The three stages of John Ewing Walker's development of North Kelvinside in Glasgow as viewed from the southern side of the River Kelvin. At the bottom is the remains of Walker's Bridge.

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He first built his own bridge over the river and then commissioned Alexander 'Greek' Thomson to design the structure we now know as the Sixty Steps.

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How to get people across the River Kelvin and up the steep slope on the opposite bank to the land he wanted to develop at the top of the hill? His solution was ingenuous, if rather expensive.

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Rather oddly, on Doune Gardens/Quadrant itself, a modern vehicle barrier has been erected at the exact spot where the wall once stood, so recreating Walker's spite wall in a new form some 150 years after it was initially built.

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As each developer developed their own areas on either side of the wall, they gave streets different names and built different styles of buildings, and even though the wall itself is long gone, these differences can still be seen to this day.

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In this case, it was a neighbouring developer, the City of Glasgow Bank. The main problem faced by both developers was how to connect their land to the city's rapidly expanding West End on the other side of the nearby River Kelvin.

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Well, it's because it was here, in 1869, that a developer by the name of John Ewing Walker built a spite wall (outlined in red on the 1892 map on the right). A spite wall is a one constructed purely to inconvenience or annoy a neighbour.

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