Narrator: Cala Sona came into existence in 1959 when refugees from Eastern Europe were brought to Scotland by Muriel Gofton. The original housing consisted of flats within a mansion house and lodge, together with 6 prefabricated bungalows.
With families growing up and moving out into the wider community during the early 1970s, the number of tenants at Cala Sona began to fall. Because of this, Margaret Blackwood Housing Association took over in the mid-1970s. We guaranteed that the existing tenants would have a home at Cala Sona for as long as they wanted to live there. We also adapted the vacant properties into housing for disabled people, and brought in staff to support the tenants in their daily lives.
In 1978, we built a new block of sheltered flats and bedsits designed to need the needs of disabled people, and very much cutting edge at the time. The community at Cala Sona grew and flourished.
Nothing, however, stands still. By the turn of the century the housing was well past its sell-by date. With the 70s block comprising mostly of bedsits off a long corridor, there was an old-fashioned, institutional feel to the place. Space standards were not very good. People had very small kitchens and there wasn’t much turning space for wheelchairs, especially the modern powered ones.
Cala Sona was no longer working well for the tenants and it was increasingly at odds with our own vision of our tenants making their own choices and living independent lives to the full. We took the decision to completely redevelop Cala Sona to meet the needs of the tenants in the 21st century and worked closely with them on the project.
With all of the tenants moving into the 70s block for the duration of phase one of the project, we demolished the bungalows, mansion and lodge and built 24 spacious accessible, sustainable and energy efficient 2-bedroom flats in 5 blocks that make the best of the beautiful location.
Now that the tenants have moved into their new homes, we will be demolishing the 70s block and be building a further 28 high-quality flats.
In this film some of our tenants tell the story of Cala Sona, and talk about the impact their new homes have had on their lives.
Mrs Adamski: Miss Gofton was here you know, just everything. I read about this, start as a refugee, asking yes, it’s alright, people healthy they can go to other countries. What will happen to these people who are after TB you know, in hospital? So she came and she asked “Would you like to go to Scotland?”. So, that’s when we came to Scotland, in ’59, you know, just my family and, you know, my husband, and my son and myself.
I’m 82 years old. I still sometimes wonder how I am alive after all of these problems, so many illnesses I had.
Mrs Kaczynska: I was in Germany for many years, and then in 1960 I came here, straight to Scotland to Cala Sona to bungalow.
Mrs Adamski: In the beginning as far as I know there were 6 families in the bungalows because they were 3, 2 families you know in one block. ????? was the 7th. I got a flat you know, on bedroom for my son. He was then 15. He was going to school. And then from school he used to bring quite a lot of his friends you know. Always, “Mrs, can we have a piece with jam?” Plenty fruit so there was plenty jam.
Mrs Kaczynska: I was serving all the chips in the fish and chip shop on the counter, from beginning. I could not speak proper, you know. I could not speak, very poorly. But I could manage. I have never been without work as soon as I arrived here.
Mrs Adamski: There was a big garden here, there was something to do. There was quite a lot of functions you know, the big house was a big hall you know. There is people come regarding meetings you know, local people, ministers and others you know. Because it was arranged a committee, you know, big committee from different people.
David Braidwood (filmed before moving into his new flat): In my condition, I think I’ll have to have home help for the rest of my life to do certain things for me. Because my legs are fused. I can’t bend my legs. I’ve got arthritis, I’ve had TB, I think I’ve had everything. I’ve had a lot of good times in my life and all.
Theresa Martin: This is better you know, plenty of room and that.
George Henderson: That Place was ok when I was walking, when all I did was sleep, get up and go out in my car and disappear for a day, just come back at night and sleep.
Nearly 2 year ago I was stuck in a wheelchair, and in a bedsit it’s no terrific.
Mrs Kaczynska (filmed before moving into her new flat: If I’m still alive and kicking, I will be moving into the new building. If I’m still alive and kicking!
Sue Thornlee & Anna Daintrey (MAST Architects)
Anna Daintrey: There was already a community of residents who had been living here for a long time and we wanted to maintain that and nurture it so there’s always something to look at inside and outside.
Sue Thornlee: I can go back to the early days when the project was begun because it was my husband who was working on it at that time, Mike Thornlee, and he was involved in a complicated feasibility study where a lot of different needs and requirements were picked up on and built into the new housing that was projected.
