Friday 29 July 2011

DERBY STREET MULTIS IN THE MID 80'S.

Love them or loath them, those of us who grew up during the 3 retro decades are the ones who lived with multis most. There were none before that period, and since that time many have come a tumblin' down into oblivion!
The ones in the photos here are the Derby Street multis, themselves due to be demolished next year.
The top picture makes a very satisfying abstract image to me and is of Butterburn Court, snapped on 2nd April 1985.
Middle photo was taken from the corner of North George Street & Church Street, and captured on 20th September 1984.
It features a hotchpotch of Hilltown housing, from the corner cottage at the front, to the derelict tenements on the right, with the multis at the back of it all.
Quite a lot of wasteland in-between as well, but one place that was active in amongst all this, was the cream coloured building - The Ladbroke Social Club.
The bottom picture is of the same area but from higher up, this being the view from Carnegie Tower on 30th July 1985.
You'll notice the rough bit of land beside the corner cottage has become modernised, and in fact wipes out half of Church Street.
The road running from the bottom-left with the empty tenement, is Caldrum Street.
It's good to view these Hulltoon humdingers on a grander scale, so to bring up the enlarged versions, just click onto the pictures.
Photos by Neale Elder.

8 comments:

  1. I take it the social club was the Regent Cinema?

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  2. and bingo hall, my old lockup was just to the left of that lovely big tree and my dads was right under it, there was a driving instructors at the entrance and his older brother (Dave I think)had a garage at the back of the shop and would do cheapish welding/body repairs for the tenants of the lockups.

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  3. These blocks had a white roughcast that was removed in the mid 80's.I have pictures of the scaffold that went all the way up to the top!The 1st and last multis i worked on for DDC!Again a great place until the bad tenants started to flood in!!

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  4. That's right - the outer cladding was removed in 1983-84 after it started falling off and narrowly missing passers-by on Strathmartine Road.

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  5. I recall workman removing loose roughcast from the east side of Dallfield Ct and setting up an "exclusion zone" below the area only for a pensioner to lift the ribbon and proceed to walk underneath as a large chunk smashed to the ground and she had the check to complain!!!!!!!!In my experience the tenants of the blocks by and large were never the problem...it was usually the visitors and the people who stayed nearby the blocks that used to cause most of the problems and disregard the accepted rules for Multis as in the mentioned case.

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  6. Was the photo taken from the 13th floor of carnegie? It looks just like the view from my bedroom window when I was a kid!

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  7. I remember the auction of all fixtures and fittings inside the Regent cinema shortly before demolition. I bought all the woodwork for £20 and made picture frames out of the door surrounds. Somebody else bought the electrical fittings and switched off the power while i was trying to strip out the wood, that was helpful !

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  8. Can't remember what floor the Carnegie photo was taken from, Jen. I do remember it was from the window at the end of the landing. I didn't just barge into somebody's flat!

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