Glasgow was a European pioneer in the use of cast iron and steel for commercial buildings. The use of these modern materials, which led the way to the early skyscrapers in North America, was developed by local architects and foundries to provide cost- efficient floorspace in Victorian Glasgow's thriving business district.

Large-scale production of industrial ironware had began in the area as far back as 1786, the year when the Clyde Ironworks were established in Tollcross.

The rapid urbanisation of Glasgow in the early 1800's had created an unprecedented building boom which led to the fabrication of cast iron buildings.

The Carswell brothers, William (died 1852) and James (died 1856), were responsible over a 65-year period for many of the utilitarian premises resulting from this expansion. The obituary to James Carswell in the Glasgow Herald of 25th February 1856 states that "they were in their day the most extensive contractors as wrights in the city". It goes on to say that "the Carswells were the first to introduce iron pillars in buildings, as well as iron fronts and facings ".

The obituary informs us that the brothers came to Glasgow from Kilmarnock in 1790 and erected their workshops on a clearing they had created from a cornfield, adjacent to a footpath which would later become George Street.

Looking at some of the semi-derelict buildings in this area you can gain an insight into how the building styles and construction methods evolved. The example (right) features prefabricated ironwork in both internal and external construction elements. The tell-tale signs of rust on the slim cast iron window frames give a clue that new factory-produced materials were involved in the construction process.

This type of building was an intermediate step towards the fully framed multi-storey structures which were soon to follow. The external masonry was loadbearing; the floors were carried on timber joists or wrought iron beams, supported internally on cast iron columns and externally on the masonry walls. The green netting in this example is required to protect the disintegrating stuccowork, rather than the ironwork.



By the time of the Carswell brothers' deaths in the mid-1800's, the industrial areas of the expanding city contained 122 furnaces, burning coal from 37 local pits to produce over a million tons of pig iron annually. An indication of the huge demand was demonstrated on 14th December 1855 when the Glasgow Herald reported that weekly cargoes of Irish ironstone were arriving from Ballycastle, County Antrim, to supplement the flagging supplies of Scottish ore. The rich deposits of indigenous black-band ironstone which had been discovered in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire in the early 1800's were completely exhausted by the end of the century.