This chapter explores where children played on high-rise estates in post-war Glasgow, with particular emphasis on the 1960s. In this decade, widespread urban redevelopment in the form of inner-city slum clearance and new housing estates resulted in significant societal change at both a national and local level in the UK. This was a period of transition in which community and family life was being reconstituted.¹ The modern high-rise block was steadily replacing the traditional working-class dwelling throughout the decade. These physical changes in the built environment had important consequences for everyday life for individuals of all ages. For children this had particular implications. The speed with which high-rise blocks could be constructed and the pace of physical change in the city resulted in the re-emergence of earlier fears that ‘living high’ would have adverse effects on child welfare. Central to these concerns was the question of where children could play and how the lack of play space would affect their well-being and development.²

A renewed emphasis was placed on the welfare of children in the post-war decades with an increased interest in childhood mental health immediately following the Second World War.³ The work of John Bowlby and Anna Freud on the separation of children from their parents and the consequences of child evacuation became influential in shaping understandings of child development. Bowlby’s books on ‘attachment theory’, which emphasized the centrality of the mother–child bond, became best-sellers.⁴ Professionals also placed increasing emphasis on the potential legacy of early childhood experiences in determining the life chances of the adult. These ideas had important consequences for public understandings of what constituted ‘normal’ child development. In this context, publications by government and reformers made play, and the opportunity to play, central to ensuring children’s physical and mental well-being and ‘normal’ development.⁵

In spite of these concerns, Mathew Thomson suggested that children’s lives were curtailed and became less ‘free’ as a result of post-war planning.⁶ In the many new housing estates and redeveloped inner-city areas throughout the UK, adults sought to keep children safe by providing them with designated space that was theirs. This could take the form of the neighbourhood play area or, for the very fortunate who moved to houses, their own private garden. They were no longer free to play where they liked. Through adult eyes, the professionally designed playparks and spaces provided by the local authority were preferable to ‘unsafe’ streets, roadsides and liminal ‘in between’ spaces such as waste grounds and other brownfield sites. In this analysis, Thomson drew on Colin Ward’s influential Child in the City in portraying the restricted place of children, and especially boys, in the changing landscape of post-war Britain.⁷ Children’s own narratives were, however, largely absent.

This chapter places such narratives at the centre of its analysis. It explores children’s agency in the new environment of the modern high-rise housing estate in two locations in Glasgow in the 1960s and 1970s, the Gorbals and Castlemilk. Working-class children were the objects of adults’ concerns in the archival sources, as high-rise housing attracted attention from a range of professionals studying a period of profound social change. The under-fives were a particular focus of professional and parental concern in terms of the long-term effects of early childhood experiences and ‘normal’ development.⁸ This chapter re-analyses residents’ questionnaires and other research materials that contributed to social science researcher Pearl Jephcott’s Homes in High Flats.⁹ This project was conducted between 1967 and 1971 and was the first large-scale investigation into the social effects of high-rise flats in the UK. These archive materials are re-analysed to focus on children’s experiences and behaviours.¹⁰ By reading against the grain, it is evident that children actively shaped their environments through their play and were able to make use of the space around where they lived. Jephcott also made attempts to capture children’s responses to high-rise through observation, which provides an important, albeit mediated, insight into how children were perceived to be using space. In the Homes in High Flats archive there is also material produced by children themselves in response to tasks set by their teachers at the request of Jephcott, which provide evidence of children’s own concerns. Finally, the chapter will draw upon oral history life narrative interviews with former residents reflecting on their experiences of childhood play in these two high-rise locations in the 1960s and 1970s. These sources suggest that, despite the contemporary concerns of parents and professionals relating to the lack of provision, children were able to make their own fun and find places and games to play.

High-rise, children and play

Glasgow Corporation, as the local authority in the city was known, vigorously adopted high-rise as a solution in the early 1960s given the city’s long-term housing shortage and resultant inner-city tenement ‘slums’. In 1951, the newly appointed Corporation architect, A. G. Jury, had estimated that 186,000 new houses would need to be built in the city in order to demolish and rebuild the overcrowded districts as well as clear the existing housing waiting list.¹¹ As a result, there were proportionately more high-rise blocks built in Glasgow in the 1960s than any other city in the UK.¹² This construction was central to the city’s dramatic comprehensive development strategy, which aimed to clear and reconstruct twenty-nine areas of the city. Initially, high-rise was designated for use in these areas, but latterly they were also constructed in gap sites, brownfield former industrial sites, on municipal golf courses and in existing peripheral estates. This construction was a powerful visual symbol that showed Glaswegians that the Corporation was solving the housing shortage. As David Gibson, housing convenor, stated in 1962:

Gibson’s political background in the Independent Labour Party ensured that housing was his priority. He had a revolutionary zeal for improving living standards for the working classes of the city. While Gibson acknowledged the Scottish Office’s (the representatives of the UK government based in Edinburgh) competing interest in preserving greenbelt land, in his opinion it was more important to provide the additional housing that the city desperately needed. However, Gibson’s good intentions would result in long-term problems. The failure to take ‘good planning principles’ into account, such as the provision of infrastructure and amenities, would cause significant inconvenience for many of Glasgow’s high-rise residents.

