1958: Princess Margaret turns on the water works

PRINCESS Margaret, “looking fresh and radiant after a night of dancing at the Savoy, London”, flew from the capital to Renfrew Airport from where she was driven to Loch Katrine to inaugurate the £600,000 Glen Finglas intake works. The new works would add more than seven million gallons a day to Glasgow’s water supply and bring the total quantity of water available in the area each day to more than 100 million gallons.

In order to open the sluice gates, the Princess turned the same handle as had been used by Queen Victoria to open the Loch Katrine water supply scheme almost a century earlier. The gilt and red velvet chair she used was also the same one as Victoria had sat upon. “We are recapturing a moment of history,” enthused Bailie Richard Mccutcheon, convener of Glasgow Corporation’s water committee.

Mr Mccutcheon told the Princess that the ceremony she was about to perform marked another milestone in Glasgow’s long march towards self-sufficiency in the harnessing and distribution of water. It had started in October 1859 with the visit of Queen

Victoria and had continued ceaselessly since then.

The Princess spoke warm and knowledgeable words of praise for the new project. She then moved over the handle to open the sluice gates, and the assembled crowd cheered as peaty-brown water poured out and gushed into the loch.