Smellscape, Key-Smell, and Heritage: The Glasgow Subway 1896 to present

Since its opening in 1896 the Glasgow Subway has been known for its distinctive smell. Using sources from across its 130-year history, ranging from newspapers and TV documentaries to memoirs and social media, this article traces the history of that smell and highlights its shifting tarry, earthy, and electric qualities as the subway underwent electrification, modernization, and museumification. In so doing the article explores the fate of the subway smell within the history of Glasgow’s transport infrastructure and the city’s struggle with urban pollution and regeneration. Extending existing conceptualizations of historical ‘smellscapes’, the subway-smell should be understood as ‘key smell’ through which Glaswegians have historically imagined the wider smellscape of the city. The subway smell was and is a form of intangible cultural heritage in which smell perception, rather than the existence of particular odorous materials, constitutes a form of everyday, embodied, heritage. What the Glasgow subway smells of, which has itself changed over time, is less important than the perception that it has a distinctive smell. This smell has informed how Glaswegians have imagined the relationship between Glasgow’s past, present, and future.