The Scottish Office was also concerned by the scale and speed of high-rise construction in Glasgow.¹⁴ This was not only about the quality of construction but also fears about the long-term implications of the relocation of thousands of the city’s inhabitants to live in high-rise blocks. The Scottish Office therefore provided the impetus for Home in High Flats, in that the study aimed to consider ‘some of the human problems involved in multi-storey housing’.¹⁵ Given the scale of the housing shortage in Glasgow, Gibson had insisted that two-bedroom flats should be built in high blocks throughout the city to accommodate families. In the 236 existing blocks in Glasgow in 1967 there were approximately 8,000 to 9,000 children under the age of nine.¹⁶ In the same year, the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee stated that ‘by far the most serious problem is to provide adequately for the recreational needs of children living in the flats’.¹⁷ One of Jephcott’s tasks was to provide recommendations on how this could be done. She also became especially concerned about the effects of ‘living high’ on children and the long-term implications for their social and educational development.

These were pre-existing concerns among UK government departments. As early as 1952 the Central Housing Advisory Committee had commissioned a sub-committee to produce a report on families living in large blocks of flats, which found that ‘There is much evidence from tenants themselves that the need most keenly felt by mothers in blocks of flats is “somewhere safe for children to play” ’.¹⁸ Recommendations were made as to the amount of space that should be designated for children’s play and the sort of facilities that should be provided. The construction of housing intensified in the 1950s, mostly of low-rise houses or flats. Municipal authorities across the UK also increasingly experimented with high-rise construction, with this becoming more established in the early 1960s, largely as a result of the London County Council. In 1961, anticipating continued construction, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government set out minimum space standards for new housing and its surroundings in Homes for Today and Tomorrow. However, it was suggested that it was difficult to plan play spaces because ‘the importance of play in the normal development of the child is not yet fully understood’. Yet, at a basic level it was suggested that ‘all children need the opportunity to play with other children, space in which to play in safety, and something to play with’.¹⁹

As increasing numbers of new council housing estates were constructed across Britain, the relationship between opportunities for play and ‘normal’ child development attracted increasing attention. Various ministries of the UK government commissioned research on children’s play requirements. Again, there had been earlier research in the 1950s with particular reference to flats, such as L. E. White’s 1953 study of the outdoor play of children living in flats.²⁰ More research was published in the 1960s on high-rise in particular. Joan Maizels’ Two to Five in High Flats funded by the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust and published in 1961 provided a basis for all subsequent research on the limitations placed on children’s play by ‘living high’.²¹ Maizels’ decision to focus on young children suggests that her work was influenced by child psychology and welfare professionals’ research. Indeed, Maizels found that young children, under five years old, rarely got out to play as their mothers could not let them out by themselves. There was nowhere they could play unsupervised, either inside or outside the flats, and as a result they were ‘hemmed in’ and it was ‘too restrictive a life for them’.²² Maizels found that some mothers were concerned that their children would lack the socialization of other children, would be lonely and shy and would be emotionally behind their peers.²³ Maizels made several age-specific recommendations that were echoed in subsequent reports: separate play facilities for children of different ages; indoor play spaces for children under five (such as play groups); and outdoor activities for older children.²⁴

Lady Marjorie Allen of Hurtwood, a pioneer of adventure playgrounds in England in the 1950s and an acknowledged expert in the field of children and play, also discussed the types of play facilities children preferred in Planning for Play published in 1968. In this comprehensive book she singled out high-rise, specifically the Red Road flats in Glasgow, as ‘a kind of psychological pollution’, a place where ‘a lift hall is their only playground’.²⁵ She described children who ‘lived far off the ground’ as being ‘denied the chance to explore and play in freedom’.²⁶ Lady Allen was concerned about the long-term effects of such a constrained childhood. If children were not able to play with other children, take risks and learn to be resilient then what kind of adults would they become? Pearl Jephcott shared this concern. She asserted, quoting the adult questionnaire respondents, that high flats were ‘nae use for the bairns’ and described multi-storey life as ‘somehow alien to the children’.²⁷

Children’s play in Glasgow’s high-rise: Queen Elizabeth Square and Mitchellhill

Responses to Jephcott’s questionnaire can be re-analysed in an attempt to locate working-class children’s experiences through adults’ accounts of their behaviour. This close reading will focus on two contrasting case study areas selected for their differing geographical locations within the city: Queen Elizabeth Square in the inner city and Mitchellhill on the periphery. The resident questionnaires primarily provide evidence of adult perceptions of relocation and experience of living in high-rise. However, Jephcott’s interest in the restrictions placed on children’s ability to play ensured that she included a section entitled ‘The Children’. Residents were asked where children played and for suggestions on how facilities could be improved. Jephcott employed a team of market researchers to conduct her questionnaire with 1,067 residents in the 163 blocks that existed in 1968–9.²⁸ At Queen Elizabeth Square thirty-four individuals were interviewed and fifty-one at Mitchellhill.²⁹ Both men and women were interviewed. Some respondents were parents with children living at home, others were living alone or were older adults whose grown-up children had left home.

