Fairfield Heritage

Fairfield Heritage and Shipbuilding Museum is 3 miles southwest of Glasgow centre at Govan, Postcode: G51 4XS, Free to visit, donations welcome.

The Red Tour Buses run to the Riverside Museum just across the River by Footbridge.

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There is a scenic Riverside Walk from Glasgow centre out to the Science Centre, then to the Clydeside Distillery, then to the Riverside Museum half of a mile west of the Distillery, then to the Goven Stones in Govan Church, then to this Fairfield Museum a short walk west of the Church, then there are many inexpensive buses from Govan 3 miles back to the city centre, a great day walking.

Fairfield began building Ships at Govan in 1861, soon becoming the largest ship builders in the world, building Battleships, Aircraft Carriers, Liners and every type of Transport Ship from the time.

There have been over 25,000 ships built on the River Clyde since the first yard opened in 1712, not sure how many were built at Fairfield?

Ships were built right in Govan Centre by Fairfield and Harland & Wolf with 13 slips between the two companies for building huge ships.

At Fairfield:

The largest Battleship was the 42,000 ton HMS Howe completed in 1941.

Largest Aircraft Carrier was the 32,000 ton HMS Implacable completed in 1944.

Largest Liner was the 26,032 ton SS Empress of Japan completed in 1930.

Three Graving Docks were built just up-river where the Glasgow Tower is now, as seen in the image bottom right from the Tower. The largest Graving Dock here is 880 feet long, 115 feet wide.

The Graving Docks / Dry Docks were used for painting the underside of ships and repairs.

Old Image of the Fairfield 6 large Building Slips, Fitting out Basin, huge Workshops, and Govan Old Church.

The area where the vast SEC entertainment complex is now, was the Queens Dock that was always full of large Cargo Ships, bottom right of the bottom image, across from the Glasgow Tower.

This Dock was filled in with stone from the old St Enoch Station Hotel that was demolished in 1977.

Large Image of the Queens Dock looking west to Govan showing just how busy this area was with shipping up to the 1970s. The Rotunda building is all that remains, the round building bottom left in the image that is now a Restaurant.

The area where the Riverside Museum is now, across the river from Govan, was a shipyard named A&J Ingles that closed in 1962.

Large Image of A&J Ingles and other shipbuilders all around Govan that seems to show at least 20 large Ships could have been built at the same time in one small area at Govan.

John Brown Shipyard was the most known shipyard on the Clyde, as they built the huge liners Queen Mary 1936, Queen Elizabeth 1940 and QE2 1969, with Queen Elizabeth being 83,000 tons, 1,031 feet long, 118 feet wide, largest passenger ship built until larger Cruise Ships were built from 1996.

John Brown's was located at Clydebank, 4 miles west of Govan, where the river is wider and there is a tributary named the River Cart where the longest ships were launched for extra room. Large Image

John Brown's opened in 1851, closed in 1986, Wiki Page

The largest Dry Dock on the Clyde is at Greenock at 1,000 feet long, 145 feet wide.

All the large Cargo Ships now dock at Greenock, 22 miles west of Govan, at the mouth of the River Clyde.

The two large Cranes you see next to the Clyde, one at the Squinty Bridge and another where John Brown's was in Clydebank, were used to lift real heavy objects such as Steam Trains for export onto Ships, and to lift the huge Engines into new built Ships.

After World War II in 1945 - ship building on the Clyde slowed due to vast debts the UK ran up funding the war.

1960s - saw a further decline in ship building on the Clyde as more countries around the world began competing for orders of new ships, forcing many companies on the Clyde to close.

Some other countries were fast to adopt building ships in modules, then connecting the modules together to complete the ships, a faster and less expensive way to build ships.

Today - there are just three ship builders left on the Clyde, Fairfield at Govan now part of BAE Systems that mainly build Warships for the Royal Navy, Yarrow now also part of BAE Systems building Warships, and Ferguson Marine that mainly build Ferries for the Scottish Island routes.

Fairfield Govan built some sections of the two 72,000 ton Aircraft Carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth 2017, and HMS Prince of Wales 2019. These ships were completed at Rosyth by Edinburgh.

There used to be 19 large ship builders employing around 70,000 workers. The population of Govan reached 95,000 in 1907, down to 27,000 by 2022.

The Clyde was the largest ship building area in the World by far, producing 23% of the worlds ships in 1913, with an endless supply of Steel and Coal from around Scotland to allow such a vast operation, also vast numbers of workers prepared to work in real harsh conditions.

List of the Largest Ships built on the River Clyde.