One man’s regeneration vision

THE FABRIC of Campbeltown is its stone buildings, which feature in this week’s Courier.

An exhibition at Glasgow Art Club (GAC) is bringing Campbeltown’s wealth of A-listed buildings to a wider audience. The exhibition celebrates the original architects and ties in with the current restoration operations.

As Michael Davis wrote, comparing Glasgow and the Wee Toon, in the Campbeltown Book published in 2003: ‘In the whole of Partick, Hyndland and Dennistoun there is simply nothing to rival the treatment found packed into a few Campbeltown streets.’

However, it was Glasgow which led the way, with lottery money through a Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) paying for restoration in the Trongate and Merchant City areas.

In 1999 and 2000, two hurried THI applications were made for Campbeltown but both failed due, ironically in view of the current THI success, to the lack of a regeneration strategy. It took the energy and resolve of Argyll and Bute local officer James Lafferty to drive the THI applications forward. That has seen more than £7 million spent since 2009.

Mr Lafferty received praise last week. On Thursday, Argyll and Bute Council chief executive Cleland Sneddon singled him out during a speech at Campbeltown Town Hall. On Friday, in Glasgow, GAC president Efric McNeil acknowledged his role in helping create the partnership which resulted in her show Campbeltown – Success in Stone.

The original buildings created employment. The 21st-century regeneration is doing the same both in the building trade and in the frontages being preserved for shops and their workers.