Queen Elizabeth Square was integral to Glasgow’s first Comprehensive Redevelopment Area in the Gorbals, arguably Glasgow’s most notorious inner-city area.³⁰ The existing four-storey tenements were demolished and replaced with brutalist high-rise blocks designed by Sir Basil Spence. Influenced by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, the blocks were built on pilotis with amenity space underneath.³¹ However, Spence’s derivative blocks did not have the facilities for children that were included in the original. There was no children’s play area and no ‘kickabout’ for football (small red ash pitches found in many of the housing estates in Glasgow). There was a play area across a busy road from the blocks and another more ‘modernist’ playground within the wider housing estate.

Castlemilk is one of Glasgow’s four peripheral housing estates built on the edge of the city in the 1950s, comprising mainly modern four-storey tenements. In the 1960s, Glasgow Corporation decided to add three areas of high-rise flats. Mitchellhill was approved in 1963 and was completed only two years later in 1965 by construction firm Wimpey using mass systems building prefabrication techniques. The row of five twenty-storey blocks was located on the southern edge of the estate next to the Cathkin Braes.³² This was an isolated, almost rural location, with a working farm on one side. Mitchellhill was also separated from the rest of the housing estate by a busy road. Older children had the freedom of playing in the forest areas on the braes, there was a small red ash football pitch for the older boys and eventually there was also a small play area behind one of the blocks for younger children.

The overwhelming response to Jephcott’s questions on children’s play from residents in both locations was that there should be playgrounds for all ages as there was ‘nowhere to play’ at the blocks. However, it would seem that play provision was not a priority for Glasgow Corporation. In spite of the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee’s concerns regarding children’s ability to play, not to mention the contemporary discourses on the importance of play to child development, the Corporation’s primary focus was the construction of housing.³³ In both the redeveloped Gorbals and in Castlemilk, residents waited years for the construction of schools, shops and community centres. Children’s play areas were even further down the list of priorities. While older children were able to find their own places to play, for younger children this was more difficult. Age was an important factor in determining children’s agency. Residents articulated very similar views to the participants in Maizels’ research in London in relation to children under five years old. Young children had to be accompanied out to play as they could not reach the buttons on the lift. Parents could not leave such young children unsupervised to play outside because if anything happened, or their child was being bullied, they could not get down in the lift or stairs quickly enough to help.³⁴ For practical reasons, this age group were seen as being particularly vulnerable. There was a perception among adults in both Queen Elizabeth Square and Mitchellhill that pre-school children were shut indoors.³⁵ Parents feared that their children’s lack of play opportunities ‘holds them back’ developmentally.³⁶ The focus on the early years of childhood among child welfare professionals and the ways in which this entered public discourse perhaps influenced respondents’ views. There is no evidence to suggest how the children themselves felt.

Residents living in high-rise in both locations suggested that there should be increased provision for ‘wee ones’ under five years old. It was especially important that young children should be able to play ‘safely out of the way of traffic’ in ‘enclosed’ spaces.³⁷ Concerns about busy and ‘dangerous’ roads were evident among residents in both locations.³⁸ This also applied to older children who were more likely to be crossing roads to find places to play beyond the immediate area of the high-rise blocks. Indeed, Thomson suggests that increasing car ownership, and with it child fatalities and injuries, resulted in restrictions being placed on children’s movements in urban space.³⁹ It was no longer judged safe for children to be allowed to roam freely and especially cross roads without adult supervision. From the late 1960s, residents in both the Gorbals and Mitchellhill raised concerns about the increasing risks associated with traffic, drawing on both their own experience and local media coverage of child injuries and fatalities.⁴⁰

Adult residents at Queen Elizabeth Square described children over five years old playing in the paved areas, footpaths, roads and carparks surrounding the blocks. There was no grass to play on and relatively few children played in the local play park.⁴¹ This provides a fairly bleak impression of the opportunities for play. Some older residents suggested dedicated play areas for children to ‘take them off the streets’ and ‘away from the doors’.⁴² The desire to provide play areas could also be read as enclosing and demarcating space for children as Thomson suggests. These adult responses also give a sense of where children played when there was theoretically nowhere for them to play. The doorways, entrance halls and spaces surrounding the blocks, which were not designed to be used for play, were used for this purpose. This is evidence of older children’s agency in subverting spaces that adults thought of as unsuitable for play.

At Mitchellhill, adult residents also overwhelmingly suggested that there should be more play facilities near the blocks and several residents mentioned the need for swings in particular. As was the case in the inner city this was not just about keeping children safe. It was also hoped that increased provision would keep the children busy as ‘there’s too many kids about the entrance’ and ‘there wouldn’t be so much damage done to the blocks if they could go to a playground’.⁴³ These concerns were not unwarranted. A group of University of Glasgow graduate social science students, observing play on a summer night in Castlemilk, found ninety children out playing around the blocks and ‘not even half a dozen adults’ to supervise them.⁴⁴ Jephcott concluded that the lack of play facilities combined with boredom and with no adult supervision could result in so many children becoming ‘a law unto themselves’.⁴⁵ Indeed, a sixty-four-year-old widow blamed the parents for letting children ‘run wild’ as they can’t keep an eye on them’.⁴⁶ Other residents also complained of destruction, vandalism and the noise of children playing. Again, an alternative reading could be to suggest that the children were making the best of the resources they had available to them. The adults’ responses do not specify what ‘destruction’ or ‘vandalism’ had occurred. Nevertheless, children were highly visible, out and about around the blocks, taking up space and enjoying themselves playing.

