Nae Streets in Drumchapel - Glasgow Life

from an old Drumchapel boy
At the start of the Campsie Hills was a single very big mountain.
It was known as ‘Dumgoyne Hill’. Drumchapel kids did not call it
Dumgoyne. We called it ‘the Camel’s Hump’. We wanted to climb to
the top. One day I did climb to the top. By that time I was a dad and
had wee girls of my own. They came with me and their mum.
In 1953 there were no good shops in the whole of Drumchapel.
Mothers had to go on the bus or the train to bring back vegetables,
groceries and butcher-meat from the shops in Glasgow and
Clydebank. In Glasgow the main places they went to were Maryhill,
Cowcaddens and Partick. They had to buy enough food for a whole
week. The mothers came home laden down with heavy bags. Boys
and girls waited to help them carry the bags home.
Sometimes vans drove round the streets in Drumchapel selling
different food things. We had fish-vans, bread-vans, butcher-vans
and vans selling fruit and vegetable. The bread-vans sold cakes and
biscuits too. Some boys and girls had plenty of biscuits and did not
need any more. Their mothers and aunties worked in Beattie’s
Biscuit Factory and they brought home piles of broken biscuits. The
biscuit factory was beside where the B & Q store is at Drumchapel
Shopping Mall.
The best vans of all were the chip-van and the ice-cream van.
The chip-van sold fish and chips, sausages and haggis suppers. In
One Scheme the ice-cream van was owned by the driver Alex
Verrecchia. His family owned the University Cafe in Byres Road.
Some of this family still own the cafe. It sells great fish and chips
today and makes good ice cream.
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