1916 Shuttle Row, Low Blantyre
By the 1910’s and early 1920’s Shuttle Row, the birthplace of David Livingstone was starting to fall into serious decline. The homes there were in deplorable condition and like other buildings in the Village works, had been condemned.
This picture allegedly of 1916, shows just how squalid the exterior of the houses had become. Brickwork exposed, plaster and pebbledash falling off the building, and inadequate drainage next to the washhouse to the left.
It took until 1926 for the suggestion that this building should be saved from demolition and not until 1928 when construction work commenced on the renovation. Shuttle row was re-opened as a museum in 1929.