The residents at Mitchellhill also commented on the need for particular play facilities for boys. Perhaps this was because the nearby kickabout was already dominated by older boys who, according to some residents, would not let younger boys have access to the space.⁴⁷ Again, age was an important factor in determining which children could access the designated spaces for play, with older children frustrating the attempts of the Corporation to provide facilities that would serve children of all ages. Jephcott also related stereotypical representations of Glasgow boys as having a ‘reputation for physical violence’ because they had to learn to be tough in the back-courts of the tenements.⁴⁸ Mothers in Mitchellhill had witnessed this first hand, suggesting that their sons ‘could do with a sports club’, a ‘boys brigade’ or scouts.⁴⁹ Such organized and disciplined activity would provide an alternative space to avoid fighting, bullying and destructive behaviour in the area around the flats.⁵⁰ In addition, given the public moral panic over gang violence in Glasgow’s peripheral estates in the 1960s, perhaps parents in Mitchellhill were anxious to keep their sons busy with sports and group activities to avoid the lure of gangs when they were older.⁵¹

Meanwhile, Jephcott noted that ‘no one seemed to have thought about girls’ needs as regards their type of play’.⁵² At Mitchellhill only one woman, who did not have children, suggested that ‘The girls need some kind of playground or play field. The boys have a football pitch’.⁵³ There was no comment on the needs of girls or boys in particular at Queen Elizabeth Square. The domination of older boys in designated play spaces provided by Glasgow Corporation was largely unchallenged.

Concerns of residents were therefore surprisingly similar in both areas in spite of their differing locations in the city. In both locations, residents were particularly concerned about the lack of play provision for children under five years old, which echoes earlier government findings and those of Maizels. Some parents had also picked up on public discourses on ‘normal’ child development and the need for socialization through play and were worried their children were disadvantaged by living high. For older children, with the exception of the focus on provision for boys at Mitchellhill, the only other difference was adult perceptions that older children living in this high-rise estate had more freedom as a result of the semi-rural setting. They could go wandering and play on the grassy slopes leading to the Cathkin Braes and in the forest areas beyond. This was considered ‘healthy for the kids’.⁵⁴ Queen Elizabeth Square’s concrete brutalism and location nearer the city centre resulted in a perception among adult residents that older children were more restricted in their use of space. However, in both areas children can be located in the adult responses to the questionnaire, which give a sense of where children played and what use they were able to make of the space and resources available to them. Nevertheless, this does not tell the full story. Children’s own views, in their own words, are also necessary to understand just how suitable high-rise was as a place to grow up and play.

Where did children want to play?

As well as interviewing adult residents through the questionnaire, Jephcott gathered material created by children to determine their opinions on living in high-rise, where they played and where they would like to play. It is important to consider the means by which this material was collected and therefore the ethical implications of its re-use. During her research, Jephcott attempted to compare the health and educational development of working-class children living in high-rise with their contemporaries living in more traditional forms of housing. This line of inquiry was not pursued because findings suggested that ‘there was no evidence that children’s health suffered’ and that there was no social ‘retardation in the multi-storey group’.⁵⁵

In this context, Jephcott sought cooperation from primary schools in order to access children’s views on play. University researchers had access to the children’s school records and their creative work without the consent of the children or their parents or guardians. This was the result of unequal class-based power dynamics. Working-class children had little power to avoid being the object of concern, however well-intentioned or justifiable. At the same time, Jephcott’s actions enabled these children to make their opinions known, providing them with agency as creators of evidence. The resulting archived material in the form of drawings and essays is rich and illuminating. Nevertheless, this chapter will draw on the essays that Jephcott published in Homes in High Flats, which have been available to the general public since 1971.

In these essays, older children, aged between five and ten years old who lived in high-rise in Glasgow, described playing in similar locations to those described by adult respondents, including at the ‘enterance’ and ‘I play on the ground floor.’⁵⁶ The children liked to play in places with ‘no glass or gangs’, which suggested a lack of maintenance and the misuse of play areas by teenagers in the evenings.⁵⁷ Children had also presumably internalized the warnings of their parents relating to the dangers of cars and traffic and knew to avoid busy roads as ‘you mite get nocked down’. Jephcott also drew upon the notes made by the University of Glasgow social science graduate students when observing play around high-rise estates. The findings echoed earlier studies of children’s use of playground facilities, with static objects like tunnels and climbing frames in concrete and metal not being particularly well used, except in the case of slides.⁵⁸ Jephcott also found that when children were not at school any equipment that moved was nearly always busy, as were the boys’ kickabouts. Perhaps these preferences suggest that children liked play equipment which they could have some form of control over; it was not aesthetic values that were important for children but function.⁵⁹ Perhaps the Mitchellhill residents’ emphasis on swings was understandable when Jephcott’s evidence suggests that this may have been just the sort of equipment that the children themselves desired.

