Kelvin Wheelies Skatepark in Kelvingrove excavation

The Scotsman

Unearth the history beneath your feet! Once a haven for Scotland's top skateboarders, the Kelvin Wheelies Skate Park is being brought back to life by archaeologists.  This groundbreaking excavation at Kelvingrove Park aims to preserve the legacy of Scotland's first outdoor skatepark. Discover how this concrete playground fostered a vibrant subculture and put Glasgow on the skateboarding map.  The University of Glasgow team, with volunteers and former skaters, are piecing together the park's story. Help build an online archive by sharing your memories, photos, and videos of the Kelvin Wheelies!  #Archaeology #SkateparkHistory #Glasgow #KelvinWheelies

Transcript

00:00My name is Kenny Brophy, I'm a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow.

00:04We're standing in the Kelvin Wheelies Skateboard Park, which is also known as the KG,

00:09in the middle of Kelvin Grove Park and it was a really important concrete skate park that was

00:16open in the late 70s and closed in the 1980s and we're here this week because we've been carrying

00:21out archaeological excavations and survey work here so we're just checking out aspects of the

00:26surviving remains of the concrete park to see what survives and see if we can say anything more

00:30about the modern story of this place through archaeological methods. So the skate park was

00:35opened in 1978 by Glasgow Council and it was a proper council facility, it had a fence around it,

00:42there was a freestyle area, there was a lot of really quite dramatic concrete ramps and bowls

00:47and jumps and it had a burger stand, a ticket office, a first aid tent and all that kind of stuff so it

00:52was a proper staff facility and that ceased in about 1982 due to a lack of funding and because

00:58there was problems with drainage and stuff so in 1982 they took the fences down and shut down the

01:02kind of the paid element. After that the council got concerned that the BMX riders and skateboarders were

01:08going to hurt themselves within the kind of the unregulated environment of the skate park so they

01:12took the decision to fill the whole thing in so the whole thing was basically buried and landscaped to

01:17be a kind of more of a garden feature within the skate park so all that's left visible on the ground

01:21just now are some of the concrete rims of the bigger features and some fences and other than

01:26that you wouldn't really know what had been here. We're lucky because it's quite a recent

01:29site in the last 50 years that we've got people we can speak to who were children or teenagers who

01:34skated here and some of those have been helping on the excavation. We've had both those people and

01:39also a lot of members of the public have been sending us photographs and archive material related

01:45to the skate park so we know exactly what it looked like because of all the photos and we have the

01:50stories and memories of the people who played here as well and they've been on the excavation helping

01:55us out so a lot of the gaps are being filled in but there's still things that we didn't really know

01:59exactly no one was quite sure when it was filled in how it was filled in and some of the aspects of

02:04what happened here at the end of the life of the park and so that's something that we've been able

02:07to unpick through the archaeology and we've also been able to find other bits of the park that were

02:11never properly recorded like graffiti on the sides of some of the concrete features so the archaeology

02:16is recording stuff that was really never recorded even 40 odd years ago as far as i can tell it was

02:21a really high quality place it was designed by someone who designed some of the top skate parks in

02:26london it had they brought in californian skateboarders to test skateboarders to test it out

02:32before it was actually open to the public and they made some recommendations to make it safer because it

02:36was initially too dangerous so there was a lot of kind of thought went into making it a proper

02:41international quality concrete skate park that was one that was the skateboarders came from all

02:46around the world to have a go at so it was it was used for the uk championships so it was a really

02:51top quality facility and the council pumped a lot of money into this it cost about 100 000 pounds

02:56to build it in the first place so that was a massive investment in what was basically a marginal

03:00teenage sport at the time so the council were clearly keen to provide a facility for young people

03:05and also to try and put glasgow on the skateboarding map yeah there's some amazing skaters yeah i mean i've

03:09spoken to a lot of the um the guys who were teenagers and they were winning uk championships

03:14or performing at a really high level and there was a they were kind of looking up to the generation

03:18before so it was it was a time when skating really took off in scotland for about five years it was

03:23super popular and again it started to decline in the early 80s because of bmx riding it became more

