I'm obliged to raid RCAHMS again for the before pic, and hope the acknowledgement of the source is enough to keep them happy, but the pic is necessary to show what has happened to what was probably another fine house along the banks of the River Clyde, thanks to the closure of Belvidere Hospital, and the 2014 Commonwealth Shames.

The former hosptial ground are being developed with shiny new luxury flats and townhouses, as 'Belvidere Village', while the traditional tenements across the road are sprouting metal guards over the windows as they empty, and the shops below are progressively deserted.

Tell me I'm not a cynic, but I bet an investigation in the appropriate places would eventually find that the houses in Belvidere Village will be changing hands for a healthy premium in the coming years as the buyers trade them for inflated prices prior to the game, and lease them to fans of, or participants in, the 2014 Shames.

Belvidere doctor's house as was in 1967...



And, as is, as of April 2008 at the back of the new Belvidere Village development...



Oh, as an aside, there's so much water running off the site and washing all sort of pollutants from the building site into the Clyde that ducks can go swimming on the Westhorn road down to the river...

Really, this is a dry road, photographed on a rainless day, as the run-off from the Belvidere Village site makes its way down to the river.



I'm pretty sure it would be a fairly safe bet that there's a rule, regulation, or law that says the contractor is responsible for ensuring that no potential pollutants leave the site without a certificate or similar.

Judging by the way the roof and apparently all the internal timber has been removed without damaging the walls I would say it is going to be renovated and probably converted into flats.  If it was coming down it would all have been demolished at the same time.  The complete absence of timber suggests to me that it might have suffered from dry rot for which there is no cure, only eradication.

I was hoping someone else might pipe up with that thought.

I both concur, and hope it proves fruitful.

I might try and revisit later, but only managed this shot by chance as the security fencing was vandalised, and you can't see the house from outside. I couldn't get any closer, even though this part of the site isn't working at the moment, it seems to be part of an internal route, and I had to wait for a break in the passing 'traffic' to get the clear shot of the building's shell.

Once the hospital was closed (about ten years ago) and the site cleared (they didn't hang about demolishing the other flimsy buildings), it was just fenced off and abandoned, with the usual 24-hour security signs tacked on to wall/fences after the gates were locked.

The remaining buildings were sealed and shuttered, but from what I saw, this was fairly pointless given the isolated nature of the location, and the, ahem, 'location' of Parkhead and Tollcross. The buildings were vandalised and stripped, and no doubt used by drinkers, druggies, glue-sniffers and whatever, so even without any sort of rot, would have needed to be stripped to remove the filth left behind after they wee treated as latrines.

I'm avoiding the start of another 'project', having discovered that there used to be quite a lot of 'Big Houses' along this area of the river, most of which are long gone. I've read about a few of them now, never even heard of them before, and there is a problem locating their sites exactly - maybe one day

If you revisit this house in the Bird's Eye view the Aerial View you can see how little of the original structure is remaining.

It would be nice to go back in a few months and find the carcase re-used, but they seem to taken a lot away so far.

I will definitely try and get a look - who knows, later in the year you might be able to walk right in off London Rd. The 'Sold' signs are already up and some places looked as if they were being decorated and tidied inside, although as far as could see none were occupied, that could have changed already.

You have lost me on the aerial view Captain as it seems to be well out of date compared to Apollo's pic.

I have to say you have some interesting friends.  I thought we had some eccentrics down this way but I have never heard of anyone falling off their shed roof while sun bathing.

The Aerial view is about 5 years old, and shows the site as it lay after they blitzed the hospital grounds which then lay derelict until about a year ago, when they started to build Belvidere Village.

The Bird's Eye view shows the place about a year or so ago, which is when they were spurred into action to start building Belvidere Village, no doubt motivated by the premium that the announcement of the 2014 Shames promised.

Apollo's pic was last week, maybe, as he wandered along and he noticed the locals had 're-organised' the security fencing that should have been securing the site against the Clyde Walkway.

Pull it up in Flash Earth and you'll get an unexpected bonus - the Ask.com view is old enough to show the hospital!

Look to the west, and you'll see a whole raft of modern tenements that were razed to make way for forthcoming developments too. It may have been 'tough' Parkhead, but the folk there, even 10+ years ago, used to do up their bit of garden space on London Road at Christmas and had illuminated Santas and displays for the kids. Granted these are common now, but not so 10-15 years ago.

Not just the Captain's friend that fall off roofs - I used to work with a colleague from Leeds University, who was an Liberator pilot in World War II. A few years ago he came up to Glasgow for work, and had a walking stick - having decided to shove 'A few loose tiles' back into place on a 2 storey house, he managed to fall of the roof, land on his garage first, then the ground. Given his age, he didn't quite quite walk away unscathed, but nevertheless, although bruised and battered and in need a of a stick, had a remarkable escape from serious injury.

I imagine that the other wings were demolished because modern developments have lower ceiling heights and they can squeese another floor into the same overall height and hence make more money.  Retention of the house was probably a planning condition.

Following on from the VE dates noted aboove, I don't find myself in Google Earth very often, so had to upgrade tonight. I'm sure it was there before, but if you are interested in finding out the age of Google imagery, then if you use Google Earth and zoom reasonably close into an area, then the date will appear in the Status Line that runs along the bottom of the view.

Belvidere View housing estate is now partly open with road access to the rear area and a number of houses and flats occupied.

While you can now walk to the ruin as shown, they've repaired the fence down on the Clyde Walkway, so there was no access to repeat the earlier pic. Well, there was... further along the vandals have ripped open the corrugated iron fence as usual, but it was too far away and through an overgrown section of woods

As you can see, no real difference yet, positive or negative, so no clue as to what the plans are yet. You can see some of the concrete bases for the next row of houses, and the beginning of the foundations for more to come. Presumably if they were going to simply get rid of it, it would be well gone already, so there would seem to be something in the pipeline.

Maybe after another six months?

Hardly a selling point for the new houses in it's present condition.