The Glasgow People's Palace and Winter Gardens
Visit his Interesting Social History Museum on Glasgow Green
May 18, 2009
The People’s Palace and Winter Gardens is a lovely building with an exciting social history museum collection, and, as the name suggests, an enormous conservatory, which now serves as a café set out around a tropical garden. While it is a little out of the main shopping centre of Glasgow, it is nevertheless easily reached, and makes a great break from the bustle.
How to Get to the People’s Palace, Glasgow
The People’s Palace is situated on Glasgow Green, the long -established Common for the city where, by statute, residents are still entitled to graze their milk cow or spread out their washing to dry. It is on a well-served bus route and buses 16, 18, 40, 61, 62, 64, 203 and 263 will all drop the visitor at the door. High Street railway station and St Enoch subway station are closest but involve a short walk.
History of the People’s Palace, Glasgow
The Palace was designed by Alexander Beith MacDonald and opened in January 1898. It was purpose-built as a reading room and art gallery to provide cultural opportunities for the industrial poor who lived in the East End, where the building is sited. Lord Rosebury, who opened the building, described it as a ‘palace of pleasure and imagination’ and stressed the sense that it to belonged the people with the phrase “Open to the people for ever and ever.”
By the 1940s, the People’s Palace had become a social history museum and, with regular renovations, now houses a most intriguing collection of art and artefacts that explores the lives of the people of Glasgow since 1750. Some of the collection looks at the lives of the wealthy ‘Tobacco Lords’, but most is dedicated to the simple working people and their battle to make ends meet and squeeze a little pleasure from a hard life.
Highlights of the People’s Palace Museum, Glasgow
There is much to see but the outstanding exhibits include the Steamie, the Buttercup Dairy and the Anderson Air Raid Shelter.
The steamie is a mock-up of this common communal laundry where women would gather to boil clothes, put them through mangles. Even an example of an old baby’s pram (often the item used to take the heavy wet washing home) is sitting there. The physical exhibit is accompanied by excellent period photos of steamies in use.
The Buttercup Dairy is a room set up as a shop selling milk products. All the old equipment is there, plus pretend blocks of cheese. An original Buttercup Dairy sign hangs over the door. School groups are amazed at how ‘primitive’ shopping once was.
The Anderson Air Raid Shelter is carefully sandbagged all round and open for people to crawl inside and experience the sense of waiting for the bombs to fall. Associated exhibits include a range of gas masks, including a children’s model and other WWII paraphernalia.
Doon the Watter
Another display, largely of quotes and photographs, shows the urgent need for families – sometimes whole tenements or streets, to go ‘Doon the Watter’ together on a steamer. Humorous quotes from participants reveal that these pilgrimages to the Firth of Clyde seaside were quite often conducted from start to finish in heavy rain, but nevertheless represented a much-needed outing.
Glasgow Patter
This audio-visual treat allows visitors to hear the distinctive Glaswegian speech and humorous turn of phrase as famous Glasgow comics, including a young Billie Connolly, make fun of their local ‘patter’ and their inability to make themselves understood outside Scotland. Older visitors will find themselves singing along to a broad rendition of “I belong to Glasgow”, broadcast on overhead speakers in this section.
The Doulton Fountain
Outside the People’s Palace is an outdoor museum piece – the enormous terracotta fountain gifted to Glasgow by Sir Henry Doulton, of the famous Royal Doulton Pottery Company, for the Empire Exhibition in 1888.
With five tiers reaching to 46 feet at the top of Queen Victoria’s head, the fountain is 70 feet across the base, making it the world’s largest terracotta fountain. To celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, it features exquisitely detailed tableaux of four happy groups of subject peoples representing Australia, Africa, Canada and India.
The People’s Palace is, undoubtedly, one of the best of 13 great museums in Glasgow, and entry is free. It is open daily: Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The café in the deliciously steamy Winter Gardens serves hot and cold food from 10 a.m. to 4.15 p.m. daily. A walk across Glasgow Green down to the Glasgow Clyde river is a fitting way to end a visit.
