Wynford Towers have been demolished in Glasgow’s Maryhill to make way for new affordable homes

The Wynford Towers in Maryhill have been demolished. Here’s a bit of history behind the 26-storey structures.

Transcript

00:00The Winford Towers were brought down at the weekend to make space for new affordable homes.

00:04People gathered to watch the demolition of three 26-storey high-rise flats

00:09on the Winford Estate in Maryhill that were erected in the 1960s.

00:14Decades worth of memories for hundreds of people were brought down in just a few minutes.

00:19Here's a wee bit of history behind the towers.

00:22They were built on a 55-acre site at the old Maryhill Barracks,

00:26with each block including 150 flats housing around 1,900 families,

00:33which equates to around 6,000 people.

00:366,000 lives at any one time shaped within these structures.

00:40Part of a larger housing development,

00:42these particular towers were put up between 1965 and 1969.

00:48Community was at the forefront of design,

00:50heavily influenced by townscape architectural planning popular among the 1950s.

00:56It was organised to incite a communal feeling among tenants.

01:00Each floor had six flats, which were all connected by a communal balcony

01:05intended to recreate the working-class stairheed and encourage neighbourliness.

01:11The prospect of this demolition was the subject of a row

01:14between local residents and the housing association who owned them, Wheatley Homes.

01:20Residents campaigned against the plan,

01:23arguing for a retrofit option,

01:25but Wheatley Homes said they could not feasibly be altered to meet modern floorspace standards.

01:31386 affordable homes will be built in their place, with 85% available for social rent.