Glasgow’s Tenement House was occupied by Agnes Toward from 1911 to 1965. When it was bought over all contents were preserved and the house is now accessible to the public to take a look at history.
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00:00 Hello! So today we are off to visit the Tenement House, just on the verge of Glasgow's West End.
00:05 This is owned right now by the National Trust for Scotland. It used to be owned by a woman
00:11 named Agnes Towers who lived here from 1911 to 1965, a lot of the time with her mother. So the
00:18 tenement flat that she lives in is essentially being entirely preserved. She'd kept letters
00:23 that she'd written over the course of her entire life. All that shebang. Well let's take a look
00:28 inside. Agnes Towers moved into the flat 145 Butecliffe Street aged 25 in 1911 with her mother,
00:34 where she lived until 1965 when she was taken to hospital and died 10 years later.
00:39 Born in Renfrew Street, her father died when she was three and her two sisters died as infants.
00:44 Agnes never married or had any children so this flat and the contents inside is a good
00:49 representation of how independent women lived during this time, a group in history that is
00:54 often overlooked. It was powered entirely by coal and gas until 1960 when Agnes installed
00:59 electricity. Agnes didn't have any family to inherit her possessions but she did leave chairs
01:04 to her local church. When the church elder came to collect them in 1975 he brought along his niece
01:10 Anna. When Anna learned that the house was to be cleared and modernised she convinced the owners
01:14 to sell it to her, with all possessions kept, and she did her best to preserve it. She lived
01:19 there for seven years before selling it to the National Trust for Scotland who opened it as a
01:24 museum shortly after. There are letters written by Agnes addressed to her mother from as young as
01:28 six years old thanking her for birthday gifts. From these abundance of letters she wrote to
01:33 friends as well as a decor you can kind of piece together who she was. She was meticulous at keeping
01:38 things that most other people would throw away which is what allowed this museum to flourish.
01:44 There was homemade jam found from 1920. The top two floors are still on privately and people do
01:49 live in them while the bottom floor has been transformed into a reception and cafe. Tenements
01:55 are the traditional form of urban housing in Scotland, usually built with sandstone with two
01:59 or more floors and each floor having one or more separate residencies with a shared communal
02:04 entrance. These varied in size and appearance depending on the wealth of residents. Working
02:09 class tenements only had two rooms known as room and kitchen and these often housed large families
02:14 with up to eight people in one room and over 30 people sometimes sharing a toilet. This is actually
02:19 the kind of flat that I live in and there are still toilets in some of the communal cupboards.
02:23 Middle class tenements usually came with four or more rooms and had tile closets to signify the
02:29 wealth. Many of the larger houses are now occupied by students where a good few of them share one
02:34 flat. Tenements are so monumental to Glasgow's culture it's visually obvious the impact they've
02:39 had on architecture and the way we live even today but because of how common they are it's so easy to
02:44 forget this. The tenement house is open to the public Monday to Sunday between 10am and 5pm.
02:50 I found it to be a good accessible way to learn more about Glasgow's social history,
02:54 the reality that normal people lived pre, during and post world war two. It's also a great way to
03:00 to see how the city has evolved on a macro scale and how individual people played a role