bath when they were small, so I knew that they were trying to raise funds. I contacted them and they said, “Yeah, absolutely.” So we did it. We did a paranormal investigation twice a year and we raised over 1,000 pounds a year for them.
Niall Murphy:
Brilliant.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And that was going on there for about 11 years now. Oh, what a place. It’s amazing. Oh, yeah.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, really? Oh, go on. Do tell us.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Me and Laura, who’s also on our team, we were standing in where the steamie used to be.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And it was like 2:00 in the morning, pitch black, we’re standing there ourselves, and we literally felt these ice-cold fingers on the back of our neck, and we were frog-marched out of there, out of that room. And we were like, “Oh my God, what’s going on?” Just frog-marched right out of there and into the main reception area. And then I left.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And we just looked at each other and we’re like, “Okay, let’s go back in,” and we went back in again. And it happened again.
Niall Murphy:
I couldn’t do that.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Obviously, it was very tragic as well that the main pool was drained and used as a morgue during-
Niall Murphy:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah, during the Clydebank Blitz.
Niall Murphy:
Okay. I had no idea.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
The main pool was drained.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And that area I decided to play 1940s music. We’ll Meet Again, things like that. And just the noises, the bangs, the bumps. And then I put the music off and I could hear a man singing. And there was no men, it was just me and my friend and some public. And I said, “Right. Okay, I’m going to stop the music now, but if you want me to do it again, can you say you want me to do it again?” They’re like, “Yes, please.” We all heard that, “Yes, please,” this man’s voice. So I put the music back on, and again, he was singing. Okay. There’s loads of spooky things have happened in there.
Niall Murphy:
It’s intriguing. It is. It’s intriguing. My funny story about the baths was we were taking… This was just before lockdown, and this was just as we were about to start on all the works, the construction works. We were interviewing for the contractors for it. And we had this day in which we took the contractors around the building. And I don’t know whether Stevie West, who now manages the Deep End around the-
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Mm-hmm.
Niall Murphy:
Stevie, he’s great fun and he plays practical jokes. So we’re taking these contractors around the building, taking them down into the basement, and the basement freaks me out because it’s straight out of a horror film, the basement.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
First thing he did, I’m leading this party down the stairs and I opened the door, which normally is an electrical cupboard, just to show them this is the electrical cupboard here. And out pops this mannequin with a noose around its neck with a rectus Stevie set up for us. And it was like, “Ah.”
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, no.
Niall Murphy:
And you’re trying to be professional and taking a bunch of contractors around and you’re completely freaked out. And it’s like, “Stevie, I’ll get you for that.”
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
The basement is one of the creepiest. The stories I can tell you about what happened down there was, wow. We were doing some glasswork, finger on the glass and it was just the public, they were doing it. And the glass was going, it was going everywhere. It was doing the shape of a pentagram. It was going all over and then it just flew off the table and smashed against the wall.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Scary.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
I was like, “Oh, let’s do this again.” Oh, yeah.
Niall Murphy:
Okay. Before we delve deeper into this, a few technical and practical questions. First off, what is involved in managing a paranormal investigation? I understand that a typical event is held between 9:00 PM, 3:00 AM. Do you need any special equipment to pick stuff up? Any training, risk assessment, first aid, all that practical stuff?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah. You need that first-aider. We also do a risk assessment. We do that because it’s pitch black. And sometimes we’re in big castles and there’s stone stairs. And so we need to do all sorts of things like that. We have a load of equipment that we use.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Okay. And does any of that equipment, can pick up stuff, stuff that is going on in the environment, cold spots, stuff like that? Because I know people talk about that.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah. We’ve got laser thermometers, and we’ve also got an SLS camera, which that is one of my favourite things because if there’s a spirit there, it will capture it like a stick figure. So if you’re in an empty room and you’re panning the camera around, if there’s a stick figure in that room, that’s how we spell it. Can you say hello?
Niall Murphy:
Right. Okay.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And we have trigger objects as well, which is good.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
That we throw around.
