Cafes
All the cafes and fish and chip shops had seating areas. Some had booths, others had tables and chairs. Some had both.
Verrechia’s café on Glasgow Road Silverbanks area on the right hand side of the road heading to Glasgow. When the building was demolished in the sixties the café moved across the road to a new building at the foot of Buchanan Drive.
Valerio’s café on Main Street at Bridge St corner was a large family run café and fish and chip shop.
The Station Café on Main St. opposite Valerio’s and next to Cambuslang Railway Station was run by the Pontiero family. It was the last Italian café in Cambuslang. The premises were sold a few years ago and reopened as an Indian restaurant named The Cinnamon Club.
The Cross Café on Main St. was next door to Scoulars Ironmongers which stood at the corner of Church St and Main St. It was also Italian owned and was fairly large with marble topped tables.
Tony’s Café and fish and chip shop was on Main St. near the Terminus and next to the Borgie Rest, a well known public house.
Rab Bunyan’s Fish and Chip shop was on Main St, a few doors along from the Cross café.
Langs Café on Main St was almost opposite Tony’s Cafe near the terminus .As well as selling ice cream, it also did a good trade selling hot peas and vinegar and hot Bovril and cream crackers. This part of Main St. was also demolished.
Public houses
Public houses in Cambuslang tended to be known locally by the name of the publican rather than the actual name of the pub. This caused a bit of confusion to strangers to the district. The Sun Inn at Halfway for instance, was always known as McGinley’s. Women did not go into the bar area of pubs in the 1940’s. There was a small section with the sign ”Family Department” above a separate entrance from the street Women could sit on a wooden bench and have a drink and bottles of beer and spirits were sold at the counter there to take away. Empty beer bottles could also be returned here, mostly by kids for pennies. It was enough to get into the children’s film matinees at the Empire cinema.
Pubs in Cambuslang in the 1940’s and 1950’s :
The Sefton - Main St. at Tabernacle Lane (still on same site)
The Ritz Bar - Main St. (in a new building on roughly the same site)
The Black Bull - Main St. at Westcoats Rd ( still on same site)
The Railway Tavern - Main St. at Westcoats Rd. (still on same site, now Finlays)
The Auld Cellar (Eadies)- Main St. at Greenlees Rd (still on same site, now The Clock Inn)
Morrisons – Main St (still on same site but without the billiard hall above. It’s now Cheers )
Chapman’s - Main St. almost opposite The Black Bull (demolished in the 60’s)
The Borgie Rest - Main St. near Terminus (demolished in the 60’s)
Paddy Martin’s Pub – Main St .opposite the Sefton (demolished in the 60’s)
McGrory’s Pub – Colebrooke St. (demolished in the 60’s)
McGettigan’s Pub - Main St. at Terminus near the Empire cinema. (demolished in the 50’s)
The Toll Bar – Hamilton Rd at Westburn Rd on ground floor of tenement
( demolished in the 60’s)
The County Bar– Glasgow Rd at Bothwell St. Silverbanks (demolished in the 60’s)
The Lorne Bar – Glasgow Rd Silverbanks near Buchanan Drive (demolished in the 60’s)
The Curler's Rest - Hamilton Road on the slip road to the Gasworks
Shops
Shops of every type were stretched along both sides of Main Street down to Bothwell St at Silverbanks.. Cambuslang Co-op shops ran from Tabernacle Lane along Main St to the terminus. There were also shops at nearly every corner in Park St. which ran parallel to Main St. As well as the corner shops there were several shops in the centre of Park St. including Tom Smart’s Fish and Chip shop and the Bookery Nook, (a second hand book shop.) Annie Goldie’s general store and a small fabric shop. These shops were run by women during WW2. Further along Park St where it continued as Bain St another large branch of the Cooperative was sited at the corner of MorrisonSt/Bain St. Lower Bank St had a corner shop and there were several more shops in Colebrooke St. The building in Greenlees Rd opposite Tabernacle St had a couple of shops well frequented by school children from the nearby St.Brides and Busheyhill schools. Kirkhill had a couple of shops and a pub. The pub is still there.
