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From: The12499s
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  • I remember most of those changes taking place while I was growing up. My mum used to work in the shoe shop Timpsons that is now McDonalds. We used to go to the Saturday morning roller discos in the Olympia. My old man worked on the refurbishment of the plaza while the Olympia as we now know it was under construction. I’m sure one of the pubs was called Memory Lane but I’m not sure if it was the round one, I will need to ask my uncle as he used to go there when we where kids.

  • Bravo ! Not easy to find such photos on the web.... :-)

  • ive got some footage of the taxi fair with Glen Michael waving to them as they went past from 77 in the plaza car park, I grew up in EK and loved it, used to sneak into the multi storey car park at the back and race round on our bikes, ah happy days.

  • Loads of memories there: I was in EK from 62-74 and the old town centre was very familiar to me. The Mushroom; the concrete scuptures, with their lovely cool smooth cementyness. I saw David Cassidy - of Partridge Family fame - stand on the ledge of the Olympia one afternoon, but he didn't jump! I played in the cinema when it was being built: couldn't believe the hugeness of it and had many many Saturday afternoons in there for 12p: Playing tig mostly!

  • Also remember going to EK sports in 1987 to meet Super Ally and get his autograph.

  • I used to stay in Greenhill's and my maim memory of going to the town centre was watching Airwolf through Glen's Hutchisons, Robertson and Stepek window, on about 20 tellies haha.. This would have been about 87/88. Me and my old man did this every Saturday whilst my mum got the messages.. Happy Days

  • its amazing how you can spend millions of tax payers money to make a piece of shit an even bigger piece of shit , fuck EK !!!

  • i think its at the start of the princes mall next to east kilbride bus station if u look at the top ryt hand side it looks like the clock tht is still there at the entrance of princes mall

  • @ArsenalLiviEwan yes it is.....my family were the fifth family to move into greenhills in 1972 and believe me....from then EKOK went from no a bad place to a shithole full of twats...hence....i seen the light and got out, still full of many happy memories for me....but face it....its a shite hole

  • THINK THE WON OF THE BUS STATION IS TAKEN FROM THE TOP OF THE SPIRAL STARS TYPE THING

  • EK IS THE WORST PLACE EVR AND IVE STAYED HERE FOR 17 YEAR

  • The last pic is taken with the photographer's back to what is now the bus station looking up the Princes Mall between what was Hendersons/Bairds/What Every's and the now closed Superdrug on the corner. The demolition work that can be seen is the oval flower bed (previously the 3 fountains) which was outside Henderson's. To the right hand side of the picture where the pillars are, at the top corner of them just before the frontage of the shops juts out, there used to be an R S McColls.

  • i remember the orange seats up the princes mall and the cars driving through there where woolworths was,then the bus station was built and they blocked it off. im not sure where these dates come from but im 31 and i was around 5 when the cars drove through there. More interestingly, what happened to the coat of arms of East Kilbride that was on the civic centre??!!?? its now a tiny SLC sign. anyone?!

  • my grandfateher and father were both security guards in the old plaza . the ariel shot in the pics is actually from an old camera placed at the top of the plaza tower. the bumps on the roof used to be a flat that my did lived in which is still there to this day just at the entrance to the service yard of the plaza . the old mushroom was called dontown miama which was a roller rink during the day n a nite club in the evening. you also had shoprite which was the name of the supermarket

  • i miss going to Bullochs and watching them slice the gammon in that guillotine machine they had. i used to spend my days watching that machine all day long through the window. i still love gammon but its not the same out of the sealed packs in the supermarkets..

  • Those are just magic photos. I lived there as a very young child in 1970 to 1972. The number of times I got lost and taken home by the police from that town centre. One thing I remember that I have never seen on any photos is the big pool and fountain just in the area off the car park where the bus station was later built. This pool was later filled in as a flower bed in about 1971. Thanks for posting

  • i live in EK...its shit

  • I remember the square in the picture at 6:46. There used to be an off license there with staind glass windows. I believe Lorraine Kelly's mother used to work in there

  • Awesome video! Good memories of EK. Left in 1978. 

  • PS

    Stan's old man,was the camera man for the film--"The Mad Death"--filmed in EK.

  • Saturday morning,bus from Murray Square(if we couldn't be arsed to walk,--raining) Ali or his Asian oppo,the bus conductors,would not charge me and Stan.(good guys) We'd go swimming and then to the "Cinema",for the matinee.,and would spend the rest of the day scuffin' around the town centre(uncovered)and shops.

