Castlehead

It is a heavily wooded area of Victorian villas where many of Paisley's most influential industrialists and professionals made their homes as a nineteenth-century industrial boom town became overcrowded.

As Paisley developed rapidly, the overcrowding and unhygienic conditions of what became known as "the dirtiest town in Scotland"[citation needed] drove the merchant classes outwards and upwards.

Social pressures overcame the problems of an unsuitable building site and "upward mobility" came to Paisley a hundred years before the phrase was coined.

The writer saw this as excellent news for the local building trades and urged townspeople to visit this scarcely known vantage point to admire the splendid views -- "the town lying like a panoramic picture at your left and from all directions"[citation needed].

[citation needed] Paisley Museum and Art Gallery has a map dated 1864 on which Wotherspoon and his agents, Reid and Henderson, writers, extol the virtues of their new venture.

The map shows Castlehead with the housing plots marked and conforming fairly accurately to the layout that has survived to the twenty-first century.

A note in the bottom right corner states "The ground is beautifully situated, commands the finest views around Paisley, has fine southern and western exposures, is within a seven-minute drive of the railway station, and the soil is of the richest nature"[citation needed].

Abercrombie (Redholme, 5 Main Road)) was the architect, William Taylor was the stonemason and builder, John F Baird supplied the bricks and mortar, George G Kirk was the glass merchant.

It seems unlikely that the prolific Abercrombie did not contribute at the planning stage of what is generally believed to be the first building in the West of Scotland with a reinforced concrete frame.

Castlehead continues to be the home of a number of prominent Paisley residents, including singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini and sculptor Alexander Stoddart.

& P. Coats dynasty and their own family fortune was based on Rule and Greenlees, large-scale manufacturers of cotton and gingham clothing in the East End of Glasgow.

Bow was an enthusiastic supporter of day-release schemes under which his apprentices attended courses at Paisley Technical College (now the University of the West of Scotland).

The co-authors of The Clyde Valley Regional Plan (1946) were Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Robert H Matthew, and they began work on their blueprint for the future in 1944.

This was a problem that post-war Scotland would have to address urgently, but Abercrombie and Matthew believed that expansion should not encroach too far onto the farmland to the south and southwest.

Castlehead, together with the adjacent Craw Road, Riccartsbar Avenue, and most of the residences spread out to Brodie Park and Corsebar Drive, provided their escape from a dilemma.

Stating glibly that "the report does not set out to make detailed proposals for individual towns"[citation needed], the authors then included an artist's impression of Paisley as they would like to see it.

Described as "a bird’s eye view", and in full colour, it shows that Castlehead, Craw Road, High Calside and the rest have gone – replaced by high-density skyscrapers.

And so on it went – another vast plantation of concrete and roughcast replaced Craw Road and Riccarstbar Avenue, and there was yet another on what appears to be the present site of the Royal Alexandra Hospital.

The reason soon became clear: apart from following the Town and Country Planning directives on short-term permission for garden sheds and garages, Paisley ignored Abercrombie.

It proposed the new towns of East Kilbride and Cumbernauld, the Glasgow overspill strategy and had a host of plans for regenerating industry, transport, and agriculture.

Abercrombie and Matthew’s priorities included an improved rail service to Gourock and Wemyss Bay to handle the hordes they envisaged taking holidays on the Costa Clyde, as it was later (and ironically) dubbed.

The Balloch end of Loch Lomond would be a National Recreation Centre, with sail boats, canoes and hotel complexes as ugly as any in today's package holiday destinations.

Having opted against encroachment on the indifferent agricultural land at the foot of the Gleniffer Braes, the report proposed a major iron-ore terminal opposite Dumbarton Rock and an iron and steel plant on the rich farmland between Bishopton and Erskine.

All this began to happen in the late 1950s and within 20 years McNaughton was singing the praises of Castlehead when it was designated a conservation area of architectural and historic merit.