The Scotstoun Heritage Trail is part of our active travel programme. People of all ages can walk, cycle or scoot around while following our online tours to learn about the heritage of Scotstoun as well as looking at some of the present places of interest in the area.

There are three loops and they are set up to start and stop at the Heart of Scotstoun Community Centre however you can start and stop at whichever point is most convenient for you.

There are about 25 to 30 points of interest on each of the three loops and walking with minimal stops will take about 45 minutes for each loop. Walking the three lops together will take about 2 hours.

Clio Online Platform

The Heritage Trails have been set up using the Clio online platform, which is a US educational website and mobile application that guides the public to thousands of historical and cultural sites. Each tour offers turn-by-turn directions as well as links to relevant books, articles, videos, primary sources, and credible websites.

The platform is compatible with most smart phones and tablets and we would recommend using a smart phone. It has a range of features including

• Individual entries for each feature on the trail
• Google map of entries
• Text-to-speech audio so you can listen to the entries as you walk

We will be producing leaflets and printed maps in due course.

Heritage Trails

This trails cover a busy urban area with main roads and a well used cycle path which has cyclists, pedestrians and dog walkers. Please make sure you exercise caution at all times and where possible use pedestrian crossings.

Scotstoun Heritage Trail Eastern loop - this heads East towards Whiteinch and Victoria Park and back through the Avenues conservation area (linking with the Central loop)

View the Eastern loop

PDF of the Eastern loop (300kb)

Scotstoun Heritage Trail Central loop - this heads North towards the Avenues conservation area (linking with the Western loop), Scotstoun Stadium and Showground, the Victoria Park Nature Trail and back through the Avenues (linking with the Eastern loop)

View the Central loop 

Coming soon - a PDF of the Central loop

Scotstoun Heritage Trail Western loop - this heads West towards Yoker before heading up to the Kingsway Court estate, south Scotstounhill before heading south towards the Community Centre (linking with the Central loop)

View the Western loop

Coming soon - a PDF of the Western loop

About Scotstoun

Scotstoun is an area rich in history. A document of 1488 tells of the ‘lands and tennandrie of Scottistoune’ passing from the royal Stuarts into the hands of the Montgomories of Eglinton. The Montgomeries owned the estate for over 200 years; it then changed hands several times and was bought by the Oswald family in 1748.

Charles Connell and Co shipbuilders bought its first yard in 1861 and launched Scotstoun away from agriculture into Heavy Industry and Manufacturing. The farmlands of Scotstoun Estate were sold off piece by piece from around the 1880s to provide housing for the influx of workers; much of this housing still exists today.

Scotstoun House, the Oswald family home, was demolished in the 1890s to make way for the Lanarkshire & Dunbartonshire Railway’s line between Stobcross and Clydebank. This line connected with the Whiteinch Railway opened in 1874 to connect industrial premises, with the later addition of passenger services.

Although many of the buildings have long gone, the elevated position of the old railway line gives glimpses of Scotstoun past. There are many pleasant green spaces within Scotstoun where you can explore and learn about the social enterprises which now occupy the old industrial sites.

This project has been supported by Beat The Streets, Glasgow City Council and the Smarter Choices Smarter Places fund.

Photo kindly provided by Sandra Malcolm, local historian