It is a very attractive site. It’s got wonderful views out and it really is a wonderful place for people to live, particularly when they’re more tied to their houses. It was a dramatic site to develop and it was also dramatic in terms of really quite steep levels and that is quite a problem when you are trying to create level access into all of your houses and it meant that the whole site really had to be reconfigured in order to make it work.
Anna Daintrey: I think its very important for people to have a chance to have independent living and be able to stay in their own homes, rather than have to move to places with higher care provision because it is a loss of independence. And what we want to do is allow people to live their own lives.
Sue Thornlee: It’s a happy home. It’s what Cala Sona means and it’s very nice that it can be developed like that.
Mrs Adamski: Old Cala Sona finished. That’s why they built this new Cala Sona
Mrs Kaczynska: Actually this building is very old. The windows were very bad and we get a new building so… I’ve been told they’re beautiful flats, that is what I must share with you.
Mrs Adamski: We’ve had and been shown the plans, you know, what it will be, the bathrooms and dining room and bedrooms you know and all this, just seeing on the paper what you can see inside!
George Henderson: They showed me the plans. They asked me what it was I wanted, so I said this one.
Theresa Martin: I got the plans, aye. They showed us the plan thing down in Cala Sona. It looked the same way, it did look the same way in the plans.
David Braidwood: I’m going in that block of 10, and see that building? They’re building it in 4s and 2s, they’ve all moved in 5 weeks ago. I’m really looking forward to it!
Mrs Kaczynska: They make the packs, even pack stuff for you, you know, and go to the new building and unpack and put in their own places as it was here, so it’s very kind of them.
David Braidwood: They have told me that when we move over there, they’re going to unpack all our things and that, which I think is alright!
Theresa Martin: In Margaret Blackwood they helped us to move. You could get your stuff and move it yourself but I would rather have Margaret Blackwood help me. There was nothing got broken so it was ok!
George Henderson: The boys that came in to do the moving, it was Margaret Blackwood’s guys. The boys that came in to do the moving, I was talking to them, and they said “go out and don’t worry about a thing,” so I just went out their way. The next thing I was out of here. They’d packed everything for me, so it was really great that I got them to do it, and I didn’t have a worry in the world.
For me, it went terrific.
George Henderson: I need a tracking in the bedroom to the bathroom and my phone, I need my phone for an emergency. So that was all done for me, I didn’t have to worry about that.
Theresa Martin: You could pick any carpet you wanted, you know, so I picked this kind. Pick whatever things you wanted, whatever you wanted and they did it.
Paul Moore (SWOT): My name’s Paul, and this is Johnny, we’re from the Small Works Team. I’m a plumber and Johnny is an apprentice joiner. We make it as comfortable as possible for the tenants to move from their old houses to their new houses, helping with TVs, hanging pictures, hanging curtains, etc. etc.! So yeah, just make it as comfortable as possible for them.
Theresa Martin: I thought I wouldn’t sleep the first night, but I did! You know, in a strange house, but I did, really, I must have been tired. I took a couple of days to settle but I got there, I got there, and I’m fine now.
Sue Thornlee: Well there were early surveys done of finding out people’s needs but obviously people’s needs do change over time so that always has to be monitored but the basic design of the houses was built so that it was flexible enough to build in a wide range of needs.
Anna Daintrey: They’re very spacious and adaptable. There are lots of different features that can be altered later. And then of course the Occupational Therapists have their surveys of the individual tenants and their individual needs allocated in different flats depending on what’s required.
What we tried to do was make the flats as flexible as possible to allow for all those different adaptations to occur.
You can see that this worktop is installed at the standard height, but this whole area can be dropped or raised, depending on what people need. And this is a special oven with a side-opening door, and you’ve got the space on either side so that you can easily transfer things in and out. Individual people have different requirements with the height, depending on the height of their wheelchair or who is actually going to be using the kitchen area the most.
There’s some space to have a bath or a shower, or a bath and a shower in different configurations. We’ve always got panels, which can be opened up to put a door in to have a hoist track between the bedroom and the bathroom.
See this is set quite low so that the controls are easy to reach, and this is a longer hose than normal so that you can stretch it right around, wherever you want it to go.
