Bar lower down with tenement above
Tongland
Calton is a district in Glasgow's east end. It lies between Bridgeton, Dennistoun, Parkhead and the city centre. One of the city's oldest roads, Gallowgate, runs through the area and Calton is commonly referred to by locals as 'The Calton' . Calton's most famous landmarks is the Barras street market and the world famous Barrowland, one of Glasgow's principal musical venues.
Calton has been a village since the mid- 17th century when along with Bridgeton were predominantly known as weaving villages. However, unlike its contemporary, housing was almost entirely made up of 'Rehousing' grade tenements - the lowest grade of council housing and cheapest to build. These tenements, made of constituted stone, aged badly. Many became illetable and were demolished in the 1980s and 1990s.
The comedienne Jane Godley, in her 2005 autobiography "Handstands in the Dark", wrote about the 14 years she spent running a Calton pub, the Weavers Inn (formerly the Nationalist Bar). Her book details life there in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when the area became notorious for heroin abuse and when urban renewal began.
Most of the housing is owned by Glasgow Housing Association with a high percentage of tenants on housing benefit. Due to the revival of Glasgow City centre as a desirable place to live, leading to rising demand for land and consequent overspill into surrounding areas, the Glasgow Green area has once again become a place for new luxury building development - as it once was in the 19th century.
Like neighbouring Bridgeton, the area has experienced sectarian tensions for generations; the Orange Order have a particular foothold in this area and there are also Irish Republican organisations present. This is reflected, albeit much declined in modern times, in gang and sectarian related graffiti.
Calton is an area of considerable poverty and deprivation. A BBC Scotland news report on 13 February 2006 pointed out that partially due to poor diet, crime, alcohol and drug abuse, life expectancy in Calton is lower than in some areas of Iraq or even the Gaza Strip. A news report in the 27th October 2006 edition of the Metro newspaper gave the average lifespan of person living in the Calton area as 53 compared with the Scottish average of 78. However, according to an article written in the Glasgow Centre For Population Health in 2015 by Public Health Programme Manager Bruce Whyte, this is an unfair conclusion, because what did not feature in the newspaper article was one major factor which would have contributed to the low life expectancy. There were clusters of deaths in areas that had hostels in place which looked after adults with various problems related to alcohol, drugs, homelessness and mental health. These circumstances and the already small population size of Calton at that time would have skewed the final mortality rate statistics unfairly.
Calton once had two of the United Kingdom's tallest tower blocks: 109 Bluevale and 51 Whitevale which were twin tower block flats situated in the Camlachie district prior to absorbtion into the Calton Ward within the East End of Glasgow. They were 31 storeys/90m tall and are the 6th and 7th tallest high flats in the country only behind the Barbican in London and The Sentinels in Birmingham. They were condemned due to structural problems with 109 Bluevale Street being demolished in 2015 and 51 Whitevale Street in 2016 respectively.