JEAN Wright can recall a time when cows and sheep were taken along Duke Street on their way to market.

“Sometimes a cow would escape and run through the back courts, giving the women working in the washhouses the fright of their lives,” she laughs.

In the second part of our Dennistoun Thanks for the Memories special, we reveal more stories from our visitors at the drop-in event at Dennistoun Library earlier this month.

Jean, who is 98, still lives in the house in which she was born, and in which her parents were married.

“This is my home,” she says, simply. “Of course it has changed a great deal, over the decades. But it was a wonderful place to grow up in.”

She smiles: “You were somebody if you lived in Dennistoun. It was the place to aspire to.

“The shops were high class – fashion, grocers, butchers, bakers – it was a marvellous part of the city.

“I remember we had two piano shops – Caldwell’s and Semples. I couldn’t play the piano – well, ‘Can you wash a sailor’s shirt’ was about my limit – but I loved looking in the shop windows.”

Jean’s father was a joiner, her mother a housewife, and her brother was sadly killed serving in the Second World War.

Jean joined the ATS and served for four years in England, doing clerical work.

“I was a secretary all my life – I loved my time in the ATS, where I made some lifelong friends,” she smiles. “When I came back to Glasgow, I joined an office in the city centre.”

Jean was a well-respected guide and brownie leader.

“I was at Whitehill Church the night the brownies started up there,” she recalls. “I went on to be a guide captain too, which I loved, for 25 years.”

Bill and Mary McCarrall travelled from Cumbernauld to share their memories of living in Dennistoun as a newly married couple, more than 60 years ago.

“We met at the Dennistoun Palais in 1956 and got married two years later,” recalls Mary, who is 80. “Bill had come out of the army in 1955, and I remember him asking me to dance.”

Bill, 83, chips in: “It was my bowly legs that attracted her! She’d come up from John Street, where she worked as a machinist, on the bus.”

Mary smiles: “I remember him telling me he was a good footballer. I usually went to the ice rink at Crossmyloof, that was where I spent my Saturday nights. But that night at the Denny Palais, he asked me to dance, and that was that.”

The couple’s first house was a room and kitchen on Fisher Street, which cost them the princely sum of £150.

“We sold it 10 years later for twice the price!” laughs Bill.

Mary recalls the first time they visited the house.

“The close was immaculate, the door was beautifully painted and it had this gorgeous brass bell and letterbox, which the previous owner had kept shining and bright,” marvels Mary at the memory.

“But when we went inside, I reached my hand around for the light switch and we realised there was no electricity.”

“It was still gas, and there was a coal fire and a bunker in the living room!”

She laughs: “Everything was black. We got electricity put in, and it was a lovely house. We were the top flat, so we had a beautiful skylight, and it never leaked. Not one drop of rain came in.”

Mary recalls the shops on Dunchatton Street.

“You could buy everything from a needle to an anchor,” she smiles. “It was fantastic. I remember there was a beautiful hat shop at Bellgrove.”

Bill used to deliver coal for the local merchant.

“It was by horse and cart at first, then on the lorries,” he says. “The kids used to love running after us. I went on to work for the Olivetti typewriter factory.”

The couple have five children, 10 grandchildren and two-great grandchildren.

“I remember taking my eldest daughter Linda to Dennistoun library to get her first book,” smiles Mary. “My other daughter was born in the house – it was like something out of Call The Midwife, with Bill running up the hill to get the nurse, and her dashing down to us with the gas and air.”

Mary grins: “I can still see her – she was awfully impressed by how modern our house was when she came up the stairs…”

Douglas MacIntyre was born and bred in Dennistoun.

“I lived in one of the prefab houses on Ledaig Street – two wee bedrooms and a kitchenette with a gas fridge,” he says. “The railway to St Rollox used to run behind the houses and my dad was a train driver.

“On winter nights, he’d toot the horn as he passed, stopping the train and shoving coal off the tender. We’d get our wee barrow and run down the garden to pick it up.”

Retired merchant navy engineer Douglas smiles: “It was the best of coal, mind – British Rail, after all! And it would last us all winter.”

Douglas, and Mary and Bill, all recall visiting Alexandra Park in the summer, and playing on the ‘Sugarolly Mountains’ – heaps of debris from nearby factories beside the rhubarb patches at Hogganfield Loch.

“It’s amazing how far we travelled – and what we played on,” groans Mary. “Imagine what was in those dumps. It’s a miracle we all survived.”

Our Thanks for the Memories drop-in events will be taking place at a venue near you very soon – check the Evening Times for details or visit www.eveningtimes.co.uk

And send us your stories – if you grew up in Glasgow, or have fond memories of living in one of the city’s neighbourhoods, email your stories and photographs to ann.fotheringham@heraldandtimes.co.uk