00:00My name is Ryan James. I'm the owner of the Buttery restaurant in Glasgow.
00:05We've owned the restaurant since 2007, but of course it's been a restaurant since 1869.
00:10So it's one of the oldest, if not the oldest, restaurant in Glasgow.
00:14And there are tenement flats above the building.
00:17The ground floor, which is where the Buttery is housed, was a coaching inn at that point.
00:22Obviously in 1869 there was no motorcars or buses, it was just horses and coaches.
00:28And so this was like a, if you like, a bus stop, a very grand bus stop where you could have something to eat and something to drink while you're waiting for the coach.
00:36If you were coming to Glasgow there would probably have been some form of accommodation somewhere amongst it.
00:42After the Second World War, round about the 1920s, this was a very built up area with lots of tenement flats running all the way from Argyle Street at Central Station
00:56all the way through to Argyle Street in the West End.
00:59And this became a very big part of what was the Irish immigrant population.
01:05Partially because the Bruma Law was where the Irish boats docked.
01:11So that's where people would first stop off, if you like, was to get there.
01:13What was the coaching? It became a public house.
01:16Because at that point licenses became more free and also there was an appetite for alcohol, particularly after the First World War.
01:25People think it became much more accessible and so there wasn't the same kind of rules, if you like, about people being non-drinking, if you like.
01:40It became a lot freer.
01:41So this became a pub called the Shandon Bells.
01:45It lasted like that way up until 1967.
01:50But in 1967 all the tenement flats around here were demolished.
01:56There's no romance about why they were demolished.
01:58The building that the buttery's in and that building further up they were called Anderson Savings Bank.
02:02The donors of both properties thought they weren't getting enough compulsory poultry from Glasgow Council.
02:09And so they decided to hold out.
02:11And when Glasgow City Council decided that they didn't really need the land anymore because Kingston Bridge was going across that way and the expressway was going that way.
02:20This whole part of land, really they didn't know what to do with it.
02:23So they just pulled out and everything else was demolished apart from these two buildings which just sat there for the best part of 20 years on their own.
02:33But as a result of the tenement's going, the pub couldn't survive because there was no longer a sitting population coming into the bar.
02:40So what happened at that point was a family called the Lamont spot it and they decided to take it from being a bar into a restaurant.
02:48They dropped the bells part from the chandelion and put the buttery at the end.
02:52The buttery being a Scottish word for larder.
02:55So it signalled the fact that they were now selling food much more than they were selling alcohol.
02:59So it turned out a different way.
03:00So that night, you can see...
03:03...you know, it's a very unique thing.
03:05So if you wanted to be a religious group, please don't give me a message in order to get to it.
03:08So like, wait till this time, you get to it.
03:08So I'll just leave the neighbours now.
03:09So in the future, you'll probably have my boss so that you know, and you'll get to it.
03:10So I'll just leave the back to it and I'll just come back and see...
03:12So I'll just leave.
03:13So I'll just leave the track to it.
03:14I'll just leave my house so that you can take it.
03:16No, I'll just leave the track down.
03:18So that's it.
03:20It's like, baby, and you can take it and see it.