Niall Murphy:
Intriguing. Okay. Tell us more about Glasgow’s Haunted Buildings then. You’ve investigated some wonderful places in Glasgow that are really high profile, full of everyday visible life. So places like Tron Theatre, Barrowland Ballrooms. What have you found there and can you tell us a bit more about all of that?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
The Barrowland Ballroom, I was so happy to get that. I couldn’t believe I got that. Yeah, I was so excited about that. That was amazing. Just the history of that place. And me and my team and a lot of the public were in the guest dressing room and we heard this big band music. This was like 1:00 in the morning. It was only us that were in the building. We heard this big band music and I thought, oh. And then we heard this lady singing. It only lasted a few seconds but we clearly heard this lady singing. And then it stopped and we thought, what? Hair was standing on end. And I said to her, “Do you know that was beautiful?” I said, “Could you do that again?” And it happened again.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
She sung again. Oh, it was just… And the infamous, I’m Afraid Bible John came through.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Fascinating.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Picked up that as well. Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
Why is it that people’s spirits and things can get trapped in these places? What is that about? Is it memories? How does that rub off on a place?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
It’s said that obviously, things can happen in your house, bad things, good things. It’s like they get ingrained into the walls, the feelings that happened on that particular day. And spirits can come back to visit or they can stay there because it was a really happy event or a really sad event. And people think, when you say to people, “Oh, there’s a spirit in your house,” they get terrified. But not every spirit is bad. Some spirits, we’ve met some… Well not met, but we’ve spoken to, interacted with a lot of lovely, lovely spirits.
Niall Murphy:
I’m assuming here that obviously if you’re in an older building, it’s much more likely those qualities are going to be more imbued in an older building. But have you come across new places that attract paranormal?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
It depends, it may be a new building, but what is it built on?
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
What was on that ground before it was built?
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, yeah.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah. Which could be-
Niall Murphy:
That can abuse something too. I’m interested in this because I did see a ghost once. I was brought up in Hong Kong.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, wow.
Niall Murphy:
And we were living in this building called Greenlake Hall. And when I look back… And I was born in the seventies, Greenlake Hall must have actually been built in the sixties because it was a modern block of flats. And I saw a ghost of a woman’s head come through a wall in my bedroom.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Wow.
Niall Murphy:
And I’ve never forgotten. And I must have been about three, four at the time.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Wow.
Niall Murphy:
Never forgotten. Screaming and running to my mom because I saw this happen.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
That would be scary.
Niall Murphy:
And I’m thinking, “Where did that come from? Did I imagine that?” And I’m like, no. It’s one of my earliest memories.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
See, if you do see something, you do think, “What was that? Was that my imagination?” And you start questioning yourself. Mainly, sometimes it’s out of the corner of your eye you’ll see something walking past. Or I’m like, wow. It happened in our house. Our house is crazy. It’s an old Victorian tenement. And we had one of our friends who was a really good medium, he came into my house and he just walked in. He is like, Oh, my God.” He said, “This house is crazy.” And it’s the old couple who used to stay here. And there’s also a little boy who wanders around, but that’s fine.
But there was one day my husband was in the kitchen and I was in the bedroom and I walked through the hallway and I saw my husband coming into the living room and sitting down. So I followed him in. Nobody there. And the hairs on the back of my neck really that… I said, “I’ve got chills. And they ain’t multiplying my spirit at all.” I was like, “Wow.” And in the kitchen and my husband was sitting in his man office thinking away. And I was like, you’ve got a doppelganger. He’s just walked into the living room.” There’s only one time in the… no, twice, sorry, in the 14 years I’ve been doing this I’ve had really bad nightmares. And that’s only twice since that’s happened. Oh, I didn’t like that.
Niall Murphy:
Right. So most of the encounters are good.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah. Yeah. They’re a lot. Over the years, we’ve met… Well, not met, I keep saying met, but we’ve interacted with spirits from the Bannockburn right through World Wars. And we’ve even got relations back together with their ancestors. That was really interesting. That’s happened a few times. Yeah. That was really-
Niall Murphy:
Fascinating.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah. Plane Castle, it was a lovely girl was here with her husband. And we kept getting this French man’s name. And I’m like, “French, my baby is here to help fight with the Bannockburn.” And then I said his name out loud and she went, “Oh.” She said, “That was my great, great, great, great-grandfather’s name.” And I was like, “Wow.” And then we did some glasswork and he kept coming through and it turned out it was her great, great, great, great-grandfather. And there was also other names that he said. And I said to her, and it connected all up. And I was like, wow, that’s happened a few times.
