LAST Thursday’s page carried two photographs from the past of Port Glasgow’s Ardgowan Street, which used to be the main road linking the town with Greenock.

A section of the street can be seen in the lower left of today’s image taken in 1963.

Known as the Glen, the area was once home to many families and a wide variety of shops.

My previous articles about this part of Port Glasgow have included a reference to a former resident recalling that in the 1920s east of the Glen Burn and west of Argyle Street, which ran off Ardgowan Street, was regarded outwith the Glen.

Residents considered the Glen a community separate from the rest of the town.

Ardgowan Street carried thousands of vehicles daily until the construction of the dual carriageway on the north side of the railway line.

It was also used by thousands of people employed in the Kingston and Glen shipyards and the Port Glasgow and Newark Sailcloth Company, referred to by many as the Glen Mill.

The shipyards, the Glen Mill and the Glen’s old tenements are gone but Ardgowan Street still has the Kingston Industrial Estate.