Argyll Motor Works, Alexandria

This looks like an art gallery or a grand public building in the Baroque style but was originally a car factory. It was constructed in 1905/6 to house Argyll Motors. At the time it was the biggest car factory in Europe. The company went bust in 1914 and it became a munitions factory in the First World War.

It was empty for most of the interwar period before becoming a torpedo factory in 1937 until the '50's. In the '60's it is said to have housed "Chevaline"  - a secret nuclear weapons project. The building lay empty between the early '70's and 1997 when it reopened as shopping centre now called "Lomond Galleries"  

Tolbooth Steeple, Glasgow.

The Tolbooth Steeple is located east of Glasgow City Centre at the crossroads of High St & Trongate and the point where the city centre becomes the less salubrious east end. Completed in 1626 the tower was once part of the Tolbooth Buildings that where the home of the City Council and the location of public execution in days past. The Tolbooth Buildings were demolished in 1921 to allow widening of High St and the construction of a neoclassical quadrant that houses the Bank of Scotland. It was originally intended that two quadrants would be built with the tower in the centre. The tower is one of the few remaining medieval buildings in an otherwise mostly Victorian city.