An abandoned urbanization called “Chernobyl de Scotia” for its mysterious appearance of the ghost city is finally about to be razed to the ground.
The housing in Clune Park in the city of Port Glasgow in Invertclryde were built a century ago as a home for shipyard workers, but have been mostly abandoned for years.
A confrontation between private owners and the local council has frustrated the redearicization, leaving the site frozen in time with just a handful of remaining tenants.
Demolition contractors are expected at the site in a matter of days, preparing to eliminate a third of the buildings, including a school damaged by fire and a crumbled church, after they condemned as structurally insecure.
UrbandonedIn recent years, the farm has become a magnet for urban explorers and photographers, which forces the authorities to intensify security patrols and issue danger warnings.
Often comparisons have been made with the city of Pripyat de Ukrania, abandoned after the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant led to a great radiation leakage.
Clune Park was first described as Chernobyl in Scotland more than a decade ago, and the name has stuck. Local politicians say it was an easy badge to apply to the area because or its desolate nature.
Beyond superficial appearances, thought, their stories are very different.
The bell blocks with a red sandstone front that radiates on Robert Street in the city were built just after World War I by the Naval Lithgows builder to house their workforce.
At that time, the coast of Port Glasgow and neighbor Greenock were full of shipyards.
It was a densely full house (430 beds and floors, mainly in four Corey blocks, but there was a church, a school, local shops and a sense of community.
Former resident Karen Thomson and her husband Allan bought her first floor together as a married couple in Wallace Street in 1992, and stayed for six years.
“He was lovely, the neighbors were pleasant. It was a pleasant area, it was very kind, everyone knew everyone,” Karen recalled.
“I was very busy and the houses were sought. It was very difficult to get one of the houses in the area.”
But Clyde’s naval construction had been in Declive for a long time, people moved and cheap floors were increasingly bought as rental investments.
Karen said: “The area was beginning to fall, they maintain maintenance of it: the area began to go to the pot. I don’t think they were putting money.”
Clune Park fell into a decline spiral, with the values of the properties that collapsed even more, since it acquired a reputation for the use of drugs and crime.
The Marshal of retired forest workers, Craig, 73, is one of the few residents of handful or removing.
He has lived in Clune Park for 20 years and his current interested apartment on the edge of the farm is in much better conditions than most. He describes it as the “elegant end.”
Some years ago he was hospitalized for smoke inhalation caused by one of the frequent deliberate fires in abandoned buildings.
But as a great reader, guitarist and nature lover, he values tranquility.
“There are seventeen different species of trees along the way,” he said.
“At night you have the foxes and the owls and all the rest. I love it.”
His blockade is not yet scheduled for demolition and his lessor is not in a hurry to sell, so for the moment Marshal stays.
His house is well decorated, it has a large window and a Chesterfield sofa, all in marked contrast with the abandoned of empty floors just a stone shot.
“People go, how can you live there, you are not afraid?” Hey says.
“I am not afraid. I am a big guy, or I used to be. I look good, but it does not adapt to everything and does not adapt to the Council.”
A regeneration plan prepared more than a decade proposed total demolition and reconstruction, but ran into the shock absorbers when some owners set up a successful legal challenge.
Since then, the Council has constantly bought the floors to the point where it now has about two thirds of the properties.
The first demolition phase will see the Church, the school and 15 of the 45 housing blocks, 138 floors in total, but the plan is that everyone is possible.
The old primary school of Clune Park is one of the oldest buildings on the site, founded in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s jubilee.
Victoria’s busts and Prince Albert leave each side of the door, while higher on the wall are the coat of weapons of Port Glasgow, a three mast mast ship and the Latin motto “Ter et quater anno review aequor atlantantum impunity.”
It is translated as “three and four times a year to review the Atlantic with impunity”, a reference to the ships that once obtained huge trunks of Canada, to be seasoned in the “wooden ponds” of Clyde before it is used for Sivbuiding.
Demolition contractors say they will try to preserve the best characteristics of the stone eliminating them by hand.
When the school closed in 2008, the alumni remembered on social networks about the great staircase, the comforting smell of wood floors and favorite teachers.
The building is on list B, which means that it has regional importance.
According to the original regeneration plan, the facade would have been retained and the site became an energy center, providing a low emission heating.
But A fire in 2023 destroyed school And now it is considered beyond repair.
Next to the school is the Carazón de Cluneza Park Church, built in 1905 from a red sandstone in the architecture style of “Modern Movement” Late Gothic.
It has a window adorned to the art nouveau style and, like school, it is on list B for the Scotland historical environment.
But the decomposition of the building is now advanced so far, the permit has granted Bone for demolition. The roof has been gone and huge wooden roof armor that once supported them have stacked on the street outside.
Clune Park’s homes are unusual in western Scotland, since they have flat concrete roofs that, according to the Council, suffer from “corrosion swelling.”
Invertclryde council leader Stephen McCabe says that in the renewal of the 1990s it was a consideration, but there were no funds available and a better value for a better value was thought.
But he says that the Council has faced a long “war of wear” to identify the owners and buy the properties, with assessments of reaching a few pounds.
Ultimately, the plan is to replace the 430 floors with 165 new affordable homes with the investment from a social owner.
“The beginning of the demolition will be a real sign that we are arriving there and finally we will demolish all those properties,” said McCabe.
“That will be a day for the celebration.”
But with about 100 floors still in private hands, there is no clear time scale for when it will happen.
Demolition contractors hope to start eliminating the first buildings at the end of this month.
While it marks the beginning of the end of “Chernobyl in Scotland”, it can spend some time before a new Clune park comes out of the rubble.
