THE Glasgow Herald’s municipal correspondent, Claude Thomson, had spent hours in the City Chambers every day, seeking information about the workings of Glasgow Corporation and its committees. To him it was the most fascinating building in the city, but he had never had a full-scale tour. Until, that is, one day in February 1971, when he got his wish.
“Monument to Victorian ideas of civic splendour”, ran the headline above his report. He first climbed the 54 stone and 90 spiral stairs to reach a vantage-point in the central tower (he took one look at the 30 rungs on a ladder that would have brought him higher still but decided enough was enough, thanks anyway).
He gazed out at the city landscape but disliked the excrescences atop the nearby FE colleges. Back in the entrance hall, he admired the ceiling of 1.5 million pieces of Venetian mosaic. In the council hall he visualised the seats occupied by bewhiskered Victorian councillors, “Albert chains stretched over ample paunches.”
Spotting the basement stores with their iron-barred gates, he would not have been surprised to learn that they had once been dungeons where recalcitrant councillors had been detained. He saw the city archives, a mile and half of shelving holding records going back 800 years.
He noticed, too, the maintenance staff who kept the entire building ticking over. And at one point he would have seen this Parks Department worker, watering the floral displays on a staircase.
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