I was saying the other day that there are several streets that lay bare the crisis in Glasgow and that one of them is Carlton Place, the Georgian terrace on the south side of the Clyde that has, how can I put it, seen better days. But I was also saying that streets like Carlton Place highlight not only the problems the city is facing but the potential as well and now here I am in a building that proves it. I think, I really do, that this is a house that could change things for Glasgow.

The house is 50-53 Carlton Place and from the front, like a lot of its neighbours, the neglect it’s suffered over the years is obvious: the portico has been boarded up and the graffiti artists have moved in. But then we’re through the front door and everything changes. I’d been told that the interior of the building was extraordinary and extraordinary is the right word, although it takes a bit of getting used to. How can there be so much decay and neglect out there and so much grandeur and splendour in here?

I’m being shown round the place by the man who’s taken it on, property developer Marc Bringmann, who bought it for £600,000 and is spending £3.5million doing it up. He has a team of 20 or so working on it right now and at times we have to raise our voices to be heard over the hammering and the drilling and the sawing. The range of jobs varies from the major – like restoring the plasterwork, some of the finest to be seen outside of royal palaces – to the relatively minor: there’s a statue of Minerva, goddess........

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