Niall Murphy:
Fascinating. How do you handle sceptics? And it’s not just awkward customers who might be alive. What about ghosts, are they always well-behaved? Your encounters mostly seem to be with nicer ghost, but you did mention you got some difficult ones. Can you tell us anything about that?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Sceptics are good because we need a good balance. I’m not one of these that think everything’s bad or everything’s good. No. But my husband is a sceptic, even though he is been doing it. It drives me mad. A spirit could come up and slap him in the face and he’ll say, “That was wind.” It drives me crazy. But you need that. You need the balance. So that’s good. But yeah, we’ve had a few. Inveraray Jail, I got grabbed by the lapels and shoved against the wall in one of the jail cells. And I was like, “Please don’t do that.” I said, “We are not here to hurt you, so don’t hurt any of us.” Everything that we do has got to be with the greatest respect. I will not go…
I see these paranormal shows. Some of them, not all of them, some of them, the people go in there very aggressive, shouting. No, we don’t know. No, absolutely not. Spirits were alive once as well. We are not there to judge anyway. We’re not there… We don’t do that. So if they’re attacking us, pushing us, and poking us, we’ll be like, “No, please don’t do that.”
Niall Murphy:
Right, right.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
So you are a true believer of this, but you seem to take this quite lightly and not too seriously with the whole thing. And looking at your Facebook page and your website, you seem to be having a lot of fun, but there’s obviously a serious side and a serious interest in the buildings you’re exploring and you’re raising money for charity as well. Tell us about the causes you’ve supported as part of this.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Over the years, we’ve supported the West of Scotland Autistic Society.
Niall Murphy:
Oh, interesting.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
We did that twice for them. Once in Govanhill Baths. And then we did another one in Provan Hall in Glasgow. And we raised money for them to take the kids on a sleepover at Christmas to the aquarium and-
Niall Murphy:
Right. Sea Life. You mean Sea Life, something like that. Right? Yes.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah, Sea Life, they did a sleepover for the kids. And recently we did the Barrowland and we raised 1,050 pounds for the Glasgow Children’s Hospital.
Niall Murphy:
Brilliant.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah, we’ve done lots of things over there. I mean, 14 years, I can’t remember all of them. But yeah, we’ve done quite a lot. And we raised a lot of money for the National Trust as well, to keep them going. They’re a charity, they’re a preservation thing, so we do that as well.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Big fan of their work. Okay. What happens next? Your first live event since lockdown sold out very quickly, and you’ve been asked back by a special request to Holmwood House by the National Trust of Scotland. Can you tell us what you’ve uncovered there on previous visits?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Do you know that the mirrors in there, we do a lot of scrying, which is-
Niall Murphy:
What’s scrying?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Scrying, the team doesn’t do it, but we will say to a member of the public, “Does anybody want to do scrying? Only if you feel comfortable.” What they’ll do is they’ll stand in front of the mirror and we’ll shine a candle or a torch into the mirror, and I’ll ask the spirits to change that person’s face in the mirror to come through to us. Now, we’ve seen men turning into nuns.
Niall Murphy:
Really?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
We’ve seen women start to develop beards, moustaches.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
It’s really… Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
That’s fascinating. Because it sounds like that links back to the history of the house with it having been a convent at one point. And, of course, prior to that, it was that one of the local mill owners, I think it’s John Cooper, who had built the house or got Alexander Greek Thompson to build this fantastic house for him in the late 1850s. That’s intriguing that both your references are from key moments in the building’s history.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah. On our Facebook page, we’ve got photographs of everywhere, every investigation we’ve done over the years, all our pictures are on there. We’ve got videos on there, you can have a look at. And I love having fun. I do. I will chat to anyone. That’s why I love working with the National Trust. And I try to keep our page light as well because people can come along an investigation and it’s scary. They can be really scary. And I find that humour helps to put them at ease a little bit.