There were obviously differences between where children played and where they would like to play. In reproducing these extracts, Jephcott notably retained the children’s original spelling and grammar (reproduced here). These are their words and their ideas of an ‘ideal playground’:

This extract illustrates the tensions between boys of different ages in accessing the football pitches provided by the Corporation. An age hierarchy, enforced through bullying and violence, seems to have been integral to how these spaces were used. As parents and other residents had also suggested, the efforts of Glasgow Corporation to improve children’s welfare were undermined by the actions of these older boys. Yet, the reference to the absence of nets suggests that the Corporation’s efforts were also limited. The preference for grass as opposed to the red ash pitches, which were far more common in Glasgow, highlights the Corporation’s attempt to keep maintenance costs down. This response was also gendered as there was no suggestion that girls would be permitted to play football or access these spaces. Instead, girls required separate provision in the form of tennis courts. Yet, this boy was at least considering the needs of girls whereas the vast majority of high-rise residents and Glasgow Corporation did not seem to. The use of the phrase ‘that would keep them happy’ in relation to swings and a sandpit for ‘little children’ also reads like an adult opinion overheard, and perhaps shows how widely the absence of facilities for younger children was felt in the community. This may also be evidence of this boy’s maturity in thinking about the needs of those younger than himself.

The way in which these young writers perceived the absence of facilities for girls is again in striking contrast to the majority of high-rise residents in Mitchellhill and Queen Elizabeth Square. One boy wrote:

This writer acknowledged that boys could break the rules to play football on the grass, but this was not considered to be an option for girls. Signs protecting grassed areas and garages from children’s play were an infamous feature of housing estates across the UK. Such demarcation of space into proper and improper use have become legendary in accounts of growing up in post-war Britain. There were rules to be followed, as well as caretakers and neighbours to be avoided. That this boy accepted ‘no loitering’ was interesting. Perhaps, in his opinion, football and play had a purpose that meant they should be permitted. His requests were fairly straightforward in focusing on traditional play equipment such as a chute (as slides are known in the West of Scotland) and again swings, grass and a ‘decent football pitch’, which highlights the clear lack of provision for children in Glasgow. His other points relating to the age restrictions placed on the playgroup are more complicated, especially when he suggests that ‘the public’ could fund this and that the caretakers could help for ‘their childs sake’. Jephcott’s experiment with establishing a playgroup in a high-rise block in Royston in Glasgow highlighted that funding and staffing were both insurmountable issues.⁶² The phrase ‘the flats would be pleased’ is also a nice illustration of how children conform to adult agendas where their interests are aligned. This arguably was a particular form of strategic agency. He chooses to feature issues that the adults in the flats would agree with, but that are also a priority for him.⁶³

In other extracts, gendered play and access to facilities were also evident with one younger girl suggesting that she liked ‘to play with my mums dresses and high heels and my other frends do that as well I woul ofen play at houses with them’.⁶⁴ Such imaginative play contrasts with the active games pursued by boys, and potentially reinforced the gendered hierarchies of working-class family life in 1960s Glasgow. Interestingly, she also suggested that she ‘would like to play with pepol that are frendlay and dont fight with each other and dont talk scrufy’; she also liked ‘places that are tiddy and not all papers about’. This gives an indication of the levels of fighting and bullying among children, as well as the litter and lack of maintenance of communal areas in high-rise estates. An older boy also described the absence of provision, but referred to the facilities that the community expected to be constructed: ‘we are getting a grass football field and swimming baths and tennis courts, but even that’s going to take a lot of time and hard work’.⁶⁵ Children living in high-rise estates had, like their parents, come to terms with the fact that they would have to wait for amenities. The use of the phrase ‘but even’ suggests aspirations for more. As the chapter by Jonathan Taylor using writing by London-based children also suggests, children were aware of the important role that local government played in delivering welfare services.

These extracts were undoubtedly selected for publication because they supported Jephcott’s argument. Yet, they also provide a clear sense of children’s thoughts about play, how they used space and the barriers they had to overcome to be able to play. In these accounts, the authors are very much ‘experts on their own lives’ and provide evidence of what Pooley and Taylor describe in the Introduction as the ‘everyday meanings of their own welfare’.⁶⁶ The writers’ suggestions for improvement illustrate the nuanced nature of children’s opinions on what they wanted from their environment, as well as a tacit acknowledgement of how their aspirations were restricted by limited resources. The older boys seem to know that Glasgow Corporation cannot afford to staff playgroups or construct facilities quickly or without ‘hard work’. Collectively, the aspirations of the children are limited. There was no utopian idealism, but rather pragmatic requests for nets in the goals and for litter and glass to be cleared. Children recount the effects of bullying but with no suggestions of how to solve this problem. The older boys acknowledged that play provision was gendered, even though adult residents seemed unconcerned by this. Children’s requests for play workers or leaders had also been overlooked by adult residents.

Memories of ‘living high’ – where did you play?

