History
Pollokshields was one of the first Garden Suburbs in Britain, with construction starting in 1851 on land owned by the Stirling Maxwell family of Pollok House.
The Maxwells made great efforts to ensure a first class residential district with strict planning controls of the position, quality and use of buildings.The area is divided into two distinctive parts, namely East Pollokshields laid out on a grid pattern of sandstone tenements, whilst West Pollokshields consists of Victorian and Edwardian villas, with green spaces and wide oft tree-lined streets on one side of the railway and large, elegant tenements on the other.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century the character of Pollokshields, as we know it today, was well established with villas, tenements and public buildings built of sandstone, gardens and parks, all a reflection of the city’s late Victorian and Edwardian prosperity. In 1973 Pollokshields was designated as a Conservation and Outstanding Area to halt the decline that had been threatening to destroy the character of the area
Pollokshields Burgh Hall
East Pollokshields
The eastern area was mainly developed between 1855 and 1910 in a grid street pattern as an upmarket area of tenement flats. The later tenements, mainly south and west of Nithsdale Road, are some of the finest anywhere in Scotland. Provision for shops on the ground floor was strictly regulated.
West Pollokshields
West Pollokshields contains villas by most of the prominent Victorian and Edwardian architects in Glasgow including Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, H.E. Clifford, James Miller, Sir John James Burnet, J.C. McKellar, John Gordon and William Hunter McNab. Within these houses are superb examples of the work of some of Glasgow’s finest craftspeople of stained glass, ornamental plasterwork, cast iron and marble, wood carvings and wally tiles.