Tannahill Remembered

Tannahill Remembered

Recently the Tannahill "ghost" properties in Paisley had become a target for flytipping and fireraising amid ongoing work to regenerate the area.

Once the most sought after properties in the area, the Tannahill estate in Ferguslie Park had fallen into disrepair with some blaming historic botched dampness repairs and lack of investment from the local council. The last of the remaining tenants moved out earlier this year.

Demolition work has begun on 51 blocks, which includes Drums Avenue, Ferguslie Park Avenue, Tannahill Road and Tannahill Terrace and has been broadly welcomed by the community.

The sadness of the demise of this once pristine area where Judges, Police and the Lord Provost of Paisley lived is not lost on ex residents who paint a picture of a thriving and proud estate where prize winning manicured gardens and spotless streets where a given.

The waiting list for a house in Tannahill "was as long as your arm" and you were "filling dead men's shoe's" as residents rarely left willingly and only the death of a beloved neighbour would see a house change hands.

Now looking more like a war zone, with roofs ablaze and shuttered up windows, the empty streets will vanish as the demolition firm, Caskie raze the estate to the ground with the project expected to last 12 months.

Local council member, Terry McTernan has lived in Ferguslie Park his whole life and now works at the Tannahill Centre, which is home to a number of community groups making changes in the area.

“It’s a million miles away from the community that I grew up in,” he said.

“It still continues to experience various challenges – food insecurity, fuel poverty etcetera, but I think the pandemic was a real turning point.

“It allowed us to visibly see the efforts that can be made by people just coming together and working together for the greater good and that’s something that Ferguslie Park has always been good at.

“For me, locally-led regeneration is the way forward. It’s local people that have that internal knowledge.

“A number of the provisions that we’re responsible for delivering within the community, certainly since the pandemic, are locally-led. They’re much wider-reaching in nature and they tend to stick.”

Ferguslie Park was found to be Scotland's most deprived area in both 2012 and 2016, and in a study, in 2020, the third most deprived area in the country. The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation put its employment rate at 28 per cent, with 39% of people classed as income deprived.

Mr McTernan said "This important development marks the beginning of the end of the community-led housing regeneration initiative for the new Tannahill area and provides a fantastic platform for continued positive engagement with both the community council and the community at large in respect of the future use of the land."