Niall Murphy:
Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, very much. The first time I got asked to do a walking tour in Glasgow, this is way back, it’s like 2001, and I got asked to do it as a dare for Doors Open Day. And I thought, “Oh God, I’m going to make a complete fool of myself because people will realise straight away that I don’t come from Glasgow and I would be so rumbled.” And I was standing in front of what’s now… It used to be the We Travel Centre in St. Enoch Square, but I think it’s now… I can’t remember. It’s a coffee shop of some… I can’t remember the name of it. Anyway, the actual door to that, which used to be, that was the headquarters building for the Glasgow subway. And it was the main entrance into the subway itself that James Miller, who is the architect of that, around that door, he has Devil mask faces.
So it’s actually a gate to hell, Glasgow’s hell mouth. And you’re like, how did he get away with that, with the subway making that joke like that? And yet presumably the building owners were actually okay with that. So standing there, I suddenly spotted this, and I turned it into a joke and people started laughing. And I thought, oh, that’s really good because then you start connecting with people through humour. And that worked really well. It’s a really good way to connect with people. It’s interesting that you do that too. Okay. What else lies on the horizon for Lanarkshire Paranormal? I can see you’ve got a lot of things. Hill House. I’m intrigued to know what Hill House is going to be like.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, yeah, we’ve done that. We did that a couple of years ago. Oh, so good.
Niall Murphy:
Right. Go on. Tell us a bit about that then.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Nothing bad, but there’s a spirit there. He is quite famous. Everybody has seen him, apparently, of a man, a tall man with a cape and he is walking around. We saw him, footsteps. If we were sitting down, above his, in the room above his, you could hear, it was a sound like dragging. Something was getting dragged across the floor.
Niall Murphy:
Oh, that’s a bit creepy.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, it was good. It’s like, “Yay. Do it again.” What we do find, which everybody says that men scream louder than the women.
Niall Murphy:
Oh, really?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yes.
Niall Murphy:
That’s too good.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yes. The men can be, “Oh, you’re okay ladies. You’re safe with me. Don’t worry.” And then a door will slam and the men are like, “Ah!”
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, you’re like, right. Quick, run.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And their wives are like, “I could have been killed and you run away and left me.”
Niall Murphy:
Yeah. You abandoned me. You ran off.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
That’s fun.
Niall Murphy:
I remember once I was living in Berlin, and this was my first job out of architecture school, and I had to survey this huge factory complex in Kreuzberg in Berlin. And it was five interlocking courtyards in this one factory that was across six floors with a huge basement. And it was going around the basement all by yourself in the dark with a torch. Completely creepy. And all I could think of was, “Oh God, what if something did happen to you? Nobody would ever find you again.” It was just me and the security guard at the front door. And it used to completely freak me out. And by the end of it, I was sprinting out of that place as fast as I could go.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
See, we’d be like, “Yay. Take us out.”
Niall Murphy:
You’d have been right in there.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Yeah.
Niall Murphy:
And I was like, “Get me out of here. I don’t like this. I can’t take it anymore.” Okay. Right. Coming to our last question, which is a completely loaded question, and we ask everybody who comes onto the show about this. What is your favourite building in Glasgow, haunted or not? And what would it tell you if its walls could talk?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, there’s so many to choose from.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, you’re like me.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, I love it. I love all these old buildings. And I think it’s tragic the way they’re getting knocked down.
Niall Murphy:
Yeah, I know.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
That drives me insane.
Niall Murphy:
Tears my hair out and I don’t even have any hair.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
I love Glasgow Cathedral. That is just stunning. And the history that could tell us. Yeah. But I understand it’s still used as a cathedral. I don’t really disrespect anybody. Or the Theatre Royal, wow. I love theatres.
Niall Murphy:
Theatre Royal is a great space.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
I love theatres. See, the spirits that come through in the theatre, obviously the actresses, the actors, they come through and oh, it’s great. You’re standing on the stage looking out, and you can see the chairs going down as if people are sitting down and there’s nobody there, but you can see the shadows of people sitting.
