Kelvin Wheelies, Glasgow

In 1977 Glasgow's council announced it would build a skatepark in Kelvingrove Park in the West End. Work started that August, and the council set aside around £100,000 for the concrete, the landscaping and the buildings, a big sum at the time. North Skate Mag credits the design to Richard Wrigley, who also drew up Rolling Thunder in London.

Kelvin Wheelies opened in May 1978. It had a half-pipe, a clover bowl, bowls with names like Jaws, Torpedo and Bazooka, the Cobra run, and a long head-to-head slalom run beside the Stewart Memorial Fountain. An old 1950s roller rink became the freestyle area, and there was a ticket booth, a café, toilets and a first-aid room. A three-hour session cost £1.80.

It was Scotland's first major concrete park, and it soon hosted the 1978 Scottish Skateboard Championships, the first national contest in the country, where Glasgow skaters did well in the bowl events. Locals such as Cameron Brown, Iain Urquhart and Danny Oji are remembered from the park's crew.

Like most parks of the era it did not last. By the early 1980s skating had dropped off, and worries about upkeep and safety led the council to close it. By 1983 it had been buried: archive records show the main slalom run was filled with garden soil, while the Cobra run was packed with demolition rubble, bricks, lino and carpet tiles.

A new free skatepark was built next to the old site in 2004, and a few bits of the original were still poking through. In August 2025 a University of Glasgow team led by Dr Kenny Brophy, with students, volunteers and local skaters including Jamie Blair of Clan Skates, opened six trenches across four of the buried features. It is thought to be the first archaeological dig on a concrete skatepark anywhere.

The finds were a time capsule of 1983: sweet wrappers, blocks of white paint laid over graffiti, and a Denis Law hologram. The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland helped fund the work, and the team has been collecting photos and memories from people who skated there.