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Shandwick Street, Easterhouse
Old easterhouse
Houses in easterhouse, ready to be knocked down

Easterhouse was one of the 'big four' housing estates built within Glasgow's city limits. Like Drumchapel, Pollok and Castlemilk, it was a tenemental housing scheme to accomodate people displaced by the slum clearances of the inner city.

Easterhouse is fairly cut off from the rest of the city - 6 miles outside the city centre. It is even cut off from neighbouring districts Garthamlock and Ballieston by Auchenlea Park and the M8 respectively. On the area's north and western border lies the fields of North Lanarkshire.

All this highlights how poorly planned this scheme was when it was built in the 1954. The area quickly became an undesirable wasteland with flats in abundance, but little in the way of amenities. The schools didn't open until 1960 and when the population peaked at 56,843, there was still no supermarket. It was not until 1972 (18 years later) that Shandwick Shopping Centre was built. A police station was not built until 1968. Easterhouse became notorious for its gang culture with celebrities like Frankie Vaughan promoting a knife amnesty in the area in the 1960s. The population has fallen to around 32,000.

Only in the past decade has Easterhouse seen many of its tenement housing demolished and new housing replacing the dated flats. Those that remain have been refurbished.

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