Name: Play: Tam Harvie’s Dyke
Start: 2026-09-20T16:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-09-20T17:30:00+01:00
Location: Harvie's Dyke

Play: Tam Harvie’s Dyke

Glasgow Building Preservation Trust

A site-specific, interactive performance, by local playwright Davey Anderson.

Harvie's Dyke

Digging The Dyke: Glasgow's Radical Archaeology

Over Glasgow Doors Open Day Festival we’ll be excavating and recording the remains of one of Glasgow’s least well-known stories of popular uprising - Harvie’s Dyke. Drop in to meet the archaeologists or join us for free walks, talks and tours.

Tam Harvie’s Dyke is a short play written to be performed by the audience - that means you! It tells the story of community activists taking on a greedy landowner in the 1820s, resisting the enclosure of the commons, and winning rights of way along the Clyde. Come along to the site where history was made and help bring the story to life by reading a part, or simply by giving encouragement to your fellow citizens. It’s the early 1820s and Thomas Harvie, a wealthy whisky distiller, buys the beautiful Westthorn estate on the eastern edge of Glasgow. Then, to enclose his newly acquired property, he builds a huge wall running down to the Clyde. The problem is, this hated dyke blocks a much-loved pathway along the river. So a crowd of local weavers and other workers gather in the village of Parkhead one midsummer’s evening to decide: What are we going to do about it? Take Harvie to court, or engage in direct action? Inspired by Prof Christopher A. Whatley’s book Harvie’s Dyke: The People, Their Liberty and the Clyde.

Play: Tam Harvie’s Dyke

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Play: Tam Harvie’s Dyke

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