[The sink] has got a flexible seal so that it can be adjusted up and down to whatever height people need.
For some people, any door is just going to get in the way and it is best to have it all open, whereas some people, especially with visual impairments, it helps to know exactly what room you are in. So if you’ve got smaller spaces with doors inbetween it is a very clear definition between the spaces. You don’t get lost in your own house, which obviously we don’t want.
Sue Thornlee: There are certain things which are questions we did ask, which if they are not needed you don’t put them in. You want houses to look like anybody’s house, as homely as possible, and domestic and friendly. That’s the aim really.
George Henderson: This place – I wouldn’t be embarrassed if anybody was to come. I’ve got space, I’ve got the room. A spare room if any of my friends want to come over and stay the night, they can. And I’ve got a living room they can sit in, and we can sit and chat, sit and have a drink, or sit outside on my patio and I can puff my brains out on a cigar.
It’s a new lease of life really. It’s terrific.
Sue Thornlee: There’s plenty of room to circulate and turn in wheelchairs.
Anna Daintrey: And to keep any equipment, like different wheelchairs for different occasions as well.
David Braidwood: It’s brilliant, the space, compared with the old building. Much, much more room to move a wheelchair, so I find it quite alright for that.
George Henderson: I’ve got a big hallway that’s wide enough in the narrowest bit to turn a wheelchair, and I’m right on a level.
David Braidwood: The lift is far wider too. When you go in you can get out the other side.
Sue Thornlee: We also have the sun spaces, which we think are a nice addition to a living room. People have a semi indoor-outdoor space. They can open up the glazing there, making it more like a balcony, but they can also be protected by closing it off and making it like a small conservatory.
Anna Daintrey: A lot of attention was put into designing the close, and as you can see, it is very spacious and light, and we’ve got the light coming in from both sides, from over the Clyde Valley and also from over the community where all of the houses look over.
All of the flats, you know, they have views over the Clyde Valley.
Sue Thornlee: You might notice that the doors in this flat are standing open. We haven’t had to put door-closers on.
Anna Daintrey: Normally in the flats you would have to have door-closers for fire protections, but because we have a sprinkler system in this block we made a special case to the Building Standards Agency to omit the door closers, because we knew that it would cause difficulty for people moving about the insides of their own flat.
All the baths and showers and sinks have thermostatic valves on them to regulate the temperature of the water to prevent scalding.
David Braidwood: I’m hoping to go out more often, because I’ve got my passes for the ordinary bus and for Dial-A-Bus and I can phone up and they take you to where you want to go and bring you back. But it is just a matter of whether I can get in and out of the building myself or not. I’ve got to learn that.
Sue Thornlee: Well I think it is better to give people a proper house of their own. And I think that, while it is quite hard for people when they have come from a very small bedsit to spread into a larger space, you know they find things are not quite as at hand as they were, I think that in 6 months time that they’ll really enjoy having a bit more room.
Theresa Martin: It’s nice and quiet, and it’s nice sitting here at night watching the television. You don’t hear a sound you know, and I really love that here, I really love that.
George Henderson: I plan to stay here and just let it continue, that’s all. That’s all I need or could want, I can’t wish for anything else.
Theresa Martin: I didn’t go out there, because I was a wee bit worried, but I’m quite happy up here. I seem more settled up here, I can go out because I can just get out of my door and come back in again, do you know what I mean? Just go out that door and come in. You know that long corridor down at Cala Sona? That was quite a long corridor.
Anna Daintrey: Keep talking to everybody.
Sue Thornlee: Yes, and talk to the residents, most importantly, because you need to know their particular requirements and have a client who is very aware of their needs, and as we’re able to get this over to you.
Mrs Kaczynska: Thanks to the staff, you know. When I came here, you know, they helped me when they could, they helped me pick flat. And I appreciate, and I value, and I respect them very much.
Theresa Martin: I’m quite happy with the place, you know. Plenty space, plenty room, plenty cupboards and that, eh?!
Sue Thornlee: It’s only the quality of what you provide, and whether you provide a decent home for people which matters.
Anna Daintrey: In the end, all you want is to do the best job that you can.
George Henderson: If I wasn’t disabled, I don’t think I would get a better place to live. It’s just great, that’s all.
Theresa Martin: When I see it now, you know, it looks lovely. It looks great, you know.
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