The area is bounded to its east by the Glasgow suburbs of Cardonald and Hillington, and to the west by the Renfrewshire border and the farms of North and South Arkleston.

Penilee was brought into the city of Glasgow with the boundary extension of 1938, and work began on a planned community to house workers at the nearby Hillington Industrial Estate.

Some evidence of modernist architecture can be seen in the houses illustrated here, such as the flat roofs, horizontal windows and ship-deck balcony rails.

Although most council house building was suspended for the duration of the Second World War, an exception was made in the case of Penilee because of the demand for homes for workers at the numerous armaments factories at Hillington.

[1][2] The war also caused the cancellation of the 1941 census, but it is likely that wartime saw Glasgow's population reach its highest level as workers flooded in to take jobs in the city's numerous essential industries.