St Enoch Centre back in time: Remembering the very first days of the St Enoch Centre - featuring first ever pictures and old lost shops

The shopping centre has been a fixture of Glasgow city centre for 34 years, and many Glaswegians will hold happy memories of shopping in the old city centre building.

It was announced last year that the St Enoch Centre would be demolished to make way for an entirely new redevelopment.

Glaswegians can expect from the redevelopment: new streets, shops, offices, restaurants, hundreds of homes, a pub and a hotel - amongst other proposals like serviced apartments, a hostel, apart-hotel, car parking and public space are also part of the plans.

The St Enoch Centre as we know it will slowly disappear in phased demolitions over the next decade. While that’s all well and good looking towards the future - today we wanted to look into the past, and see the very beginnings of the central Glasgow shopping centre - as well as some of our favourite old lost and forgotten shops.

Work on the St Enoch Centre started in the mid-eighties. It would open its doors to the public in 1989, before being officially opened by then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the following year.

It has seen big changes since then – multiple refurbishments, big departures (including the huge BHS store) and exciting arrivals - including the new cinema complex which only finished construction a few years ago.

Built on the site of one of the cities oldest railway stations - the shopping centre replaced the old railway station and St Enoch hotel, which were demolished in 1977 to make way for the new development plans.

Costing £46 million, the 260 metre long building comprised a two-level shopping centre with seven levels of parking for 750 cars and 280,000 square feet of retail space (more than four full size football pitches).

The massive glass canopy of St Enochs centre made it the largest glass-topped enclosed space in Europe at the time of its construction. The original plans weren’t for a shopping centre however, the site was originally acquired by the Scottish Development Agency to assist in the relocation of civil service jobs from London - those plans never came to be however, and the St Enoch Centre swooped in and took the site, after a decade of being used as a car park.

Back in the day, St Enoch Centre even had an ice rink - which proved hugely popular with young Glaswegians (5000 skaters a day at its peak!) prior to its closure in June of 1995. The Disney Store was also a must-visit for just about every family in Glasgow - once a year at least.

Now as the 35-year-old centre enters its final era, we look back at the first days of the centre being open. Travel back in time to 1989 with us as we look at the very beginnings of Glasgow’s original shopping centre.

The St Enoch Centre revolutionised city centre shopping in Glasgow when it opened back in 1989 - and we wanted to celebrate that fact by looking back at the shops of the 90s and 2000s that made the St Enoch Centre what it was, as well as some exclusive looks at the very first pictures of the St Enoch Centre when it first opened.