Delete if you are not at all interested in this little jaunt down memory lane of what life was like when I was just a lass. Ken, Ahem, I don't give a 'sugar' about my age as there is hang all I can do about it! It's the crepe paper face that's discouraging though, so I try not to look in the mirror too much! Yes, I am as old as tea now, but I was a flibbertigibbet of barely 14 in 1944 when I would deliver letters to what was then the RBS in that colonnaded building in Royal Exchange Square. I would just enter the colonnaded front of the building and deliver the correspondence to the reception desk, and so I have no idea what the rest of the interior looked like, except as a bank. The office where I worked was at 144 St. Vincent Street, between Hope Street and Renfield Street, so smack dab in the middle of Glasgow. Royal Exchange Square was within a reasonable walking distance from the office where I would flit about delivering the day's office mail. I would trudge as far up as Park Circus (before one of the offices was used for genealogy purposes) and Blythswood Square, where the club was of the 'thoughtful gentleman' boss who once phoned me to bring him his raincoat as it was pouring rain. Silly young girl that I was it never dawned on me to use the raincoat to cover myself so I ended up 'drookit.' This seems like light years ago and one wonders if even legal, confidential correspondence is e-mailed or faxed nowadays and if the position of a wee office lass or lad is now obsolete. Maybe not, for who is going to pick up the wee bottles of milk and make tea for the staff? Has to be some low man on the totem pole, unless matters are more egalitarian now. The legal documents had to be taken to the Inland Revenue building, on George Street, looking out on to the side of the City Chambers building (George Square), to be proofread before being sealed with sealing wax with the official government stamp while the wax was still hot. If there was a typing error the whole page had to be re-typed. No computers, of course. On this, I liked a Royal Standard far better than an Underwood typewriter! One trip to the Inland Revenue in 1945 was of historical importance as that was when mobs of people lined the street to cheer as Winston Churchill and Clementine drove by in an open car. He was either tanned or was wearing makeup as he did not have a 'peely-wally' complexion! A-political as I was at the age of 14, I thought it was so unfair that he was not re-elected after all he had done to boost the spirits of the Brits during WWII. Lesson learned that you're only as good as your last movie, as the saying goes. I am sure Frank McGonigal can tell us about how 14-year-old shipyard apprentices were treated 'back then.' It's all of a time, but in my youth not much different from the time of Charles Dickens. When I was a lass the 40-hour week was a bit of a luxury for office workers, so the hours I worked were from 9:00am until 5:30pm (with 1-1/2 lunch break), and then from 9:00am to 1:00pm on Saturdays. This did not comply with the official 40 hour work week for children. The big aim was to find an office job where you did not have to work half-day on a Saturday. Out of the office at 5:30p.m., if you were lucky that the boss had all his correspondence ready, and off to stand at the bus stop, sometimes until 7:00pm as the buses were not too frequent (war time) and were filled with workers from the shipyards and other heavy industry. A friend and I tried different bus routes, but we likely would have been better off and quicker hoofing it home to the north end of Glasgow. On 'dirty workers!' Back in the 1940s/50s there were no such things as showers for men to clean themselves off at the end of the work day, so they'd travel on the buses still wearing their grimy overalls. Every so often there would be letters to the paper from women protesting how this grime affected their coats, and what were 'they' going to do about it. San ferry ann (ça ne fait rien) because I think even up to 1954 when I left Glasgow the 'dirty workers' were still travelling on the buses wearing their dirty work clothes. Soon such would be academic anyway as so much industry, shipyards, coal mining, and other heavy works went the way of the dinosaur, with such as Springburn, with its locomotive works closing down, deeply affected the livelihood of a population of 30,000. The foregoing is to give some colour to the way it was in my lifetime...remember, I'm only 15 years away from being a centenarian! Maisie -----Original Message----- From: Ken Mathieson Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2015 7:18 AM To: Maisie Egger ; lanark@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [Lanark] Some of Lost Glasgow Hi Maisie et al, The full story of RBS at Buchanan Street/Royal Exchange Sq is to be found here: http://heritagearchives.rbs.com/places/list/glasgow.html Maisie is partially correct in that the bank was indeed located in apart of a mansion on Queen Street on the site of today's GOMA. However it was only there from 1817 to c1827 and by 1834 it was at the west side of Royal Exchange Sq facing into the rear of the largely new Exchange Building (now GOMA), which itself was built on the site of a previously-existing mansion. The collonaded facade of the bank can be seen in the etching at the top of the website article and in the foreground is the rear corner of the Exchange Building, which occupies the centre of the square. The bank extended its property westwards to Buchanan St in 1850 and remained on that large site until 1997, when the entire building became a Borders bookstore. Since Borders withdrew from UK, the building has continued to be used for retailing. So if Maisie was going to RBS in the GOMA building for her boss, she's a bit older than she's let on about! Just joshin'! Ken On 24/12/2015 03:14, Maisie