It is the last building left standing at Govan Docks but it's now at the centre of ambitious plans for change, says Herald columnist Mark Smith

Don’t take it personally but when the filmmaker Sam Mendes was looking for a location where he could convincingly recreate a bleak, ruined landscape torn apart by conflict, a place of despair and desolation, a place without beauty or hope, he chose Glasgow, specifically the docks at Govan. And very realistic it was too: the rubble, the ruin, the mud.

But look at what’s happening now. If you saw the film – 1917 (very good, actually) – you’ll remember the old Govan pump house at the docks featured prominently because it could convincingly look like it had been bombed out during the First World War. The building dates from 1877 and was once the epicentre of Glasgow’s busy Queen’s Dock, but we know what happened next, to ship-building, to Govan. The pump house is now the only building still standing at the dry docks. Everything else: gone, taken down not by war but by change, decline, and neglect.

However, I’m down here at the docks to find out about something more positive, more hopeful: what happens next to the building. The National Lottery Heritage Fund, which is putting up £1.5million to support the plans, are showing me round the site and it’s a remarkable place, even in its current state. The roof is a skeleton, girders like bones, the walls open to the elements, but the........

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