I WALK my dog through Queen’s Park in Glasgow most days. Like many others, I often pass the Victorian glasshouse, often almost without thinking (though I’ve also spent some lovely times in there with my daughter, showing her growing peppers, blooming buds, and their famous, shimmering carp). Unfortunately, they may soon disappear.
Once a major facility in the park, the glasshouse has suffered serious decline over the past 10 years or so as local authorities have found it hard to find the money for its upkeep. Children’s facilities it once boasted – a soft play area and mini reptile zoo, alongside the park’s only café – have long since vanished. Rooms once open to the public have also been shuttered, leaving just the atrium with its koi carp pond for visitors. Core infrastructure has decayed and not been replaced.
Then, it was announced earlier this year that Glasgow City Council were to close the glasshouse permanently this summer. Happily, these plans have been put on hold for now, as public outcry bought them a small reprieve. However, their future viability is still very much in doubt.
The campaign to save the glasshouse has been amongst the more heartening stories in Glasgow this year. The group Save Queen’s Park Glasshouse has been pushing hard. They are a great and visible presence at the glasshouse, whose gates are now festooned with posters, placards, and ribbons, all showing support for the place’s survival.
This may seem a little parochial to anyone outside of Glasgow’s Southside. However, much like the first of Alfred Hitchcock’s crows landing on its climbing frame, it’s actually both herald and symptom of a wider trend. Queen’s Park is simply the latest front in a much wider battle over Scotland’s civic spaces.
Across Scotland, councils wrestling with tight budgets have increasingly turned towards libraries, leisure centres, swimming pools, museums, and community facilities for cost-cutting measures. Proposals in the Borders have included the closure of Selkirk Swimming Pool, the Queen’s Leisure Centre in Galashiels, and libraries in towns including Earlston, Eyemouth, Coldstream and Hawick. Though some of these closures have been softened or delayed, there is a clear direction of travel as councils seek to jettison their responsibilities, marring public, civic life in the process.
The story is similar elsewhere. Aberdeen’s Beach Leisure Centre has already disappeared without replacement. Proposals to close more than 20 public libraries across Aberdeenshire, Moray and Perthshire prompted an intervention from authors like Val McDermid and Damian Barr, who warned that we risk sacrificing our cultural future for modest short-term financial savings.
In fact, Scotland has lost 42 public libraries in a little over a decade, whilst library staffing has fallen by 25%. More broadly, local authority spending on culture has fallen by more than a fifth since 2013.
A single closure may not seem too bad. A single crow isn’t. But watch to the end of the film, and you’ll see what happens when that crow is joined by others. Our public realm is being gutted.
These are not simply nice amenities to have. They are vital. Modern life is increasingly migrating online and hiding behind subscription fees. We are atomised and often impoverished – financially and socially. These civic spaces are often the heart of civic and community life, and they are far more valuable than ever because of it. As a representative for Save Queen’s Park Glasshouse puts it, the glasshouse is “one of the few warm and sheltered places where we can sit without spending money. I think that is invaluable for a community”.
Edmund Burke wrote of the importance of our little platoons: the local communities, associations, and institutions through which people learn civic responsibility and experience life alongside others. Places like the Queens Park Glasshouse are exactly where these little platoons take root and flourish.
Burke also famously described society as “a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”. Our public spaces are physical expressions of this partnership. We inherit them because previous generations chose to build something. It is not up to us to throw this inheritance aside: we have a responsibility of stewardship.
We aren’t simply here to enjoy these amenities when they suit us; we are their temporary custodians, and it’s up to us to preserve as much as we can to pass on to those who come after us.
None of this is to pretend that local councils face easy choices. Years of financial pressure have left local authorities struggling to balance the books. However, per Save Queen’s Park Glasshouse, “we also know that sometimes it’s a matter of priority. Public and civic spaces in Glasgow and all over the country are shrinking, and when funding is tight, they are the first thing to go because they don’t generate profit”.
If every budget crisis is resolved by closing yet another civic institution, we should at least be honest about what is happening. We aren’t simply saving money by threatening to close spaces like Queens Park Glasshouse. We are jettisoning a part of the physical fabric of our shared civic life, simply to make it through one more financial year.
