The lady detectives of Drygate hunting for local history

THEY found a bullet hole here, the stump of a hanging tree there, and a grassy expanse of consecrated ground nearby.

Welcome to Drygate where a jigsaw puzzle on a massive scale is being pieced back together by the community.
A group of residents are involved in compiling an oral history project to tell the story of the East End site of the former Duke Street prison.
It was the forbidding Northern Prison gaol that housed the city's criminals from 1798 to 1955 - and where female inmates were sent from all over the country.
With notoriously poor living conditions and chronic overcrowding, it was the site of 12 hangings, while the bullet holes on its remaining High Street boundary wall lay testament to the 1921 Smashing of the Van incident, when the IRA attempted to spring one of their own in a deadly ambush.
Demolished in 1958, the prison was replaced by the Ladywell Housing Scheme in the early 1960s, where construction workers today busily reappoint these multi-storey blocks of flats bounded by High Street to the West and John Knox Street to the East.
Janet Harvey is just one of the residents involved who has seen much of the area's bigger picture.
She has lived in the immediate vicinity all of her 86 years, born in a block of flats belonging to the Tennent's brewery and now residing just up the hill in Cathedral Square.
Every day of her early working life she walked past the prison doors - and once even ventured inside to deliver a parcel.
"I just remember how grim it looked - it looked terrible," said Janet, who was delivering a package of medical supplies.
"I have a friend who lives up at the top flats and I'll say: 'you're right where the ladies were kept'.
"She'll say 'don't tell me - nobody wants to know about it!' And I remember they rung bells to tell people there was going to be a hanging.
"I would go by and look up at those tiny windows and think 'my goodness'. I don't like enclosed spaces myself."
Perhaps it's ironic that it would have been within those towering sandstone walls - some of which can still been seen from High Street - that she would have been incarcerated had she refused her call-up during the war effort in 1940.
Janet was employed as an electrician on the shipyards from age 18 to 24, first at Harland & Wolff in Govan and then at John Brown in Clydebank. She learned her trade in a three-month course taught in George Street.
"It took you nearly an hour to get there and you worked late nearly every other night and worked Saturdays and Sundays. You'd no free time.
"The money was good then. I think I earned about £5 a week, which was a lot.
"When the six years was up and the men came back we got tossed out," adds Janet, who went on to manage a Co-op and an off-licence before retiring, and is also an elder in the Church of Scotland.
Describing herself brightly as "one of Britain's unclaimed treasures" having never married, Janet makes full use of the tenants' hall in Drygate, attending regular dance and keep-fit classes. Indeed, she ascends the many steps on the estate like a woman half her age.
Encouraged by Donald Urquhart, chair of the Ladywell Tenants' Association, to get involved in the oral history project, it's here that she's met with her fellow budding neighbourhood researchers every Wednesday afternoon since Christmas.

Janet's role has involved researching the women involved in the Glasgow Rent Strikes of the early 20th century.
Her neighbour Margaret Fawcett, 54, volunteered to delve into the history of eminent Suffragette activist Helen Crawfurd, who died in 1954 - the same year Margaret was born.
Gorbals-born Crawfurd acted as founder Emmeline Pankhurst's bodyguard, made speeches and demonstrated all over Britain, broke into the City Chambers in defiance, and in 1919 she met Lenin in Russia.
Margaret, who has lived in the area for 11 years after moving from Rutherglen, said: "She was put in Duke Street prison twice, so she did two hunger strikes there.
"This project has been great fun - I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I don't know what I'm going to do with my Wednesday nights when it finishes.
"I found out where my house is - we're actually inside the walls! I thought: 'there's bodies buried here,' but we're in the high flats, so I guess we're far enough up!"
Far removed from the heroism of the Suffragettes, it was also in Duke Street prison that Scotland's last woman to be hanged met her death. Susan Newell was executed in October 1923 after being found guilty of strangling a paper boy, John Johnston, who would not give her an evening paper without the money. The testimony of her daughter Janet, eight, - who told how her mother wheeled the boy's body through the streets on a pram - helped seal the conviction.
The first prisoners were moved to Duke Street prison in May 1798, and extensions were added until 1872. The nearby B-listed Cathedral House Hotel was built in 1877 as a hostel for inmates released from the prison.
One of the prison's further-flung inmates was a Native American named Charging Thunder from Buffalo Bill's Wild West troop who was held on remand in 1891 for a drunken assault on an interpreter called George C Crager. He later served a 30-day sentence in Barlinnie.
Some initials of the murderers at the prison are still visible on the remaining boundary wall inside the Ladywell estate. Meanwhile, its hanging tree, which had once overlooked the gallows, was cut down in 1996 by the council.
A tapestry of the Drygate project is being sewn together by King Street media company NuArts Education, commissioned by the Ladywell Tenants Association with funding from Glasgow Community Planning Partnership. Councillor Gordon Matheson said: "It's about getting people who live here to tell their story and to talk about their memories.
"The danger is that these can be often forgotten."
The project will result in a DVD of oral testimonies and a documentary on the progress of the project.

One of the DVD's star interviewees is Stephen Coyle who spent 15 years researching the notorious 1921 Smashing of the Van incident.
The 44-year-old careers advisor, from Bearsden, was inspired by a feature he read in the Evening Times back in 1989 - and he even borrowed its title for his book on the subject, High Noon On The High Street.
The deadly incident dubbed The Glasgow Atrocity happened when police were ambushed while transporting IRA member Frank T Carty, alias Frank Somers, from St Andrew's Square to Duke Street prison. Inspector Robert Johnston was killed in the shower of bullets that rained down and Detective Sergeant Stirton was injured.
Coyle said: "Within this area of the Drygate and Duke Street prison its rich in history goes back 1000 years, maybe more. There's been a prison on this site since the 1600s when there was a women's house of correction. It's a real hub of medieval Glasgow."
Great grandmother Kathleen Jamieson proudly shows off the book of photographs that the group are assembling, many sourced from the archives of the Mitchell Library and Glasgow Women's Library.
The 62-year-old has just taken over the role after providing a refreshing service to interested residents - making the tea and providing the home-baking.
Kathleen, who has lived in the area for 14 years, moving there after splitting from her second husband, said: "I like this area. For being small, high flats it's really, really quiet, but that's because we make sure it's quiet. Put it like this, I hope being here is the nearest I'm gonna get to a prison!"
Project manager Claire Hamilton of NuArts has been responsible for pulling the different strands together. She said: "The residents have been fantastic and have been very passionate and enthusiastic.
"Their involvement has been fundamental given that they live on and nearby the very ground where the prison once stood."