Niall Murphy:
Right.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And you’re like, “Hello.” And they’re waving back at you. It was great.
Niall Murphy:
But Glasgow Cathedral, that’s so ancient.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, it’s beautiful.
Niall Murphy:
Glasgow Cathedral intrigues me because it’s like when you go into it now, your experience of it is completely different to what it used to be. Because for a start, obviously, it lost all its stained glass and everything in the Reformation. And then the Victorians gave it full-on high Victorian stained glass. And all that’s gone because of all the pollution in Glasgow is so bad that the leg columns apparently they couldn’t cope anymore. That was all stripped out in the Second World War, and now it’s all completely modern inside. And probably most people who go there don’t realise that all that stained glass is actually not that old. It’s not even a century old, but it’s all… And it makes it so light, and it must have been quite gloomy in the past, but it’s such a great space. Fantastic.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
It’s beautiful. And can we just tell Glasgow, say, “Can you just stop knocking down all these old buildings?” Oh my god.
Niall Murphy:
I know. It’s what makes Glasgow. Glasgow has all those old buildings that have so much character. That’s what makes Glasgow such a great city.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
This is the thing. Edinburgh has embraced their old characters, whereas Glasgow City Council, “Oh, knock it down. Knock it down.”
Niall Murphy:
Yes.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Drives me crazy.
Niall Murphy:
Yes. Yeah.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Just thought I’d get that in there.
Niall Murphy:
Quite right to. Yeah, I know. It is very frustrating. I was meeting somebody in St. Enoch Square this morning and I was trying to explain about the church that was there in the square and that got knocked down because it was in the way of the buses.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
And that beautiful old hotel that was there, that all got knocked down.
Niall Murphy:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Isi Metzstein used to teach at the art school, teach architecture at the art school. Really great Glasgow architect. Used to say that the joke was that the St. Enoch railway station, it was a grand hotel, huge hotel at the front of two big sheds, and they bulldozed it and then used it to infill Queen’s Dock. And then on top of Queen’s Dock, they built a big hotel with two sheds, which is the SECC. And it’s like, why didn’t they just keep St. Enoch Station and turn it into the SECC?
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh.
Niall Murphy:
No-brainer. And it would’ve been in the centre of town. Even better.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
I know. You’re, “Ah!”
Niall Murphy:
So frustrating. I know, just a bit of foresight. Anyway, that’s what we’re trying to do something about and hopefully inspire people to keep what heritage they’ve got and value it and learn to value it a lot more.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Exactly.
Niall Murphy:
Jan, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Oh, you too.
Niall Murphy:
I might actually really want to go on one of your tours, even though I’d be completely frightened about the whole thing.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Come along, don’t be feared.
Niall Murphy:
If you’re doing Govanhill Baths, give me a shout because obviously, we’re in the middle of a whole construction programme, but it would be great fun, particularly in the basement. And yeah, you’ll be intrigued by the basement now because we’ve had to lower the floor in there.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Ooh.
Niall Murphy:
Because the front half of it is going to be office space, lettable office space to community groups. But we’ve also had to renew all of the equipment for the pools. All that’s got to go around the pools. So all the floors have been lowered down, so it’s much more headroom. So it’s not as creepy as it was.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Well, that will annoy the spirits.
Niall Murphy:
Yes. I know. I wonder what they think about it.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Right? Come on, let’s-
Niall Murphy:
We should check in with them.
Jan Murdoch-Richards:
Let’s go. Let’s go.
Niall Murphy:
We should, when it’s finished, get you in there. It would be fun.
Katharine Neil:
Glasgow City Heritage Trust is an independent charity and grant funder that promotes the understanding, appreciation, and conservation of Glasgow’s historic built environment. Do you want to know more? Have a look at our website at glasgowheritage.org.uk and follow us on social media at Glasgow Heritage. This podcast was produced by Inner Ear for Glasgow City Heritage Trust. The podcast is kindly sponsored by the National Trust for Scotland and supported by Tunnock’s.