    Great times!

  • The Olympia ballroom---scene of many a young drunken escapade--and many a fumbling(short romance)

    Don't knock EK--better housing and facilities than many areas of the country..

    30-40 years ago---sod all happened on a Sunday.

    You've never 'ad it so good!

    Brills vid---Ta.

  • @ok10

    There was a quarry at Churchill ave. behind the old council offices.

  • @ok10

    I used to look for eggs(mainly pigeons) in the old castle,when it only had 2 walls--there was a programme on years ago about the guy who did it up.The nearest field to me was 150 metres away(Murray).

    Aye, big changes.

  • good work putting this together

  • I remember the old 18 bus coming back from the centre to greenhills getting trashed every friday night after Rumours (Crystals) back in the late 80s. Every window kicked out and every seat thrown out. Nowadays everyone's too busy playing on computers and Playstations to go out. Its a disgrace..

  • @superstrut75 i remember that myself a himshie boy through and through jumped out at bottom of lickprivick after putting my feet through said windows and legging it through troon to my native sandpiper

  • the night club in the mushroom was indeed called downhill miami, but the mushroom picture shown looks like its is showing Whispers and across the walkway was HJays...this was converted into downhill and the mushroom was the entrance and stairs up. Had many a scrap in that bit with the bouncers back in the day. Managed to put my had through the glass panel one night but it was okay as I went round to macburgers for a chille dip and a can of red stripe. No camera's in those days...just as well

  • I remember La Belle Arti ladies clothing and Timberland DIY in the Alexandra Arcade. Chelsea Girl nr where Argos is now. Clouds clothes shop roughly where Jessops was...before the shops were brought into line there, they were stepped back. Clouds was in the corner. MacFisheries the fish shop next to the old Clydesdale bank where Zavvi's is now. The 1320 pub & The New World next door (Crystals). Norfolk Ho. - the old EK Development Corporation - now RBS approx. Bairds was Hendersons before.

  • @TheSunzuki1983 meh, i moved away anyway

  • Where can i get a copy of the olympia picture?

  • In December 1981 Hudsons was called "Somethin' Else" - I know that because that was where I had my 21st birthday party. It changed a year or two afterwards.

  • jezz used to work in bhs aswell 7:14 them curtains are still up lol

  • lol 6:18 used to work in said shop with 15 yr old pic of gordon strachan

  • The strange array of bumps on the Plaza roof is the caretakers flat

  • @ArsenalLiviEwan aye it is m8 .ek ok fur me

  • The plaza tower font looks a little like geometric.

  • you gotta love east kilbride!

  • The shop your were asking about (next to th pet shop)was called 4A's and it sold car spares ??? closed in 1990.

  • Nah m8,upstairs at the mushroom was the nite club down town miami.Could walk round it in 2 minutes ha ha

  • The Mushroom was a "steakhouse" upstairs,might even have been Rio Stakis. Downstairs was a kiosk,called The Kiosk ?The shot over the cinema,toward the Olympia is from M&S's roof but too high must be from a crane.I do remember the Yankee Jeans and the Red Comyn pubs facing the civic centre, the EKOK tiled on the wall out side Viktors and going to see bands in Crystals "lounge" and listening to the teen disco through the library wall. Last time I was back, I couldn't believe how much it has grown.

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  • @kylephantom4 i thank i know scott allan does he have a brother called david allan?

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  • @999madmedic no my brother is dougie

  • I believe the stone structures that every kid played on was designed by Mr Barclay, Artist and Teacher of Art at Hunter High School and Claremont High School and Hudsons, I think, used to be called Memory Lane!!!

  • @102smiller

    Bill Barclay,I believe--"Cool" art teacher--had a beard, and was known as (not to his face!)--Jesus.

    Ok guy

  • Does any one remember the "HOUSE of JOHNSON " furniture shop my late father worked there., and then there was Bairds and an old family friend worked there in the seventies "GARY MUNN " where are you now ?

  • I can see why you thought it was there,but it cant be,because the bus station would be on the left of the picture,not buildings and units.

  • There must've been 2 clocks.I'm sure this is the covering of the previous pic as the O.P says.Look again,you can see the same building in the top left,also its the same units leading up to the Tower pub.The units next to the pillars are now where Disney and Maplin are.

