Lost shops of Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street

We take a visit to Sauchiehall Street to reflect on the lost shops of the high street.

Transcript

00:00So directly behind me is Sockie Hall Street. It used to be one of the main retail spaces

00:04in Glasgow. It was always busy and bustling with shoppers seven days a week. Though today

00:09it is empty. Most of the buildings here are boarded up and they're decaying. So today

00:15we are looking into the lost shops of Glasgow. Why online shopping, Covid-19 and the Glasgow

00:21School of Art fires have impacted Sockie Hall Street and the retail spaces that existed

00:26here and why it matters what they will become. Well when I was a boy this was one of the main

00:32shopping thoroughfares in Glasgow. The shops are all high quality and people made their way from

00:37Glasgow and even from England to come here and go shopping. Well Sockie Hall Street used to be

00:43brilliant. It used to be full of shops, all different kinds of shops. It was buzzing on a

00:49Saturday afternoon. It would just be a throng of people with their shopping bags and it's so

00:54disappointing to see it's no longer like that. It used to be bustling all the time. Now it's peaky

01:00peak time. Today it's a disgrace. It's had a couple of unfortunate fires and store closures but no

01:07attempt has been made by the council to encourage those to be reoccupied. So Marks & Spencer's BHS and

01:14Watt Brothers are three stores that brought in the most footfall to Sockie Hall Street. They brought in

01:19hundreds of people every day and all three of them are now lying empty. Watt Brothers, the big shop

01:26down here just on the right hand side which was a great place for your Christmas shopping. It was such

01:32a popular shop. Eight, nine years ago gradually shops started to close. They weren't getting replaced

01:39with other shops that were just getting boarded up. And in fact I went to the council and spoke to them

01:43about this and they introduced me to their SAR for redevelopment. And in his opinion retail in

01:49Glasgow is finished. His vision is that this area will be occupied entirely by students and all these

01:54places will be GP surgeries, that kind of thing. Because as far as Glasgow council is concerned,

02:00retail is dead and Sockie Hall Street is finished as a shopping centre. Well I think retail is very

02:05important. I'd like to see more shops. I'd like to see more things that are a destination for people

02:10that would actually pull people into the city to be part of what's happening in Sockie Hall Street.

02:16I knew some people who worked in Fraser's. They had a tremendous camaraderie. You know,

02:20if you had a birthday or something, a wedding, you had to celebrate, you had to buy a present.

02:23Everybody made their way to Fraser's. There's another shop called Paisley's that was famous for

02:28sporting goods. Shops known by name and very famous in this area. And they're all gradually disappearing.

02:34It's undergoing a tremendous change in that field. Not always for the better, sadly.

02:41So the question is now, what would you like to become of Sockie Hall Street? Do you think it

02:45could ever return to its former glory as a shopping centre? Or do you think it's best just to become

02:51a student hub, as the plans suggest it probably will? What are your favourite memories of Sockie Hall

02:57Street? And what do you miss most about this area?