Remembrance area at bus depot

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 3 Jun 2023

I always thought that West Lothian had a monopoly on these impressive memorial benches so I had mixed feelings when stumbling across a new design so far from home. The bench sits in a small area at the corner of First Bus's big bus park off Cathcart Road, which was created just a few months ago to coincide with Remembrance Day. The obscured bit of writing at the top of the white arch pays tribute to former workers at Whitevale Depot who died in the First World War. Here it gets slightly confusing as this is not Whitevale; this current bus depot replaced a former one at Parkhead, in the East of the city, just a few years ago. There had previously been a memorial space there - occasionally visited by people researching their family trees according to online news articles - containing the big arch and three other smaller tributes from three other depots. After having been in storage for a few years all have now been brought here. The four depots - Whitevale, Dennistoun, Landside and Newlands - were actually all tram depots. Presumably First is currently the biggest bus company in Glasgow as it calls itself the 'legacy operator' when outlining its reasons for housing the memorials in a press release. Glasgow's last tramline closed in 1962.

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