Jephcott wondered ‘what sort of “I remember, I remember” picture of his early life in a multi-storey will be drawn by the man who writes his autobiography in the 2020s?’.⁶⁷ She was concerned about the long-term implications of a childhood ‘living high’. By conducting oral history life narrative interviews with people who had grown up in Mitchellhill and Queen Elizabeth Square in the 1960s and 1970s, former residents were encouraged to reflect on their childhoods in this context. When recounting strongly gendered childhood experiences of play, individuals placed an emphasis on their freedom and initiative rather than the restrictions placed upon them. With nostalgia and pragmatism, they compared their childhoods with those of contemporary ‘indoor childhoods’.⁶⁸

Just as prioritizing children’s voices in the archive is important, so too is hearing the first-hand accounts of individuals who grew up in high-rise. Interviews took a semi-structured life narrative format. There was a rough thematic interview schedule, taking people from their early childhood to the present day and involving reflections on their life. However, the individuals providing the narratives were given the space to talk at length about the topics that mattered to them. Many of the respondents were particularly comfortable and enthusiastic in talking about where they played, often actively defending their childhoods in high-rise. This is significant given the subsequent negative reputation and stigma that many high-rise estates in Glasgow have acquired in the intervening years, as well as on-going critiques of flats as inadequate for young children.⁶⁹ Ten interviews were conducted in 2015, five with former Mitchellhill residents, four with former Queen Elizabeth Square residents and one joint interview with two colleagues, who had grown up in each of these estates.⁷⁰ All were born between 1952 and 1969 and came from working-class backgrounds as determined by their parent(s)’ occupations.

The memories of growing up in Queen Elizabeth Square and Mitchellhill were largely positive, especially when interviewees recalled childhood play. However, the age at which an individual moved to high-rise shaped their experiences and opinions. Helen, who moved to Queen Elizabeth Square in 1965 when she was eleven years old, from a tenement nearby, stated that there was nowhere to play:

As the responses of adult residents in the late 1960s suggested, older children had more autonomy to get out to play, while younger children had to be taken over the busy road and supervised. Helen saw the issue of play from an adult perspective in this sense, but this perhaps also suggests that as an eleven-year-old girl there was no specific provision aimed at girls her age. She had little memory of going out to play herself at this age as there was nowhere for her to play. This quotation also suggests the demarcation of space within the playpark between the younger children taken by their parents and the older children who seemed to dominate. As residents’ complaints in the late 1960s indicate, this hierarchy was seldom challenged by younger children or their parents.

Others who were younger when they moved to Queen Elizabeth Square remembered early experiences of trips to the playpark quite differently. Brian, who moved to Queen Elizabeth Square in 1965 when he was five years old, suggested that his mother got to know a lot of people ‘because ae the amount of kids they very quickly got to know each other because we, as ah say, in the summer months like pretty much aw the mother’s’d be sittin’ roon at the swing park wae the kids playin and they’d aw be sittin’ talkin’.⁷² Taking the children out to play was also an opportunity for socializing for the mothers. Similarly, Paul, whose family had moved to Queen Elizabeth Square in 1965 when he was a baby, spoke of his mother taking the kids to play in this playpark and it being ‘sort of like a wee flat trip. We would go en masse’.⁷³ Catherine also had very fond early memories of playing in this park which contained a slide, roundabout and swings, stating ‘it wis excellent’ as the ‘chute’ was so high.⁷⁴ Working outside the home did not prevent their mothers from taking them; all three recounted their mothers working ‘split shifts’ as cleaners in the nearby nautical college. Paul remembered ‘so many women’ working there in order to be able to work in the early mornings and evenings and care for their children during the day. For those children whose mothers worked during the day, access to the park would certainly have been more limited.

As children outgrew this traditional playpark, they would travel further afield and play at ‘the jumps’, a planned play area in another part of the redeveloped Gorbals. The play equipment closely resembled the sort of modernist play areas found in post-war housing estates across the UK.⁷⁵ The architectural profession increasingly took into account the changing attitudes to child development and the importance of play. Playgrounds like ‘the jumps’ arguably provided a safe space for children to build resilience in terms of ‘risky’ play, which Hurtwood suggested was essential for children.⁷⁶ Paul remembered ‘the jumps’ creating what he described as ‘a sense of bravado’ and compares it with parkour, suggesting that the children became ‘like acrobats’. Crucially, the jumps enabled the children to take risks and challenge themselves: ‘Go on – do it – do it – jump it – and you did’.⁷⁷ In contrast to Jephcott’s findings that children were not keen on static play equipment, according to Paul the children of the Gorbals made good use of their brutalist playground when they were too big for the swings and were looking for a bit more adventure. Figure 9.3 shows ‘the jumps’ on a busy day, crowded with children of all ages with few adults in view. Presumably the younger children were in the care of older siblings. The risky play described by Paul is evident on the tree trunk at the rear of this photograph with children also jumping from the concrete walkways behind.

