Archaeologists To Excavate Glasgow Skatepark – With Help From Skaters

Scotland’s first outdoor skatepark – presently buried beneath rubble successful Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park – will beryllium excavated adjacent week successful an effort to sphere its legacy.

Archaeologists astatine nan University of Glasgow are inviting volunteers to subordinate them arsenic they statesman their excavation and study activity astatine nan erstwhile Kelvin Wheelies park, which has been underground for much than 3 decades.

Incorporating a dual slalom run, half-pipe and runoff bowls, Kelvin Wheelies was considered a extremist creation erstwhile it opened successful May 1978, hosting nan first Scottish Skateboard Championships later that twelvemonth and attracting pro-skaters from crossed nan UK.

But a dip successful popularity, coinciding pinch concerns astir attraction and safety, led to its closure successful 1984, and now only a fewer apical sections of actual stay visible astatine nan site, which is overgrown pinch trees and shrubs.

Dr Kenny Brophy, elder teacher successful archaeology astatine nan University of Glasgow and task leader, said nan excavation, which is successful business pinch nan Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was a unsocial opportunity to research portion of nan city’s modern sporting heritage.

“Glasgow metropolis assembly spent £100,000 building it, which was a ample finance astatine nan clip and it was designed pinch skaters successful mind, and for teenagers who were progressive successful an activity that galore group deemed to beryllium antisocial and marginal,” he said.

While skateboarding will become a mandatory Olympic athletics for nan first clip astatine nan 2028 summertime games, having been discretionary successful 2020 and 2024, backmost past it was “a really important grassroots athletics that engaged hundreds of young people”.

Next week’s section work, utilizing manus devices alternatively than dense machinery, will excavation trenches to expose area of nan actual and hopefully immoderate original 80s graffiti.

“In nan aforesaid measurement arsenic if you were excavating a information tube from nan bronze age, you want to extract arsenic overmuch accusation arsenic imaginable from an achievable area,” Brophy said.

Brophy, on pinch students and volunteers from Archaeology Scotland’s New Audiences programme, will besides beryllium digging pinch erstwhile parkland users. “It’s specified a uncommon opportunity for an archeologist that we’ll beryllium digging nan tract pinch group that utilized it,” he said. “We’ll person skateboarders connected tract who utilized nan parkland arsenic teenagers and will beryllium re-living that acquisition astatine nan extremity of a trowel.”

Jamie Blair, proprietor of Glasgow-based skateboarding shop Clan Skates and a erstwhile Scottish skateboard champion, will beryllium 1 of them.

“When Kelvin Wheelies opened successful 1978, skaters from each complete nan UK flocked to this extremist caller facility. A parkland squad was formed and for nan adjacent fewer years Glasgow was nan ascendant unit successful Scottish skateboarding,” said Blair. “I’m thrilled that done this task we person a chance to rediscover it.”