Egger wrote: > Unless I am going totally and absolutely dippy, I was sure that the Royal > Bank of Scotland was located in Royal Exchange Square in the 1940s as I > know that I would deliver mail there for the solicitor for whom I worked > as a wee office lassie. The following backs up my memories, thank > goodness. > > ::: In 1954 Stirling's Library removed once again, to the Royal Exchange > on Queen Street. It was moved back to Miller Street in 1994 to allow for > the building's conversion into the Gallery of Modern Art. The library > returned to the basement of the Royal Exchange building (previously > occupied by the Commercial Library) as the Library at GOMA in 2002 ::: > > http://www.theglasgowstory.com/image/?inum=TGSA00860 > > When I returned home for a visit years later I discovered that the Royal > Bank of Scotland had, in between times, latterly been 'displaced' by the > GoMA (Modern Art Museum). > > I have an account with the Royal Bank of Scotland, now in the Gordon > Street branch, Glasgow. I should add that the RBS h.q. in Edinburgh > threatened to move to London in the event of a YES vote to split Scotland > from the rest of the U.K. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Bank_of_Scotland > > -----Original Message----- From: Ken Mathieson via > Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 5:24 PM > To: lanark@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [Lanark] Some of Lost Glasgow > > Hi Maisie and List, > > Royal Bank wasn't in the building now housing GPMA in the middle of > Royal Exchange Sq. Since at least the 1950s (perhaps earleir) to the > 1980s that building was occupied by the Stirling Library at ground level > and the Commercial Library in the basement. During that period the > library was run by the City Council's Libraries. In the 1980's the > basement was occupied by Arts organisations like Mayfest and the Jazz > Festival. > > The Royal Bank fronted on to Buchanan Street with a rear entrance in the > colonnaded facade looking on to Royal Exchange Square. In the 1960s > (possibly earlier too) the rear entrance was the security entrance for > the bank's large-scale cash movements in and out of the building, so > public access was from Buchanan Street. Somewhere online there will be a > history of these buildings. I'm nearly sure the GOMA building started > life as a merchant's very grand house, but it's late here now, so that > research will have to wait for another day. > > Ken > > > > > ----- > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2015.0.6176 / Virus Database: 4489/11246 - Release Date: 12/24/15 > >

Maisie, thank you as always. Merry Christmas to you and the list, and all the best for 2016. Kathryn -----Original Message----- From: lanark-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:lanark-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Maisie Egger via Sent: Friday, 25 December 2015 4:55 AM To: Ken Mathieson; LANARK@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [Lanark] Some of Lost Glasgow Delete if you are not at all interested in this little jaunt down memory lane of what life was like when I was just a lass. Ken, Ahem, I don't give a 'sugar' about my age as there is hang all I can do about it! It's the crepe paper face that's discouraging though, so I try not to look in the mirror too much! Yes, I am as old as tea now, but I was a flibbertigibbet of barely 14 in 1944 when I would deliver letters to what was then the RBS in that colonnaded building in Royal Exchange Square. I would just enter the colonnaded front of the building and deliver the correspondence to the reception desk, and so I have no idea what the rest of the interior looked like, except as a bank. The office where I worked was at 144 St. Vincent Street, between Hope Street and Renfield Street, so smack dab in the middle of Glasgow. Royal Exchange Square was within a reasonable walking distance from the office where I would flit about delivering the day's office mail. I would trudge as far up as Park Circus (before one of the offices was used for genealogy purposes) and Blythswood Square, where the club was of the 'thoughtful gentleman' boss who once phoned me to bring him his raincoat as it was pouring rain. Silly young girl that I was it never dawned on me to use the raincoat to cover myself so I ended up 'drookit.' This seems like light years ago and one wonders if even legal, confidential correspondence is e-mailed or faxed nowadays and if the position of a wee office lass or lad is now obsolete. Maybe not, for who is going to pick up the wee bottles of milk and make tea for the staff? Has to be some low man on the totem pole, unless matters are more egalitarian now. The legal documents had to be taken to the Inland Revenue building, on George Street, looking out on to the side of the City Chambers building (George Square), to be proofread before being sealed with sealing wax with the official government stamp while the wax was still hot. If there was a typing error the whole page had to be re-typed. No computers, of course. On this, I liked a Royal Standard far better than an Underwood typewriter! One trip to the Inland Revenue in 1945 was of historical importance as that was when mobs of people lined the street to cheer as Winston Churchill and Clementine drove by in an open car. He was either tanned or was wearing makeup as he did not have a 'peely-wally' complexion! A-political as I was at the age of 14, I thought it was so unfair that he was not re-elected after all he had done to boost the spirits of the Brits during WWII. Lesson learned that you're only as good as your last movie, as the saying goes. I am sure Frank McGonigal can tell us about how 14-year-old shipyard apprentices were treated 'back then.' It's all of a time, but in my youth not much different from the time of Charles Dickens. When I