Under fire: Why has Glasgow’s heritage proved so hard to protect?

Before its incineration earlier this month, Forsyth House’s Italianate dome announced arrival into the city’s eclectic streetscape, a motley assemblage of historical and international influences etched into muscular sandstone.

“It’s a really poignant bit of the city, it’s so photogenic,” says architectural designer Gordon Henderson. “You’re looking at Glasgow and you see the grid system and you see this building right at the pivot.”

As with many who grew up in and around Glasgow, Henderson’s memories of the city have been signed by fire. He partied in his younger days at the Shack nightclub, housed in an A-listed Greek Revival church lost to flames in 2004; his grandfather fought the 1961 whisky bond fire, where a cataclysmic alcohol vapour explosion buried 19 men and three fire engines.

“There seems to be a common theme that there is no detection, no compartmentation, no risk assessment being done,” says Henderson. “There’s nobody really looking after the heritage buildings. These buildings create this personality of Glasgow that people come from all around the world to see, if we don’t look after them then they’re lost.”

Why has Glasgow’s heritage proved so hard to protect? The answer is partly anatomical, explains Niall Murphy, director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Mid 19th-century Scottish buildings commonly had stone exteriors and timber interiors, often lined with lath and plaster and other flammable materials. As these buildings have been adapted over time to suit changing uses, construction work has tended to leave fissures through which fire can easily spread.

Citywide building regulations were updated in the 1890s, requiring a concrete slab (at that time an innovative construction technique) between floors where shops were situated under offices or flats. Forsyth House, built in 1851, lacked that protection.

“You get separate compartmentalisation in buildings [from then on], but in buildings that pre-date that, it’s more problematic,” says Murphy.

The 2014 and 2018 fires at the Mackintosh School of Art, built in two phases around the turn of the 20th century, bore out this regulatory lag to tragic effect. The first fire in 2014 hit the post-1900 western wing and was largely contained; the second, far more destructive fire in 2018 started in the eastern wing, built 10 years earlier to less stringent technical standards.

Fragmented ownership is another local eccentricity contributing to the vulnerability of Glasgow’s historic fabric. Like the city’s characteristic tenements many historic commercial buildings like Forsyth House are in multiple ownership, complicating repair and maintenance of common areas and leaving responsibility for fire safety retrofit unclear.

A tenement maintenance working group in Scottish Parliament is currently lobbying for measures to ensure individual owners take responsibility for common parts, including mandatory residents’ associations and five-yearly condition surveys.

In the case of Forsyth House, multiple ownership will also mean multiple insurers involved in negotiations as to how much will be paid out. The length of this process, and the sums recoverable, will influence how much can be rebuilt, if it can at all. Murphy has been advocating for mandating common or block insurance, which would streamline insurance negotiations when damage occurs.

First minister John Swinney has pledged £10m to “rebuild and renew that vital part of the city”, but the price of full restoration may still be too high without a substantial insurance payout. 

Glasgow has already felt this acutely. Plans to faithfully restore the Mackintosh School of Art to its former glory have been stalled by lengthy insurance arbitration, as the cause of the second fire has never been determined - leaving critical doubt as to who is responsible for rebuilding.

For many Glaswegians, the fatal vulnerability of Forsyth House demonstrates a characteristic neglect of the city’s heritage by its stewards. Many are still scarred by the carelessness of late 20th century planners, who sanguinely hacked away large chunks of the historic city through motorway construction and slum clearance programmes, cleaving longstanding communities apart.

“Glasgow suffered so badly from comprehensive development area policies in the 60s and 70s, where 25% of the Victorian, Edwardian and interwar city was demolished,” says Murphy. “What survives is quite precious.”

Of Glasgow’s remaining historic stock, many of even its most famous specimens have been cordoned off and left to atrophy. How the council deals with Forsyth House’s carcass will be scrutinised closely.

Campaign group SAVE Britain’s Heritage argue that a soft spot in Scottish legislation means listed buildings can be demolished too quickly under emergency powers, denying the chance to creatively repurpose remaining elements.

Speaking before dismantlers moved in on the remaining elevation this week, Franklin expressed hopes that, subject to the advice of a specialist engineer, the structure could be retained and reimagined in some way. “To see it completely flattened and to see that history wiped away, I think that would be devastating for the city,” she said.

It may be too late for Union Corner, but opposite its burnt-out carcass stands a hopeful symbol of change. Glasgow City Council is progressing a compulsory purchase order of Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson’s A-listed Egyptian Halls, and have appointed a developer which has unveiled plans to park hotel rooms and a food market behind its fluted columns.

“There are some really great things happening in Glasgow,” says Franklin. “It’s possible to work towards great outcomes for historic buildings, which feeds back into a thriving local economy and [preserves] buildings that people want to come and visit.”