  • woah, nice, remmeber the centre being dead and all shops cloes on sundays :)

  • east kilbride was excellent in the 70s luved every minute of it remember going into halfords n tryin on the motor bike gloves

  • East Kilbride Will always Be Legendary (:

  • yes it really is

  • lets be serious,

    thats a lie

  • wow this is funny, i'm only 19 but i remember some of that stuff being there *sniff* like the big stone things i use to play on them when i was wee!! haha

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  • The old Olympia car park was never full. Now they have spent millions on parking/redisigning it and you cant get a space for luv nor money...and when you do you have to pay for it.(except Sundays)

    Thats progress for you.

  • Good vid ;)

  • Comment removed

  • @KJS72 wiz liz yer sister?

  • I think that the 'Hudsons' pic was from early to mid 80s, when 'MacBurger' and the original Memory Lane were in there before! Excellent memories. EK rocked then. Not like the piece of sh*t nedville it is nowadays.

  • i kill east kilbride scum even when im abroad and they alert me they are there

  • huh?

  • The taxi rank was used by two firms echo taxis & toa taxis. I remember going dancing with my girlfriend she used to go to downtown miami & i used to go to splash.

  • Vaguely remember the town centre in some of these shots. Shops closed on a Sunday?! Sounds like an idea we should bring back!

  • Very well done there. Would be nice to see some up to date shots overlaid so you can see how much it's changed.

  • Wonderful nostalgia, thanks! I remember some of this all too well!!

  • I appreciate the styling now even if I thought it was pretty naff at the time. The dancing in the mushroom was called Downtown Miami!

  • impulse records, where my record collection started lol, also where i got my large picture of Debbie Harry for my bedroom wall,,,lol

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  • at 8.02 it looks as if it just outside were new look- like were the vodaphone shop is not sure- is now as thats all i can think were the white piller things are !

  • still a dump,soon the busiest job centre in scotland

  • I went to go see family members when I came here it looks nothing like this now

  • i remember going to the roller skating in the ballroom, and seeing santa claus in goldbergs (now job centre) going upstairs in halfords to look at bikes while my dad looked at car stuff and off course playing in the huge pile of boxes that was in fine fare. the last image is outside bullochs off licence and delicatesson my mum used to get the best cold meat from there.

  • I remember playing on the stone statues next to the mushroom thingy. I didn't realise that's where the Disney story is now. Thanks - can get my bearings now! Let's be honest - what a dump EK used to be.

  • Fantastic stuff! The mushroom building wasn't actually a bar itself. It was in the entrance, cloakroom and toilets of Downtown Miami, the bar was in the main building linked to the mushroom via a "tunnel". At least since I started going in 1992. I've heard it was a bar and cafe in the early 80s before it was a nightclub.

    The Princes Mall was covered over in 1983 so would guess the photo was from late '82 or 1983.

  • @TonyBananas101 .round about 1982/3 the Indians who owened the resturant ,,opened the round mushroom bit as a boozer..it rocked ..

  • I used to work in Downtown Miami and hang out at Crytals round the corner.

  • I think Hudsons was probably called "Memory Lane" when that nighttime shot was taken. Great wee vid, some cracking memories. I agree with all the other posters, EK has became a souless place due to the town centre being all undercover.

  • i was born in 1987 and i remember the big rock things in princes square - not just old fogies :P

    downtown miami has reopened in the old what every's building too

  • oh and the last picture is the building of princes mall - the big clocks still there, i seen it today :)

  • mind the old days chasing all the glesga mob back home kilby rule haha

  • @chunky169 ok Chunks aye them glesga mobs didny hang about long ....MURRAY REBELS ..

  • Loved the old ek,brings back great memories,worked in rs mcolls back

    in '82' on a yts.

  • ah memories. I used to play on those big stones in the square.

  • Awrite m8, im onky 21 but i do remember some of the old centre. I remember when the tax office was there and gateway was a supermarket where the "centre west complex" is now. By the way if you go to the mitchell library in glasgow there are books with pictures of old eastkilbride. They are very interesting, they are titled (old eastkilbride) they also have old dennistoun, govan ect. they are mainley of the village and east/west mains, but it is strange to think how it has grown and changed. TY

  • I'm 40 so I remember all this very well. Although it was all ugly, 60's architectural cliches, there was a sense of identity to the place. Now the town centre is just like any other shopping centre in Britain. It has that second-hand American mall feel and we all know that means soul-less corporate crap. EK has sadly bought into the Americanisation of the world. East Kilbride doesn't exist as it used to. Depressing innit? Poor ol' Kilbyland.

  • Bet you didn't know this. The Olympia had rock band AC/DC play there before they hit the big time.

