Men of Lyon Street

Lyon Street. Image courtesy of Mitchell Library
Lyon Street. Image courtesy of Mitchell Library

Just off the Garscube Road, where St Joseph’s primary school now stands, was a short street of tenements that housed many families. According to the 1901 Census, a dozen tenement buildings housed around 1500 people. Families as large as 8 or 9 members sometimes took in lodgers – and this was in a single end!

In 1914 over 200 young men from Lyon Street volunteered to fight in WW1. Men from the street served in practically every Scottish Regiment, including the HLI, the Black Watch and the Cameronians.

For a number of years following the war, on every Remembrance Day, a piper and bugler from the H.L.I. at Maryhill Barracks marched along Maryhill Road to Lyon Street.  The piper played a lament and there was a short service attended by all the street. Then the bugler sounded the Last Post.

The buildings were demolished in 1962 and all that remains of the street is a group of stones in the school playground.

Today most people have never even heard of Lyon Street, but this is about to change thanks to a joint project being carried out by the children of St Joseph’s and Oakgrove primary schools as part of the commemorations for the First World War.

Scattering of poppy seeds on Armistice Day 2013, by local primary school children and their parents, as the piper plays
Scattering of poppy seeds on Armistice Day 2013, by local primary school children and their parents, as the piper plays