THIS picture from our archives paints a lovely picture of “rural” Drumchapel in the 1940s.

However, regular Times Past reader Eric Flack reveals the image is a little misleading.

“This Girnin’ Gates photo was taken about 1pm on Easter Sunday in 1949,” he explains.

 (The image shows horseriders and walkers ambling past Garscadden House, which was built in 1789 for James Colquhoun, who was the laird of Garscadden. The Girnin’ Gates were so called, apparently, because of the little gargoyle heads on them which, when it rained, had water running from their eyes.)

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Eric adds: “It looks like the countryside, however, just off camera is the entrance to a large civil engineering yard owned by Kinnear and Moodie.

“It was full of steam cranes, loads of pipes and a hyperbaric decompression chamber. They had the contract to build the sewers in Drumchapel. The ground is very poor and unstable due to ‘moving sand’. They were experts in building tunnels and sewers using compressed air tunnelling. One reason many houses appeared built but unoccupied in parts of Drumchapel was that the sewers were not ready.”