As they got older, Paul and Brian also gained more agency over where they played and began exploring the wider area. Paul described copying older children in ‘trying to get in to’ a council nursery shed where there was lots of greenery near the local play area.⁷⁸ Both boys also had the freedom to just wander about. Brian remembered jumping walls and fences to play football in the school playground when it was closed. He would also explore old factories where he and his friends would ‘go up an’ walk the beams, absolutely crazy stuff like’. They would also go down to the river Clyde and ‘throw stones at the rats’. As Brian stated, ‘ye made yer own fun’. In all cases, Paul’s and Brian’s parents had no idea what they were up to, but they were trusted not to get into too much trouble or injure themselves. As discussed, older boys were allowed an important degree of control over the spaces they used for play. In contrast, it seems girls were not permitted the same freedom or agency to wander and explore as they grew older. Catherine described being more cautious in her play as her mum only allowed her and her siblings to play in the immediate area around Queen Elizabeth Square where she could keep an eye on them from the window. It is not clear if her brothers were subject to the same rules. Nevertheless, Catherine was not allowed to go to ‘the jumps’ or to wander around like Brian and Paul. Her mum was worried about the busy roads. She did sneak away sometimes and never got caught, but this did restrict her freedom.⁷⁹ Girls were seen as more vulnerable in urban spaces than their male counterparts.

Children would also play among the pilotis (stilts) under the blocks at ground level. This was a space used by boys and girls of all ages, with older boys again indulging in risky behaviour. Paul remembered that ‘we would run up the big concrete feet of the flat’ or ‘play wind catcher’ in the space under the blocks where ‘you would get your jacket up and out ... and literally get taken off your feet because the wind was crazy’.⁸⁰ In contrast, Catherine described playing team games that did not require much in the way of toys or equipment such as ‘kick the can’.⁸¹ Skipping and ‘balls’, which involved either hitting a small ball off a wall in an old pair of tights or bouncing two balls off a wall simultaneously, were considered to be ‘girls games’ while boys played football.⁸²

At Mitchellhill, the nature of play and the games remembered were much the same, except that, as residents noted in their questionnaire responses, older children could explore beyond the vicinity of the blocks. Tricia recounts that they could ‘go out and play in the woods, they thought this was a great thing’.⁸³ Again, gender was influential and Tricia remembered ‘the boys’ played up the Cathkin Braes where ‘they hung fae trees, they hid swings up there, they’d, well they played at commandoes, eh, aw that kind of stuff’. Tricia and her sister played on nearby grassy slopes and wooded areas rather than the braes because only older boys went up the braes on their own and were allowed by their parents to camp out overnight.⁸⁴ John B. moved to Mitchellhill when he was twelve years old from another area of Castlemilk and ‘loved the flats’ because of the proximity to the braes and adventures collecting eggs, using ferrets, greyhounds and lurchers to go hunting, going fishing ‘and all that’.⁸⁵ As in the Gorbals, such wandering and exploring was not permitted for girls.

The games played closer to the blocks at Mitchellhill were also gendered. Older boys remembered playing football in the kickabout. All children played ‘commandos’ in wooded areas close by, if they were not allowed ‘up the braes’, but girls also ‘played at wee shops’ or games of ‘families’, role-playing: ‘like you’re the baby, ah’m the mummy, you’re the daddy’.⁸⁶ Eventually, Glasgow Corporation responded to residents’ concerns and added a playpark behind the high-rise flats. Lorraine had fond memories of playing on the swings. Only four swings were installed and what she described as a ‘moonilogico’ so it was ‘just total mayhem’ with all the kids trying to play. Lorraine remembers that in the summer holidays she and her friend would get up really early to make sure they got a swing. She explained that ‘when ye had the swing, that wis you all day’ with all the other children waiting round for their turn; ‘You had to come off when it was dinner time though, but apart from that they [the children] were out all day’.⁸⁷ Such limited resources resulted in rules being established by the children to allocate and govern play. Clearly, older children would be more adept at setting and bending the rules to suit themselves at the expense of younger children. This etiquette, perhaps difficult for adults to comprehend, illustrates the power dynamics between children that were inherent in negotiating access to play equipment.

In all the narratives of individuals who grew up in these two locations, the lack of formal play provision is clear. Yet, so too is their ingenuity as children in making the best of the resources they had, creating their own games and finding spaces and places to play. It is also unsurprising that memories of older childhood are predominant in these narratives, rather than the years under five, given that they had far more agency over their play as they grew up. There was also a certain amount of positive nostalgia evident in these narratives with individuals focusing on the dry, sunny summer days of their childhoods. Responses to prompts on where children played on rainy or winter days were much shorter. Brian described being kept indoors, even on rainy days, as a punishment, while Tricia recalled enjoying the occasions when she could stay inside as she could read, which she loved, rather than having to take her younger sister out to play.⁸⁸ No one really wanted to dwell on just how cold it was living in high-rise flats in the West of Scotland in the depths of winter. All participants recounted experiences of ice on the inside of windows as a shorthand to explain the experience and tended to move the conversation on. Therefore, narratives which focused on play were most enjoyable for individuals to recount when these centred on games and fun. There was not as much laughter when individuals recounted their responsibilities in caring for younger siblings or the long boring rainy days stuck indoors or sheltering from the rain and bad weather around the blocks with friends.

