The anatomy of a fall at Albert Cross

If God does exist, it’s impossible to imagine why he would smite a man like Pete MacDonald. Despite his towering 6ft 6in stature, the 40 year-old is gentle-natured and softly spoken. A musician and music teacher, he plays keyboard and piano in a number of bands in the city, including Randolph’s Leap. The ‘lost cap’ he’s wearing is a nod to the label the band is signed to, Lost Map. “Making music is the best thing for release and just not thinking about it,” he explains over a filter coffee in a café on Victoria Road. “It” in this case refers to a solid five years of Kafka-esque housing bureaucracy one would hesitate to wish on an enemy — yet MacDonald somehow swerves complaints or grumbles. 

An owner-occupier, MacDonald moved into his flat on Albert Cross in 2015. It was self-factored, which was appealing at the time, given people were “always complaining about factors”. Between 2015–2020, there were no issues, other than boy racers whizzing down Albert Drive and ruining his music recordings. Then on 1 April 2020, everything changed. 

Scotland was in the first weeks of lockdown when a fire broke out on the roof of his tenement. The people sitting above him in the top floor flat, directly under the fire, were “none the wiser” as the flames grew stronger. By the time they were being evacuated, it was too late. 

The fire tore through the building at 198 Albert Drive/147 Kenmure Street only months after a similar, only more devastating, blaze on a block on the adjacent side of Albert Cross. Damage from the first had required the entire building to be pulled down (six years on, it remains a gaping hole in Pollokshields’ urban fabric). Once, these structures were the commercial centre of the area, the blond sandstone tenements and turreted roofs easily recognisable, a key landmark of the area. MacDonald’s block, which — initially at least — remained largely standing following the 2020 fire, was one of Glasgow’s oldest Victorian crossroads, historically significant as the former commercial centre of the Victorian burgh of East Pollokshields, a mix of residential flats and shops. Many other crosses, such as Anderston, were demolished (or in the case of Charing Cross irrevocably changed) to clear a way for the Corporation’s comprehensive development drive during the 1960s and 1970s.

Only hours before the second fire in MacDonald’s block, a contractor had been up on the roof with a cherry picker to repair the internal gutters. He finished up for the day and headed home. MacDonald is certain that this was the (accidental) cause of the fire, even if it’s never been properly established and there is no evidence to support the theory. “Building’s been standing there for 140 years. Man goes on roof. An hour later, after he goes home, roof is on fire,” MacDonald says, deadpan.

From the street below, MacDonald watched his home burn, along with the rest of the block. He’d return to the flat once more, many months later, to find mushrooms sprouting everywhere from the damp — an experience he describes as like visiting “the upside down in Stranger Things”. In those first weeks of displacement, he stayed with family. Musician friends donated band t-shirts and unsold merch because all clothes shops were closed. 

Years on, MacDonald considers himself one of the lucky ones. His flatmate didn’t have contents insurance, so lost all of his possessions. A neighbour didn’t tick the right box on a form, and so their insurance was void. They were not the only ones to find their insurer would not pay out due to a paperwork error. “It’s pretty traumatic for them really, obviously, and now they’re paying rent on a place and they’re paying a mortgage on a flat that they have been forced out of,” he says wearily, a deep sense of compassion in his voice. 

It was “eye opening” to realise the cost of replacing all his worldly possessions. “Each individual thing, you think ‘that’s not too much’. But if you put it all together, it’s tens of thousands,” he notes, tacking on a quick afterthought: “I hope you’ve got contents insurance”.

With hindsight, the allure of self-factoring seemed foolish. In a Facebook post addressed to the Pollokshields community, MacDonald described it as “disastrous”.