page_title: Cranhill
section_title: Housing
hierarchical_section_title: Cranhill / Housing
caption_attribution_description: This is a view across Cranhill Park looking towards Edinburgh Road.
context_page_description: Cranhill is an inner city district and housing scheme in the north east of Glasgow, Scotland. Cranhill was developed from public funding in the early 1950s and was originally, chiefly composed of four-storey tenement blocks surrounding a patch of grassland, which became Cranhill Park. Later development saw the building of three tower blocks, surrounded by rows of terraced maisonettes. In more recent years, a number of semi-detached and detached homes have been built. The area also hosts some shops, two primary schools and nurseries, a community centre and the Cranhill water tower.
context_section_description: The housing stock consisted mostly of four-storey tenement blocks divided into common 'closes', each with eight flats with the end close in each street called a "T" close with 4 flats. The gap between two adjacent "T-closes" was known as a 'gable-end', which in essence was simply a gap between two buildings and normally led to a communal area to the back of the buildings and was the common location for storing rubbish bins. Other types included three tower blocks, locally known as 'the multis' or the 'high flats', a number of terraced maisonettes and a variety of pseudo sandstone (concrete blocks) four-in-a-block cottage flats.
  Most of the flats were typical family accommodation of the time, containing a kitchen, bathroom/toilet, two or three bedrooms and a living room. Many of them had balconies or verandas overlooking the street and all were a vast improvement on living conditions in the old Glasgow slum tenements. For many of the families who moved in, this was their first access to green fields and nearby farms, and the playing areas were paradise compared to the rat-infested back-courts which the children had formerly suffered. Nevertheless, a favourite play area was the 'Sugarolly Mountains', substantial hills made from chemical tailings dumped by the side of the canal on the site now occupied by the high flats (and featured in the lyrics of Jim Diamond). No-one knew what they were made of, but the rainwater puddles were green! Even the canal itself was an attraction, given that the next-nearest 'recreational' water was either at Alexandra Park or Hogganfield Loch.
caption: Edinburgh Road, Cranhill in 1966
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