Gen. Wolfe & Glasgow

The following has been sourced from Old Ludgings of Glasgow (1901). Bro. Wolfe is believed to have been initiated in the 20th Regiment of Foot.

An interesting little 18th century house is the old residence of the Walkinshaws of Camlachie and Barrowfield (also part of the family from which Walkinshaw Street is named), the devoted adherents of the Jacobite cause.

The house is now numbered 809 to 811 Gallowgate. Here Prince Charlie is said to have visited. Major-General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, lodged in it for six months. This James Wolfe was undoubtedly one of the ablest soldiers connected with that race, and it has been said that his early death at the moment of victory at Quebec, in view of the subsequent revolt of the American colonists, was perhaps the greatest loss ever sustained by this country in any single battle.

When residing at Camlachie, Wolfe engaged a Glasgow school teacher to give him two hours' daily lessons in mathematics. At the great fire in the Gorbals on 5th June, 1749, Wolfe, at the head of a small company of soldiers, distinguished himself by fighting the flames; and at another time he quelled a local riot connected with the gruesome resurrection traffic, which afterwards shocked the world by the disclosures of the Burke and Hare trial.

Wolfe's room in 811 Gallowgate has never been altered since his time. It is a plain apartment, with a low ceiling, and without any noteworthy features, only in his day it would have a pleasant outlook over the haughs of Clyde to the hills beyond. This prospect would be enlivened by the Edinburgh Road, which crossed the Camlachie Burn at the foot of the garden, at that period one of the most busy highways in Scotland. Camlachie House, erected in 1720, stood originally in a 12-acre park, with yard buildings at the back, and a lawn with flower beds and shrubberies in front. Probably the sole reason that the house, now consisting of a tavern, a shop, and flats, is still preserved, is that it happened to hit exactly the north building line of the new street extension at that point.

The connection was held through the public house called The General Wolfe at 811 Gallowgate originally then further west at the corner of 789 Gallowgate and Millerston in 1937 (bottom).

The pub existed until the 1980s.