THIS bird’s eye view of Greenock from our archives is believed to have been taken in 1961.

It certainly dates to the first half of the 1960s as it shows the town’s new fire station which opened in 1960 and the Victoria Harbour’s old steam crane which was removed in 1964.

In the Victoria Harbour can be seen vessels belonging to two tug companies now gone – the Clyde Shipping Company and Steel and Bennie.

It is now the base for tugs operated by Clyde Marine Services.

The East India Harbour area is quite different today.

James Lamont’s two dry docks – one shown occupied by a cargo vessel – have been filled in and the buildings between the harbour and the main road have disappeared.

My recollection is the last cargo shed on the harbour’s north wall was taken down not long before the Tall Ships Race in 1999.

Also gone is the Marine Bar, later called The Waterfront, which was just to the east of Lamont’s offices and workshops.

Across the road from the west side of the fire station is the area which would become the location of the Morrisons superstore.

In the photograph it is shown running from Dellingburn Street to what was then the lower part of Bogle Street. The streets were connected by Chapel Street.

The large building with three sides at the west end of Chapel Street was the Trades Hotel. It was commonly known as the Bogle after the street it faced onto.

Some of this area’s old properties next to the main road were the first to disappear and others would follow long before anyone could have imagined the site would one day be completely cleared to build a superstore with a large car park and its own filling station.

A host of domestic and industrial properties elsewhere in the photograph have vanished since the first half of the 1960s.