The context in which an oral history life narrative interview takes place is also important in shaping how an individual composes their narrative. Most of the individuals providing narratives at some point made a comparison with contemporary childhoods in 2015 in which children were perceived as not wanting, or being allowed, to go out to play. This undoubtedly influenced the emphasis placed on outdoor play in their narratives. Most described playing out ‘all day’. As Catherine described, ‘we were in our glory’ playing outside, ‘noo it’s computers an’ this an’ that’.⁸⁹ John M. similarly made unfavourable comparisons: ‘If you look at it now, our generation, the way we were brought up, we were never in, if you look at the generation now they are never out’.⁹⁰ He states that children ‘might have more these days but we had the better lifestyle because we had freedom to do what we wanted’; meanwhile, they are ‘stuck in houses’. He further suggests that this lifestyle has led to rising childhood obesity, a particular concern among policymakers in Scotland.⁹¹ John M. also blamed parents because children are ‘no allowed to do that [go out to play on their own] these days in case you hurt yourself!’. Not all individuals made direct comparisons between their own experience and contemporary childhoods. However, the comparison with the ‘backseat generation’ whose ‘playdates’ and ‘helicopter parents’ prevent them from taking risks was implicit in their narratives of playing outside all day.⁹²

Conclusion

Individuals who moved to Queen Elizabeth Square in the Gorbals and Mitchellhill in Castlemilk reflected on the collective pragmatism of working-class children living in high-rise estates, arguing that they made their own fun and were resourceful. This was especially true of those who were young children when they moved into high-rise blocks as they had fewer memories of their previous homes and play opportunities with which to compare high-rise. They sought to defend their childhood against critics of high-rise, both past and present, as an inadequate environment for children. Their narratives focus on where they played, the spaces they made their own and the games they played there. There was less attention paid to the absence of amenities. The narratives suggest that working-class children were imaginative in their use of space in high-rise estates, both on the edge of the city and in the inner city. The spaces that could be used for play in these locations were very different and yet individuals’ retrospective narratives emphasize their agency. This was central to memories of childhood in both places. Given the shortage of amenities provided by Glasgow Corporation and the dominance of older children in certain spaces such as football pitches, such resourcefulness was a necessity. Moreover, individuals compared their childhood experiences of play favourably with contemporary childhoods, suggesting that they had more freedom. Crucially, they did not characterize their childhoods in the 1960s and 1970s as being restricted by planning and leading to a loss of freedom. The individuals whose narratives feature in this chapter did not feel disadvantaged by growing up in high-rise in Glasgow, as researchers such as Pearl Jephcott suggested. It is therefore important to acknowledge the opinions and views of those who were once the object of concern.

Children’s accounts of welfare as measured through play provision in the 1960s were quite different. They emphasized the lack of facilities and what they would like Glasgow Corporation to provide. Yet, their desires were also restricted by pragmatism. Working-class Glaswegian children were realistic. Requests focused on improved maintenance of existing facilities, clearing of litter and for the promised amenities such as swimming pools to be delivered. Suggestions for more provision for girls such as tennis courts were perhaps more far-fetched given that adult residents were more preoccupied with keeping boys busy and out of trouble. Younger children and adults also identified the unequal power dynamics inherent in the use of play spaces, especially football pitches. However, neither children nor adults suggested solutions to this problem. Given the length of time residents had waited for the Corporation to provide basic amenities following the construction of housing (such as shops in the Gorbals and churches and schools in Castlemilk), perhaps they were well aware that funding would not be readily available for staff to supervise play. The adult residents responding to Jephcott’s questionnaire were similarly realistic in their expectations, requesting traditional enclosed play areas with swings rather than experimental adventure playgrounds. Their intention was to keep children, and especially younger children, safe from traffic while also ensuring that children had their own space so they would not hang about around the blocks making noise and being ‘destructive’. Ironically, the provision of increased play facilities may actually have challenged children’s autonomy to make any spaces, including ‘unsuitable’ ones, their own. It would perhaps have restricted their agency in roaming about the estate. Working-class children made ‘living high’ work for them despite, or perhaps because of, the failure of the municipal authorities to provide sufficient formal facilities for play.

In the immediate post-war decades in Britain, an emphasis on the importance of child welfare as an investment in the future coincided with a belief that play was essential to ‘normal’ child development. Yet, the dramatic social change resulting from comprehensive urban redevelopment resulted in municipal authorities having to make difficult decisions over their priorities at a local level. This was certainly the case in Glasgow where housing construction to clear the ‘slums’ came first, followed by essential amenities such as schools and churches. Play areas for children were much further down the list, if delivered at all. Nevertheless, children adapted to their new environments in high-rise. Rather than simply accepting how researchers, government reports, or even media narratives characterized childhood in the 1960s, and beyond, it is essential that children’s own thoughts and opinions on their lives are integrated into the history of their welfare. This is true in terms of both re-analysing contemporary accounts of children’s experiences, and actively seeking out retrospective accounts through oral history life narratives. All of these sources complicate and challenge popular accounts and stereotypes of Glasgow in this period and the fate of the thousands of working-class children who grew up in high-rise. Given the predominance of high-rise in Glasgow’s council housing stock and the dominance of council housing in the city as a whole, it was an outlier when compared with other Scottish and British cities. Yet, by examining working-class Glaswegian children’s agency in challenging, adjusting to and subverting welfare provision on high-rise estates – and the limits to their power – there are insights that can be further explored elsewhere in the UK and beyond.