Halfway had many shops and it’s own Gilbertfield Co-op which stretched along Hamilton Rd from the church and took up both corners of Glen St. The Co-op hall, scene of many weddings and dances stood in Glen St. The purvey, usually a steak pie tea and cakes, was also provided by the Co-op. The shops still stand but under private ownership now. The Co-op hall was demolished in the 60’s.
Other shops along from the Co-op were a chemists, an italian café run by the La Piazza family (now a Chinese takeaway) Curley’s butchers , and a corner shop.
Coopers building stood at the corner of Hamilton Rd and Craigallian Ave. A chemist shop was on the corner of Cooper’s building and next door to that, on Hamilton Rd, was Donaldson’s fishmongers then a close and then several more shops and closes. This building was demolished in the 60’s. Opposite Cooper’s building was the Post Office. a cobblers shop and on the Mill Rd corner was McLeans newsagents (run by two brothers who lived in a cottage near the top of the older part of Craigallian Ave.) There was also a doctor’s surgery, a pub and a fish and chip shop. All of this side of the Hamilton Rd was demolished in the 60’s.
Local Schools:
Kirkhill Public School Croft Rd opened 1875 to hold 300 pupils. An extension was built in 1885. The school closed in 1920 on the opening of Gateside school.
Newton Public School built 1876
Hallside Public School built 1882. The school burned down and was replaced in 1883 and closed in1996.
Cambuslang Public School built in 1883 (was known locally as Busheyhill school)
Westcoats Public School built in 1890. A Higher Grade class extension added in 1910.
Gateside School was almost completed before WW1 and was first used as a military hospital until reopening as a school in 1920. It was demolished fairly recently and an Aldi supermarket was built on the site.
Roman Catholic Schools were kept outside of the Public Education system during the period of the School Board 1873-1919.
St Charles RC school at Newton was built in 1893
St Brides RC junior school at Cambuslang was built about 1936 and demolished in 2013 and rebuilt in 2014. The adjoining junior secondary school was demolished in the 1980s and a police station built in its place
In the early 50’s primary schools had a Qualifying Exam and children who passed this exam were sent to senior secondary schools. The others went to local junior secondary schools. Cambuslang had no senior secondary schools so children were sent to Hamilton Academy, Uddingston Grammer , Elmwood Convent School, Bothwell (RC) , St Patricks Coatbridge (RC), and Our Lady’s High Motherwell (RC) . Cambuslang station was a mass of colour on weekday mornings with all the different school uniforms. Both platforms were crammed with children. One was for trains heading to schools in Lanarkshire and the other for children heading to various public and private schools in Glasgow. The old steam LMS trains were loaded up with kids along with quite a few bowler hatted business men , the heavy doors were closed by the porters, the whistle was blown and the trains took off in opposite directions . Happy days! The characterful station was demolished as part of the uglification programme set out for Cambuslang. It was replaced by the cheap and nasty design that exists today.
From 1941 when l started school I can remember:
Women brought their shopping bags and potatoes were weighed in quarter stone or half stone and emptied into the bag. The sugar was weighed out from a big bag into some container the customer brought with them. Bread was unwrapped. A plain loaf came in twos and most people asked for half a loaf.
Brown paper bags were on a string and not to be used for everything. For the childrens' sweets l can remember after school, cutting up newspaper and making cones shapes out of it to hold things like sports mixtures, a quarter for one penny. Some of the children came in with a halfpenny for two. Dolly mixtures, to me were always a better buy. Penny caramels were also a good deal. Not many customers ever bought a quarter pound of any kind of sweets. Cigarettes came in packs of ?ve or ten. Willie Woodbine being the best seller but many customers would ask for one cigarette, so packs of Capstan and Woodbine were often split.
Bile beans were in a tin and Askit Powders in a packet but these were when people could not afford to buy the whole lot at a time. One came in everyday for one Askit Powder and stood for over an hour talking to my aunt and other customers that came in.
Although it was a grocers and confectioners, other things were for sale. My father had a plot in Gateside and grew vegetables. Leeks and tomatoes were brought down and sold in the shop.
Mary Gibson’s grandfather, John Simpson, had a grocers / confectioners shop in Cambuslang on the corner of Mansion and Bank St.. This shop photo was donated by Mary Wilson, Nov 2013, whose mother and uncle can be seen in the doorway. (Click on photo to enlarge)
