Glorious Govan
I’ve got lots to tell you. But let’s start small. I went furniture shopping in Margate the other day, and came back with this.
You can never have too many pink jugs right? But when I turned it over in the shop I saw this.
My beau’s family are partly from Govan, a district of Glasgow famous for Sir Alex Ferguson and Rab C Nesbitt. It was also the place where women organised a successful rent strike during World War 1 – read about it here. It’s fascinating. I would not presume to say much about the area myself, but check out this summary of the historical and cultural strands knotted up there on the Get Into Govan website.
The gent laughed that there were no crofts in Govan, but the Govancroft brand produced cheerful stoneware for ginger beer, jam, ink and stout from 1911 until the ’90s. Read more about it here. I feel a new collection coming on…
I didn’t know about the rent strike – how fantastic. Knew about Fergie, though. Lovely vase.
Brilliant, hey? An interesting part of the world. Have to say, most of what Govancroft produced is less to my taste – what my boyfriend described as ‘cheerful’ looking stuff to get you through the Glasgow winter. Or summer.
Ros, Govan also the place where Fi famously worked in the off license with the special drawer in the till for, as her boss told her, the quick disposal of ‘dirty money’. He was a nice guy. Ahem.
We’ve lots of connections to our family in Govan too. In fact we like it here so much we’ve just opened our 2nd business (a vintage and salvage store) here in Sunny Govan. 🙂
Do you have a website? We’d love to see it.