Our Stories of Home is a series of works by writers from the NHS Restart Project Writing Group in Bridgeton, Glasgow. As part of Arkbound’s Bridging Divides During the Cost of Living Crisis project in early 2025, one of our authors, John McGlade joined the NHS Restart Project’s long-running Writing Group for two sessions to work with the group on developing a piece of writing on a theme of their choosing. Together, they decided to focus on stories of home and produced some beautiful, personal pieces about places they call home.
Here is Eleanor’s piece about Yorkhill:
Gone with the Wind
Yorkhill in Glasgow is an area that is very dear to my heart. When I think back on my childhood memories, Yorkhill is everywhere!
It was where my granny stayed, and the rest of my aunts and uncles on my dad’s side. We would visit them often. My granny stayed in 1407 Argyle Street, straight facing the art galleries. She stayed top flat and as a young child I used to love running up the spiral staircase in the close, getting to the top, and pulling on the doorbell that sounded so old fashioned.
My gran’s house had two bedrooms, a long bathroom with a very deep bath, and a massive kitchen. In her kitchen was what I would call a sky-blue display cabinet (or a kitchen larder), where she housed her best china cups that were so small, along with her bread and condiments, and of course my favourite too, which was cremola foam (raspberry was my favourite).
Any time she pulled down the door of this sky blue cabinet, my young nostrils would be filled with many different smells. I found out much later that these smell were coming from open jars of spices.
But something I didn’t like so much was the two ventrilloquist dolls which belonged to my uncle David, and were kept in the hall cupboard. They had shiny faces and looked so real that to a kid they were creepy!
My granny’s house was always a home I felt comfortable in.
I loved looking out her window across to the art galleries, and watching people coming and going. My dad, who was bringing my sister and me up on his own, would often take us over to the art galleries. I loved the quietness of the place, and liked walking up and down the large staircase in the close, which made me feel like Scarlet O’Hara from the film Gone With the Wind. We would sometimes listen to the organ being played on a Sunday, something I still enjoy doing to this day. It just fills me with such great memories of my dad, sister and being together, a time when life was much easier (for us kids, anyway).
My granny is now dead, and so is my father, aunts and uncles, but the house at 1407 Argyle Street still stands, and hopefully there is a family living there who are making memories to enjoy, and maybe, just maybe, one day they’ll write about them— just as I am today.