Dear gleam place New film celebrates Glasgow’s ‘rollermania’ We get to be connected to skaters from the past
Director explores city’s surprisingly long history of roller skating ... and its evolution
IT was the original “rollermania”, when empty halls dotted around the land became venues for speed freak show-offs on wheels and, for the unfortunate, resulted in many a hard landing.
Roller skating took Edwardian Scotland by storm and nowhere more so than in Glasgow where hundreds of eager skaters crammed into hastily opened rinks to skate along to the tunes of brass bands and display their skills.
The surprisingly long history of roller skating in Glasgow has now been explored in a new project, which has delved into the locations of some of the city’s most popular skating rinks and examined why the thrill of strapping wheels onto our feet and trying not to fall over has endured for so long.
Led by building heritage group Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, the project is set to reach a highlight with the launch of a new short film, Skate The City, which celebrates Glasgow’s roller-skating heritage.
It will receive its premier next Friday at a roller party at one of the city’s most popular skate venues, the Barrowland Ballroom.
As well as focusing on the history of roller skating and the flood of skate halls that sprung up in the early 1900s to cater for enthusiasts, the film shines a spotlight on the more recent skating trend, driven by the impact of the pandemic and TikTok, which saw interest in roller skating soar.
The research revealed Glasgow was once a magnet for roller skating, with at one point more than 40 venues for skaters to choose from.
Many offered a range of live musical entertainment, masked balls, or fancydress events to stem the potential boredom of just rolling around in circles, while walls were painted in outdoor scenes to give the skaters a feeling of the great outdoors.
Some, such as the American Roller Rink in Victoria Road on Glasgow’s southside, was a regular venue for races, with participants vying for cash prizes of up to £10 and the chance to compete at national level.
Long history
ROLLER skating evolved from efforts in the mid-1700s to replicate the elegance of ice skating in theatre productions using wheels attached to shoes.
However, efforts in the mid-18th century to develop shoes with inbuilt wheels had a habit of resulting in sometimes terrifying falls. During a demonstration of his newly-developed skates, Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin lost control and smashed into a mirror. The accident was all the more bizarre for onlookers as he was said to be playing a violin at the time.
By the latter half of the 1800s, roller skating had taken off in America and was being embraced by Victorian society, leading to a spate of indoor rinks being built with floors made from expensive imported maple and lined with potted palms.
In Glasgow in 1876, the Glasgow RollerSkate Company opened the city’s first rink in an army drill hall in Greendyke Street, where 1,800 square yards of asphalt was used to provide a hard landing for unfortunate skaters unable to stay upright. The opening – the first of three halls run by the company in the city – drew more than 600 skaters.
One of Glasgow’s busiest rinks was the Zoo Roller Skating Rink at New City Road, where the hall was decorated with a mural featuring a Swiss mountain scene and entertainment provided by a “grand military band”.
The researchers say the roller-skating craze that swept the city went hand in hand with broader social factors that saw sport and recreation become more available to women.
Skating rinks, they add, became safe spaces where women could gather with less formality and scrutiny.
However, the sport was not entirely free of sexist attitudes. In 1930, organisers of a Glasgow to Edinburgh marathon, that would see entrants skate between the two cities, turned down four entries “from the fair sex” with “management under the impression that such a distance would prove far too strenuous for women”.
The project has also involved the creation of a heritage trail of the city’s lost rinks, some of which continued to offer skating into the disco era of the 1970s.
Among the city’s best-known venues was The Locarno on Sauchiehall Street and, more recently, Fantasia at the Barrowland Ballroom which was opened in 1981 by the Lord Provost at the time, wearing skates.