03:29popular and also they opened the livy which is a skate park in livingston which is still um used today

03:34and it was and it was probably even better than this one and that took some of the attention as well

03:38so for a while glasgow is like the capital of skateboarding in scotland the team we've got

03:42digging on here on site are a real mixture so we've got volunteer students who are in the archaeology

03:49department at glasgow university they're here learning their trade so some are on their first

03:52excavation and they're doing a lot of the digging and recording we've also been working with

03:56skateboarders both young and old so guys who have come along who are 14 back in 1978 and skated here

04:02they've come back and they've been helping us excavate and also we'll get next generations of

04:06skateboarders here as well because this is a bit of a legendary skate park for the younger skateboarders

04:10and it's next to the the modern skate park and we've also been working with archaeology scotland

04:15em who have paired up with the scottish refugee council so earlier in the week we had em some

04:19refugees on site who are doing volunteer work and picking up new skills and they've been doing a lot

04:23of the work as well so it's been a real melting pot through the week which i think is really in the

04:27spirit of skateboarding i think that i would quite like to em raise the profile of the skate park because

04:32it's here and a really popular important park in glasgow but there's actually not much knowledge

04:36about it by most people so it'd be good that em people knew what this was rather than just trying

04:41to make sense of a bunch of concrete and metal railings it'd be good if maybe some aspects that

04:45were presented better to the public and maybe also folk could find out more so hopefully there'll be

04:50some information at the skate park in the future where you can see different bits that em make it make

04:55more sense of them than you can just now and then go online and look at a digital archive that will have

04:59photographs and video footage of the skate park when it was in use and so the the real the real

05:04positive outcome would be if this doesn't become a forgotten part of glasgow's modern heritage because

05:09there's a danger if nothing was done here in 20 30 years time no one would remember anything about

05:13this it would be completely buried and overgrown and it'll be forgotten so hopefully that's not going

05:18to happen anymore the excavations are going to run until tomorrow so the end of the end of august basically

05:23and then after that we'll maybe do some more survey work in the next few months

05:26uh working we're going to build a digital archive and put that online in the next six months as

05:30well working with skateboarders and if anyone wants to get in touch then you can google me kenny brofey

05:36and you'll find my contact details on the university webpage or you can use social media and use the hashtag

05:41kelvin wheelies and we'll pick up any information or stories or memories that you want to share with us so

05:46we're really happy for anyone to share photos memories or video so that we can tell more of the story of the skate park

05:52these are pictures that were taken by jamie blair and ian urquhart em back in the late 70s early 80s

05:57which show aspects of the skate park when it was in use so it gives you a real sense of how massive the

06:04features were these balls were you know eight ten feet deep em you can see these ones with all the

06:09graffiti on it so these are the ones that they would go down slalom runs at speed to then do takeoffs and

06:14jumps so they were able to do this kind of thing so this is jamie blair here when he was 14 em doing a hand

06:22plant and with his skateboard so they would go down and then he'll be able to flip over and do

06:26that and one of the things that we've been looking for is a another skateboarder told us that he

06:31painted a hand print on this part of the concrete rim so that every time he came around the corner

06:37then he was able to know exactly where to put his hand to perform this maneuver so they were actually

06:41doing some really kind of quite elaborate stunts even at a young age so it was it was a really hardcore

06:46skate park so the photographs that we have from the time give a real sense of it just being a really

06:52amazing facility you can see that with kelvin grove in the background and this it's nice and

06:56planted it looks all pristine a really fantastic resource so it was somewhere that was really

07:02special to kids at the time and that's kind of captured by all these amazing photographs you know

07:06this is a half pipe where the uk championships was focused in 1979 this was completely bulldozed in 1983

07:13by the council and buried so none of that survives at all now so there's a real mixture of what's left and

07:18what's not but this is a really invaluable record and it helps us to make sense of the archaeology

07:23to be able to look at these photographs and actually work out where we are on the site

07:26and give us targets to look for so it's a perfect combination of digging into things but also having

07:31archive and interviewing and talking to people to make sense of what we're trying to find

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