was a lass the 40-hour week was a bit of a luxury for office workers, so the hours I worked were from 9:00am until 5:30pm (with 1-1/2 lunch break), and then from 9:00am to 1:00pm on Saturdays. This did not comply with the official 40 hour work week for children. The big aim was to find an office job where you did not have to work half-day on a Saturday. Out of the office at 5:30p.m., if you were lucky that the boss had all his correspondence ready, and off to stand at the bus stop, sometimes until 7:00pm as the buses were not too frequent (war time) and were filled with workers from the shipyards and other heavy industry. A friend and I tried different bus routes, but we likely would have been better off and quicker hoofing it home to the north end of Glasgow. On 'dirty workers!' Back in the 1940s/50s there were no such things as showers for men to clean themselves off at the end of the work day, so they'd travel on the buses still wearing their grimy overalls. Every so often there would be letters to the paper from women protesting how this grime affected their coats, and what were 'they' going to do about it. San ferry ann (ça ne fait rien) because I think even up to 1954 when I left Glasgow the 'dirty workers' were still travelling on the buses wearing their dirty work clothes. Soon such would be academic anyway as so much industry, shipyards, coal mining, and other heavy works went the way of the dinosaur, with such as Springburn, with its locomotive works closing down, deeply affected the livelihood of a population of 30,000. The foregoing is to give some colour to the way it was in my lifetime...remember, I'm only 15 years away from being a centenarian! Maisie -----Original Message----- From: Ken Mathieson Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2015 7:18 AM To: Maisie Egger ; lanark@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [Lanark] Some of Lost Glasgow Hi Maisie et al, The full story of RBS at Buchanan Street/Royal Exchange Sq is to be found here: http://heritagearchives.rbs.com/places/list/glasgow.html Maisie is partially correct in that the bank was indeed located in apart of a mansion on Queen Street on the site of today's GOMA. However it was only there from 1817 to c1827 and by 1834 it was at the west side of Royal Exchange Sq facing into the rear of the largely new Exchange Building (now GOMA), which itself was built on the site of a previously-existing mansion. The collonaded facade of the bank can be seen in the etching at the top of the website article and in the foreground is the rear corner of the Exchange Building, which occupies the centre of the square. The bank extended its property westwards to Buchanan St in 1850 and remained on that large site until 1997, when the entire building became a Borders bookstore. Since Borders withdrew from UK, the building has continued to be used for retailing. So if Maisie was going to RBS in the GOMA building for her boss, she's a bit older than she's let on about! Just joshin'! Ken On 24/12/2015 03:14, Maisie Egger wrote: > Unless I am going totally and absolutely dippy, I was sure that the > Royal Bank of Scotland was located in Royal Exchange Square in the > 1940s as I know that I would deliver mail there for the solicitor for whom I worked > as a wee office lassie. The following backs up my memories, thank > goodness. > > ::: In 1954 Stirling's Library removed once again, to the Royal > Exchange on Queen Street. It was moved back to Miller Street in 1994 > to allow for the building's conversion into the Gallery of Modern Art. > The library returned to the basement of the Royal Exchange building > (previously occupied by the Commercial Library) as the Library at GOMA in 2002 ::: > > http://www.theglasgowstory.com/image/?inum=TGSA00860 > > When I returned home for a visit years later I discovered that the > Royal Bank of Scotland had, in between times, latterly been > 'displaced' by the GoMA (Modern Art Museum). > > I have an account with the Royal Bank of Scotland, now in the Gordon > Street branch, Glasgow. I should add that the RBS h.q. in Edinburgh > threatened to move to London in the event of a YES vote to split > Scotland from the rest of the U.K. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Bank_of_Scotland > > -----Original Message----- From: Ken Mathieson via > Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 5:24 PM > To: lanark@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [Lanark] Some of Lost Glasgow > > Hi Maisie and List, > > Royal Bank wasn't in the building now housing GPMA in the middle of > Royal Exchange Sq. Since at least the 1950s (perhaps earleir) to the > 1980s that building was occupied by the Stirling Library at ground > level and the Commercial Library in the basement. During that period > the library was run by the City Council's Libraries. In the 1980's the > basement was occupied by Arts organisations like Mayfest and the Jazz > Festival. > > The Royal Bank fronted on to Buchanan Street with a rear entrance in > the colonnaded facade looking on to Royal Exchange Square. In the > 1960s (possibly earlier too) the rear entrance was the security > entrance for the bank's large-scale cash movements in and out of the > building, so public access was from Buchanan Street. Somewhere online > there will be a history of these buildings. I'm nearly sure the GOMA > building started life as a merchant's very grand house, but it's late > here now, so that research will have to wait for another day. > > Ken > > > > > ----- > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2015.0.6176 / Virus Database: 4489/11246 - Release Date: > 12/24/15 > > ------------------------------- WHEN REPLYING to a post please remember to snip most of the earlier message. Be sure the reply to address shows as LANARK@Rootsweb.com. 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