IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Croftburn Drive, GLASGOW, G44 5HU

Wheelie bins awaiting the council bin lorry.

This monumental sundial is fairly close to the similarly huge Aikenhead House in King's Park, Glasgow. It got transported here in the 1930s shortly after part of the original Aikenhead estate was gifted to the city by a developer. Presumably the developer had realised that such big profits would arise from the building of thousands of houses on the former estate's land that this grand gesture could be afforded. Whilst undoubtedly impressive, the sundial is also a bit silly. Four very unfeminine-looking bare-breasted creatures support an octagon, which in turn supports four bearded faces who share a silly tall hat. This is only the start of the silliness though. Each side of the octagon has its own sundial. (Sadly one or two of the gnomons - the metal bits that cast the shadow - are missing, and all the rest have been twisted out of shape by vandals.) At least one, probably two, and perhaps more of these sundials are superfluous however. The sun only rises due East and sets due West at the equinoxes. In the summer the sun rises in the NorthEast, and sets in the NorthWest, both of these positions becoming more Northerly as the summer solstice is approached. Somewhere online, a fairly official looking site says that at 56° North - which is roughly the latitude of Glasgow - the sun rises at 42° and sets at 318° on the summer solstice (North being 0°). I'm nowhere near clever enough to do the maths, but am certain that this means the time could be told even on the longest day without reference to the full eight sundials! The thinking must have been to do it because they could. Well, in the 1600s at least - as this apparently is something of a 'tribute' sundial to a famous one made back then. Fair enough I suppose.

Residential street in the south of Glasgow.

A short one-way street off Croftfoot Road. Croftfoot Surgery (GP practice) is on the right.

When I first came to Glasgow I was told that it has the most green space per head of population of all UK cities. I don't know if that's true but there are 90+ parks and gardens. King's Park is one of them, offering a pleasant space for the surrounding residential areas of Simshill, Castlemilk, Croftfoot and indeed King's Park.

View over Glasgow from Castlemilk.

Aikenhead House, situated within King's Park public park, was built on the site of a much earlier 17th century mansion. The main house was built in 1806 and the wings were added in 1823. In 1986, Aikenhead House was converted to contain 14 flats.

This Category A listed building dating from 1806 is in the centre of King's Park. In the early 1980s there were plans to turn the building into a museum to house Glasgow Museums' fine collection of costumes, but the discovery of extensive dry rot in the building meant it would be too expensive. Glasgow City Council instead sold the building to developers, who converted the house into flats in 1986.