Town in Dunbartonshire, Scotland
Clydebank
Clydebank built the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2, and also gave the world one of its biggest sewing machine factories. Not bad for a town on the Clyde.
Key information
- County
- Dunbartonshire
- Nation
- Scotland
- Known for
- John Brown's shipyard, the Queen Mary, QE2, the Singer factory, the Titan Crane and the 1941 Blitz
- What locals are called
- Bankies
- Famous people
- Kevin Gallacher
- Football clubs
- Clydebank FC (the Bankies), a senior non-league club in the Scottish football pyramid; the previous senior club relocated in 2002
About Clydebank
The town named after a shipyard
Clydebank is a town that was built almost to order. In 1871 the shipbuilders J & G Thomson moved from Govan to open fields on the north bank of the Clyde, and the name came with them. Houses, shops and tenements went up around the yard to hold the workers. The yard later became John Brown & Company, and it made the town's name worldwide. For about a century, if you wanted a liner or a battleship that people would still talk about decades later, there was a good chance it was built here.
Queens, Hoods and a Lusitania
The roll of ships launched at Clydebank reads like a museum catalogue. The Lusitania slid down the slipway in 1906 and Aquitania followed in 1913. HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, was launched in 1918. Then came the Queens. The Queen Mary was launched in September 1934 after construction had been halted for years during the Depression, with thousands of men laid off. When work restarted, it was seen as a sign the worst might be over. The Queen Elizabeth followed in 1938, and the QE2 in 1967. The Clyde-built ships were so familiar that for many families in the town, launch day was as big as Christmas.
The sewing machine capital
Shipbuilding was only half the story. In the 1880s the American Singer company opened a vast factory at Kilbowie, and for a time it was among the biggest sewing machine works in the world. Thousands of local people, many of them women, worked there. The factory's huge clock tower dominated the skyline. Singer finally closed its Clydebank operations in 1980, a blow that hit the town almost as hard as the decline of the yards.
Seven houses left undamaged
On the nights of 13 and 14 March 1941, German bombers hit Clydebank in one of the most destructive raids on any British town. Out of roughly 12,000 houses, only seven escaped damage. Some 528 people were killed and tens of thousands were left homeless. The yards and the Singer works were hit but not destroyed. The homes around them took the worst of it, and families fled to the hills and surrounding villages. The town rebuilt, and the Blitz is still remembered each March.
A crane you can see for miles
The Titan Crane is Clydebank's great survivor. Built in 1907, this 150-foot cantilever crane once lifted engines and heavy machinery into ships fitting out on the river. It is now a listed landmark, and it can be seen from across the water. The town also lies along the line of the Roman Antonine Wall, which ran across Scotland's narrow waist in the second century AD. Clydebank's industrial age was a long way from the Romans, but the two share the same stretch of the Clyde.
Bankies, football and a vanished club
People from Clydebank are known as Bankies, and the football club carried the nickname too. Clydebank FC played in the senior leagues from 1965 and became a well-known name in Scottish football. Then in 2002 the club was sold and relocated to Airdrie, where it became Airdrie United. A new Clydebank FC was formed to keep the name alive locally. The town's best-known footballer is Kevin Gallacher, the Scotland striker born in Clydebank in 1966. He played for Dundee United, Coventry City and Blackburn Rovers, among others. His grandfather, Patsy Gallacher, was a famous Celtic player.
Related articles
The Blitz
For 57 nights in a row London was bombed, yet the most famous image of the Blitz was a photograph of a church still standing.
History