British Imperialism and its Legacies: Scotland’s built heritage
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 1,000 objects reflecting connections between Scotland’s built heritage and legacies of slavery and empire. These complement other collections.
Much of the collection relates to Glasgow street names bearing the names of businesspeople trading in the 1700s who invested in the British plantation economy and slavery. Survey maps indicate Glasgow’s growth and expansion at a time when wealthy businessmen were building houses and roads.
Examples of topographic art show views of this expansion, the houses and streets where these people lived, and where enslaved people and servants were kept. Included are depictions of industrial buildings such as a sugar house, and political institutions such as Glasgow Town Council’s Town Hall and Tolbooth. Homes and businesses belonging to individuals who invested in slavery and plantations are also portrayed: John McCall’s ‘Black House’ on the corner of Queen Street, the ‘Buck’s Hotel’ and depictions of Charlotte Street and McNair’s building on King Street. There are also architectural fragments from these private houses and civic buildings, such as the Town Hall Tontine heads, a carved stone from the Luke family’s Claythorn House, two sphinxes from the Shawfield Mansion where McDowall of Semple and then John Glassford of Douglaston lived, and stucco plasterwork from Allan Dreghorn’s mansion. There are examples of more generic types of furnishing, including items of mahogany furniture, and silverware such as sugar casters, chocolate and coffee pots, made to hold the products from plantations. Collections from the Tolbooth, Town Hall and Tontine building, Merchant Company of Glasgow, Glasgow College or University, and Glasgow’s Exchange, and plates found from the foundation of Jamaica Bridge in 1768 – the very name of which is a legacy of Glasgow and Scotland’s parts in plantation enslavement and the British Empire – are also present.
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