Aikenhead House

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 23 Aug 2022

Aikenhead House, a Category A listed building, sits in the middle of King's Park, which used to form part of its estate. The mansion house, along with the grounds that now make up today's public park, were donated to the city in the 1930s by a developer shortly after he/they bought the full estate (which covered an area about four times the size of King's Park) and got to work building 3000 new houses. Glasgow City Council, or whatever name they went by back then, opened the house to the public a few years later as a costume museum. Then the war came along and it was used as some kind of intelligence HQ. After that it was used to store - though not display from what I can gather - the artworks and objects that make up the Burrell Collection. Considering these items were donated to Glasgow in 1944, and the Burrell Collection - a purpose-built museum located in Pollock Country Park, not too far awy - did not open its doors until 1983, they might well have been kept in this house for a very long time. Once the artworks and artefacts were rehoused the building was boarded up. Due to the building's listed status, demolition - though considered - was never properly on the cards, and in the mid 1980s it was sold on to a private developer and converted into 14 flats. The estate agents often describe it as a "neoclassical masterpiece" designed by "the father of Glasgow architecture" David Hamilton when selling the flats on. It was built in the first decade of the 1800s and was modified a little shortly afterwards. A ground floor flat comprising a bedroom, bathroom and living room/kitchen is currently under offer for £156,000.

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