Fascinating history of 178 wooden huts just outside Glasgow

The National

3 days ago

When I visited, the huts were surrounded by the lush vegetation of midsummer, adding to the organic quality of the settlement, which seems to emerge mushroom-like from the forested hillside.
The Carbeth huts have variously been the scene of family holidays and of experiments in lifestyle.
They provided emergency dwellings for those displaced by war, have fostered an outdoors culture of physical health, nurtured community, and, in their sometimes turbulent history, witnessed revolutionary organising and outbreaks of class warfare. This article can only introduce some of their earlier history.
Early Years
In the early 20th century, Allan Barns Graham was the owner of Carbeth Estate. He was a progressively minded laird, who led a modest life as a farmer and had artistic interests.
Much of his estate was wooded and largely unsuitable for agriculture. Before the First World War, it had permitted groups to camp there, including the Clarion Scouts, who combined cycling with socialism.
After the war, William Ferris, a military veteran, was, according to Lesley Riddoch in her book Huts: A Place Beyond – How To End Our Exile From Nature, a 'remarkable man who effectively started the Carbeth hutting site'. He had prior experience of the estate and wrote to Barns Graham requesting permission to construct a clubhouse for his camping club.
The landowner initially resisted the construction of huts, but eventually relented – perhaps influenced by the possibility of collecting rents.
Huts developed from tent platforms, which had been much used during the conflict in Europe. Ferris administered the site, and it grew rapidly. The huts, which were originally tightly regimented, catered to a demand for low-cost recreation and rural escape for urban and industrial workers, particularly from nearby Clydebank.
In 1922, an outside swimming pool was opened which had been constructed by damming a stream.
It became the scene of swimming galas, including in 1932, when Barns Graham presented awards to the winners. Ferris, meanwhile, was involved in a wide succession of outdoor associations and initiatives, supported by his lucrative activities as an antiquarian book dealer in Glasgow.
Outdoors Movement
The origins of the community have also, explains Riddoch, been ascribed to the outdoors movement and the economic depression of the 1920s and 30s. Certainly, these loom large in the popular memory of Carbeth.
Ian R Mitchell, writing in 2001, recorded how the site 'played a role in getting the working-class adventurer further out into the Highland hills'.
Many of the early Clydeside mountaineers were victims of the Depression, and there was overlap between them and the hutters.
The climbers met at Craigallion Loch, south of the huts, where a fire was reputedly never allowed to go out.'
Cultures of political resistance were fostered, and numbers volunteered for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
Perhaps more typical than these toughest of adventurers, however, are the people shown in a collection of photographs preserved by the Carbeth Hutters Company, the Carson Archive. These depict outdoor recreation at Carbeth in the 1920s and 30s, including camping, cycling, swimming and rambling.
One photograph shows a group of women, perhaps members of feminist groups associated with Red Clydeside, enjoying a rain-soaked rural ramble.
Family and War
Tom McKendrick springs from a family of long-established hutters. His family, who experienced pollution in Clydebank, first became involved with the site in the 1930s, when his grandmother gained a hut. Thanks to an expanding family, that number multiplied into five.
McKendrick's memories of growing up in the 1950s are filled with those of Carbeth, underlining its importance as a place of childhood. 'It was the natural thing,' he explained to me. 'You were born into the clan – it was very much your childhood.
'Families came to Carbeth in the summer, and you ran free. Animals, trees, making huts! So, when you came up here there would be 30, 40 weans around, and lifelong friendships were formed.'
More broadly, the link to Clydebank was reinforced in the aftermath of the Clydebank Blitz in 1941, when the local authority constructed 47 additional huts
which provided temporary accommodation for families displaced by the bombing.
McKendrick, an artist, believes the huts are connected to conflict by their history as a place of sanctuary from war.
THE 1960s ONWARDS
Carbeth's subsequent history features a decline in the popularity of hutting as working-class affluence and access to overseas travel increased in the 1960s.
There was a long and well-documented struggle between hutters and landowner over rents, living conditions and the future of the site.
The latter was eventually secured in 2009, followed by purchase of the land by the Hutters Community Company in 2013.
The story is well told by Riddoch in her book. 'Carbeth survived,' she wrote, 'because of the organisational abilities of its residents to effectively lobby the authorities, when elsewhere in Scotland, most other large hutting sites experienced mass evictions, demolition or conversion into caravan sites.'
(Image: YouTube)
Carbeth endures today as the legacy of the optimistic social experimentation of a century ago and encourages a more ecological approach to living, with self-sufficiency encouraged, including the building of wind turbines and use of solar panels to generate electricity.
The Carbeth community continues to provide working people with access to a precious resource in a country dominated by unequal land ownership – access to places of their own in the countryside.
Charlie Lynch thanks Tom McKendrick and the Carbeth Hutting Company, and Dr Lesley Riddoch for their help compiling this article. He recommends Riddoch's book, and her 2019 PhD thesis.