The Battle for Scottish Football Heritage Preservation
- One Flank Held, Another Front Opening and a Proposal
South Glasgow is dotted with unique locations of importance to the origins of Scottish and therefore global football. There is, simply put, no place elsewhere in the World for the game like the parish of Cathcart. Yet those sites have been under attack first by the harshness of passing time, latterly by neglect, not least by cash-strapped councils, to a degree Renfrewshire but overwhelmingly Glasgow, and even by privatised greed.
Most prominent on a list of locations has been Cathkin Park, the second Hampden Park, the second ground of this country's doyen club, Queen's Park, and the site of the final vestiges of Third Lanark, another of those first clubs to root here and therefore anywhere. The ground had been under threat, and to a degree still is, from essentially privatisation of public space and the almost certain limiting of access to and probable mis-use even to the point of destruction of what remains visibly and archaeologically of both The Spiders' and Thirds' eras.
However, a campaign was mounted first to halt and then reverse the direction of travel and it has met with some success. On 24th Sept. (2025) a letter was received from Historic Environment Scotland confirming designation. It can be read by clicking on its image. The former football ground at Cathkin Park is a "Scheduled Monument" and it would be good to think the matter is now put to bed. But, lucre is conversational always. It might not talk for now but it always whispers in the ears of those too willing to listen so with that in mind attention by us at SFHG and others still needs to paid to those who might still wish for a personal slice of the sod there or elsewhere.
And it is to the elsewhere we now turn. The first purpose-built, international football stadium, perhaps even the first purpose-built football stadium in Scotland and Britain so the World, the first Hampden Park, once stood again in Cathcart parish. In fact it was on the corners of Queen's Park Ave., Kingsley Ave. and Queen's Drive with now on its fourth side the railway-line, next stop south Mount Florida and today's third Hampden, which would eventually see its demise and conversion to in part Kingsley Gardens and otherwise Hampden Bowling Club. Indeed, you might have seen from the train the football mural on the back of one of the club's ground's building celebrating the victory there in 1882 over what else but England, 5-1.
The land itself is owned, you guessed it, by Glasgow Council and Hampden Bowling Club is in trouble. Since 2014 it has been operating with an annually renewed lease. It now also does not have enough members and therefore income to cover itself financially year-on-year, although the deficits are not bank-breaking. And just now it has been presented with a new lease that requires repair of "dilapidations", i.e. putting all things back to what they had been, for which it does not have the money either.
But there is more. Once again there are questions about Glasgow Council's both motives and motivation. It is, currently, an imminent Cathkin replay and equally needs resisting. So we suggest two solutions.
One is that you or youse, who read this, presumably with a love of the Scottish game and more to the point one that goes back to its very birth, indeed of it as a gift from this country to the World, dig into your pockets or pocket, collectively or individually, as a Patriotic Millionaire or just a patriot, to fund whatever Hampden Bowling Club needs now and for the foreseeable future. The bowling club would no doubt be happy to receive your donations, as would we on its behalf.
The second is that the football authorities, indeed the football industry, either do the same or find a parallel use for the site as it stands, one that allows the folk of the district still to roll shiny, black spheres over immaculate lawn but has a second purpose. And here is the second suggestion.
The Scottish Football Museum is in comparison to similar others not bad as far as it goes. But that going does not reach back beyond 1945, certainly not into three of the four "Golden" eras of the Scottish game, 1874-1887, 1921-26 and 1935-39, and, indeed barely even touches the 1961-65 fourth. It would be good to rectify at least specifically the first three gaps and where better than where it more or less all started. The first Hampden, the "Bowling Club" Hampden, was opened in 1873. It staged its first international in 1878 before Cathkin, just 500 yards away, took over in 1884.
So the thinking is that the Scottish Football Museum (SFM), in essence the Scottish Football Association (SFA), for it holds the purse-strings, take on the proposed Hampden Bowling Club lease, funding the reparation of the dilapidations in full, guaranteeing the continuation of current use. But that is not all. It should also utilise in situ the historic buildings at the club to create a second exhibition space, an SFM annexe, solely dedicated to coverage, at the moment almost entirely missing, of Scottish, indeed also Diasporan Scots football, before 1939, when for much of the previous seventy years it hah been the the World-leader. SPHG, not only as specialists in the period to that date from as far back as you care to go but with curatorial expertise in its ranks, would be more than happy to cooperate in every way.
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