The View From The Office (Nearly!!)

Yesterday I was telling you all about the lovely industrial monuments that have defied time and neglect to grace Paisley's skyline...

Today I remembered my camera, so here we go.  My featured building today is the Anchor Thread Works, which sits just outside Paisley town centre.  It's an imposing red and white brick building, which was sitting derelict for years, before someone finally managed to restore it and convert it into flats.  Without, I hasten to add, it managing to conveniently erupt into flames in the intervening period...   This makes a change - this blog usually laments lost buildings, instead of celebrating success stories.

Those of you who've ever done embroidery may well be familiar with Anchor embroidery silks.  I  don't know if they're still going as a company, but their ties with Paisley will have been cut (sorry about the thread-related pun!) years ago.  But some of the buildings survive, including this magnificent structure:-
 

 

Not quite as ostentatious, but still handsome, is this functional sandstone mill building, of 19th or perhaps even late 18th century date:-

 

But not every building is secure here.  Another handsome old mill structure still survives on the other side of the river.  It's dilapidated, it's run down, it's starting off on the slippery road to ruin.  Which ends, more often than not, in a mysterious fire in the middle of the night, and a big blank space in everyone's lives...

Let's hope it doesn't happen with this one:-

 

As for the archaeology... Yesterday's 'wall' twisted itself into....  Bedrock!!  It just happened to look like a wall.  And it didn't help that someone in the 19th century dug a big trench into one side of it, forming a neat straight edge.

That's what I like about archaeology.  Everything's fluid.  You think you've found a meaning, but then something changes, and you have to rethink your theories.

The View From The Office (Nearly!!)

Yesterday I was telling you all about the lovely industrial monuments that have defied time and neglect to grace Paisley's skyline...

Today I remembered my camera, so here we go.  My featured building today is the Anchor Thread Works, which sits just outside Paisley town centre.  It's an imposing red and white brick building, which was sitting derelict for years, before someone finally managed to restore it and convert it into flats.  Without, I hasten to add, it managing to conveniently erupt into flames in the intervening period...   This makes a change - this blog usually laments lost buildings, instead of celebrating success stories.

Those of you who've ever done embroidery may well be familiar with Anchor embroidery silks.  I  don't know if they're still going as a company, but their ties with Paisley will have been cut (sorry about the thread-related pun!) years ago.  But some of the buildings survive, including this magnificent structure:-
 

 

Not quite as ostentatious, but still handsome, is this functional sandstone mill building, of 19th or perhaps even late 18th century date:-

 

But not every building is secure here.  Another handsome old mill structure still survives on the other side of the river.  It's dilapidated, it's run down, it's starting off on the slippery road to ruin.  Which ends, more often than not, in a mysterious fire in the middle of the night, and a big blank space in everyone's lives...

Let's hope it doesn't happen with this one:-

 

As for the archaeology... Yesterday's 'wall' twisted itself into....  Bedrock!!  It just happened to look like a wall.  And it didn't help that someone in the 19th century dug a big trench into one side of it, forming a neat straight edge.

That's what I like about archaeology.  Everything's fluid.  You think you've found a meaning, but then something changes, and you have to rethink your theories.