The move to Gilmorehill in i870: demolition and survival

For some decades a move by the University to larger premises had been under considération, in the light of the deterioration of the mass of the seventeenth-century buildings, ever-growing student numbers, the need for improved teaching facilities, and increasing industrialisation of that part of central Glasgow (Figure 6.1). Respectable citizens had already moved westwards to new suburbs.

Pollution had a marked effect on the buildings including the Museum (see p. 78), as well as on trees in the College grounds.

A site at Gilmorehill, on the western outskirts of the city, was finally agreed on, and the existing College buildings sold to a railway company. Extensive new premises, in a neo-Gothic style with Scottish baronial overtones, designed by leading London architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott, rose on a hilltop overlooking a bend in the River Kelvin (Figure 6.2). The Hunterian Museum, a structure very much more modern than almost all of the existing College buildings, was also abandoned to the railway company, and the collections transferred to halls and galleries within the new complex.