One of the most exciting urban legends about Glasgow (to me at least) is that there is a preserved village underneath Glasgow Central Station. The legend isn’t that it is still populated and running as a village, but that, to make way for Central Station, they simply built above the village.
The village that was at this spot, before Glasgow Central Station was built, was called Grahamston, and it was a real place, full of character. There are also some first-hand accounts written about the day-to-day life in the village, which was a fantastic read that transports you back in time.
Grahamston was demolished in the 1870s, so that the Glasgow Central Station could be built on the site, but was it really demolished, or did they just build over the top, as this urban legend suggests?
I have spent decades trying to gain access to the tunnels beneath the station, but haven’t managed to yet (outside of the tours that they now offer), but while working in one of the shops on Union Street, I discovered something just as strange, but I’ll talk about that later on the page!
Glasgow Folklore
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Before the train station was built, and absorbed into Glasgow, Grahamston was a thriving community that played an incredibly important part in the surrounding areas (including Glasgow), as most of the goods being brought into the area came in via the Clyde, and Grahamston was where it all happened.
We can read a first-hand account of what life was like in Grahamston from two books written by Robert Lindsay. One of the books speaks about Jamaica Street and the surrounding area in 1820, and one from 1893 speaking about Grahamston before the railways. These accounts are an absolutely fascinating step back into a time in Glasgow that has mostly been forgotten.
The accounts tell us stories about each of the areas of the village, the people there and some superstitions, including a brilliant ghost story called The Lady in Black, who was said to be haunting a run-down villa in Grahamston. If you fancy reading about this ghost story, click here.
One of the interesting pieces about the demolition and building of Glasgow Central Station was that they had to raise the ground quite a bit, so that the River Clyde wouldn’t flood (which it regularly did) and cause damage. This is probably the key piece of information that sparked this possibility that there are still remains of the old village under Central Station.
Hidden Platforms
The notion that there is a preserved village under Central Station isn’t new, it has been spoken about for as long as I can remember (and probably a lot longer than that). Back in my youth, I tried my best to gain access to the tunnels under Central Station, but I never got the opportunity. I contacted the station and got a response that the notion that there were any secret tunnels, undiscovered platforms or a village underneath was a complete fabrication and that I should stop bothering them about it as they will simply not give me access to the station under any circumstances (I offered to have my own insurance and sign a waiver)
I was completely gutted at this news, and it basically felt like a dead end… and it was for a very, very long time…
Fast forward about 10 years or so, and it was announced that they had discovered an old Victorian platform underneath that nobody knew about! This sparked a whole new interest in the subject (and personal gratification that I was right!), and as a result of the popularity, they started doing guided tours down into the Victorian platform for the public.
As much as the popularity had piqued the interest of the public, and even got a BBC documentary about the station and the platform, there was still no will to allow for a dedicated quest for further discoveries (although they say that they do plan to explore more, but it has been many, many years with no progress).
Fast forward another 10 years or so and I become good friends with someone who works at Scotrail and is pretty well connected (coincidence, I promise), and this sparks some new hope for me! Turns out that he was also really interested in the idea of Grahamston, so we make a plan to campaign to Central Station to ask if they would allow us to go on a documented excursion under the station (as they were an employee). The informal chats sounded really positive, but alas… when the bosses got wind of it, we got shot down completely. Gutted once again!
Am I convinced that there is more to be discovered under Central Station and Union Street in general? Yes. Why? Well, because I worked on Union Street in 2008 and went on a little bit of a wander underneath the shop and found something that I wasn’t expecting…
27 Union Street: The Room That Should Not Be There
In 2008, I was working for a gaming store at 27 Union Street, on the same street as Central Station (a stone’s throw away). This part of Union Street would have been at the heart of Grahamston back in the day, before the station was built.
Completely by chance, I had spoken to the manager about what was in one of the rooms downstairs (It wasn’t in use and there were no lights down there (It was literally pitch black), and at this time mobile phones were still pretty poor in terms of their torches and cameras, so it’s not like you could just flip out your phone and see for yourself, like today.
The manager said that he actually didn’t know, as they had no need for an extra room down there when the centre was being built, so they didn’t want to have to pay to get an electrician in to wire up lights for a room they didn’t need.
Of course, that sparked my interest and I just had to have a look for myself…
The manager was a really great guy and was actually really curious too, so we planned to come in early one day with some torches and find out what it was used for.
When we got in there, the room was actually quite a bit bigger than we thought it would be, and you could actually hear the footsteps of people on the pavement outside (the room was basically 1 level down from where the street was). There was a big piece of machinery in the room, but we didn’t really know what it was. It could have been an old generator, perhaps (I’m recalling this from memory), and the tiles on part of the room were black and white checkered tiles. Apart from that, there wasn’t really anything else there. Until we noticed part of the wall was basically wooden slats that looked like they had been there for a long time, but it was (to our internal compass) looking out to under the street…
Now, I know it is probably frowned upon to disturb something like this, just in case, but we couldn’t help ourselves. The tease that there was something juicy behind this crudely boarded-up hole was too tantalising. We carefully snapped some of the wood (it didn’t take much as it was really old), and made our way inside… This room was and still is a complete and utter mystery to me and might be completely unrelated to Grahamston, but I just had to share it here, just in case.
The inside of this room looked like it was a small room/cave that had been dug out of rock. It was small and cramped and there was what looked like a bed with a pillow on top… but it was carved out of the stone… Completely baffling!
Just as we were trying to take it all in, we heard the boss man shouting into the room asking who was in there and what the racket was. We got a bit of a telling off for being in there and breaking things, but from my memory, it was just that room, and I don’t think it led to anywhere else… Hopefully I will be able to get access to that room again one day (I’ve emailed the current owners with hope). If I do, I’ll post an update here, with pictures.
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This question is one that splits the room (even my dad and I have conflicting opinions). Weighing up what we know, I believe that there is a chance that there are still fragments, or sections of Grahamston somewhere underneath the area.
There is an old photo that shows part of Grahamston being demolished (I don’t think this is the main part where the station is, though) from the book ‘Glasgow’s Forgotten Village: The Grahamston Story‘ by Norrie Gilliland (below).
Who knows if the rest of the area (especially the area that the station was built on top of) was destroyed, or not. Hopefully, one day we will find out!
If you want to read more tales about Glasgow’s legends and folklore, click here.