  • So many memories for me too. I loved Princes Square when the weather was good. They should NEVER have covered that square. The black and white pics of the Princes Mall were taken by an American visiting the town in the 70's, and his website was very crtical of East Kilbride. I can't remember the site it was on.

  • ye need a picture of the guitar man as well. It's no EK without him.

    oh the nostalgia

  • that was mental ! i miss the stone things lol

  • I remember those stone things they moved to the dollan, always used to play on those in the centre as a kid in the early 90s. They are legendary

  • very good

    I'm too young to have seen this for real but it's nice being able to see what it looked like before

    thanks!!!

  • and also my mum used to leave my brother and i in the early learning centre playing with the wee wooden train set we always longed for, whilst she went shopping, there was no cash for creches at that time! lol :) at least we appreciate what weve got!

  • haha I remember that train set too :)

  • yeah i remember all that from the late 70s and early 80s how strange but cool...

    one of my lasting memories is of going to FineFare in the plaza when we were little and there were massive brown and orange low-dangling lampshades hanging in the middle of diner style cafe booths, all at the back of the supermarket (now somerfield or something else ive not been there for years). We used to get chips and coke (and put loads of sugar cubes in the coke)..bring on the diabetes....lol!

  • Wow, I'd almost forgot about a lot of things! I remember my mum used to leave me on the stones so she could go shopping! And I used to love going into Halfords with the smell of the new bikes!

    It's weird, I can't think how the old layout would fit into the new centre, it's feels so... small. Or maybe it was just me being small that the place felt huge.

  • Fantastic! brought back good memories.. the safeway in the corner next to the clydesdale bank.. the male staff wore little bow ties and long iaprons and strong brown paper bags for ur shopping..... very american lol i can remember most of the shops... malcolm campbells, curtess, skirt and slack centre, krazykuts omg showing my age!!! macvities guest tearoom...... city bakereis lol omgggggggg im stuck in a time warp.... greattttttt

  • hope u do a part 2

  • excellent work i remember downtown miami well ! the safeway was next to halfords !

  • hudsons upstairs was called macburgers,we all met upstairs,you could watch them making hot doughnuts at the window downstairs,thanks for bringing back some great memories!

  • great pics, got some myself from the 60's not taken by me obviously, will try and put them together

  • that mushroom building - did that not become offices of somesort after downtown miami?

    only 22, so I only have vaugue recollections of Princes Square before it was all covered - used to remember the guys selling socks and lighters (for some random reason)

    anyway, back to the point, I seem to remember the mushroom building being some sort of office place in the late 80s/ early-mid 90s - prior to the covering of the square

    may be getting mixed up with Edin. House that was in the far corner tho.

  • it was a estate agents

  • 5:30 i must be an ek fogie coz i remember that, those concrete shapes are now located at the park next to the dolan. they were moved when the area was revamped

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  • 7.10min

    The view is from the bus station at your back looking down to the mushroom/downtown miami in the distance. Granada TV and Courts on the RHS.

  • 5.50min

    Safeway in the corner along from Halfords

  • 4.55min

    The shopsign with the "A" was the Alexandra Arcade Auto Accessories

    or "4As" for short

  • my gran was the bar manager in the mushroom for years..great to see old pics of it plus the concrete stones i used to play in as a kid,fantastic pics,loads of memorys..

  • Brilliant photos, thanks for putting this together. Tried for ages to get decent pics of the old cinema/town centre and couldnt find any.  I feel really old now!!

  • That was good! i have a few good old Ek pics, with thefountain!

  • ..wasn't Hudsons back then, incidentally, it was 'Memory Lane' - a pub downstairs and upstairs a family 'Burger Bar' - "families" had to brave the pub to eat there!

  • before it was Hudsons it was called Something Else and was opened by Geordie Best

  • Stood for hours atop the old Olympia centre, with my mum, in 1983, waiting on a female cleaner - possibly Billy Reid's maw - to come in dressed as Darth Vader. Does anyone remember 'Goldbergs' and its weird 'Stationsof the Cross' landing displays on the stairs within? Scott Hughes trying to get Teddy Ruxpin to swear will stay with me forever...

  • @lavverlylad .......defo wasnt " billy reids maw" she didnt start in the olympia until 1997 n by then billy was 21 . sorry to dissapoint

  • brilliant stuff i remember hating getting dragged into remnant kings as a youngster with my mum so boring! remember glens hutchisons robertsons and stepek the tv place think it was next to capital or was that tandys

  • brilliant think the place looked better back then,still remember the excitement of going down the town centre as a kid,a feeling i,m sure i ll never feel again.

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