Candleriggs is a street in the city ofGlasgow, Scotland. It is located in the Merchant City area of the city centre. Candleriggs was historically the area of the old city of Glasgow where candlemakers plied their trade, at a safe distance from the crowded tenements clustered around the High Street. As the city expanded in the eighteenth century it became a thriving thoroughfare itself, lined with tenements and businesses typical of Glasgow at that time. Looking down Candleriggs from its northern junction with Ingram Street, stands St David's, later known as Ramshorn Kirk. It had been without a congregation for a long while before being purchased by the University of Strathclyde in 1983. The church dates from 1826, built in Gothic Revival style by an English architect, Thomas Rickman, whose plans featured the large central tower which dominates the structure. It now serves as a venue for amateur dramatics. Candleriggs is perhaps best known as the site of the City Halls, a musical venueoperated byGlasgow City Council, home to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and a regular Glasgow performance base for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The old Candleriggs Fruit Market building at the corner of Candleriggs and Bell Street housed a market for many years. With the opening of a purpose built facility in May 1969, on the site of the old Blochairn Steelworks, it closed and was redeveloped as a complex housing pubs and restaurants which was renamed "Merchant Square". Towards the southern end of Candleriggs was the Goldbergsdepartment store, which closed in 1991. It was then taken over by Vera Weisfeld and reopened in 1994 as Weisfelds - a budget clothing store. Weisfeld's closed in 1999. Granny Black's was a well known pub on Candleriggs housed in an old tenement building which collapsed due to a burst water main in the basement one night in February 2002. The building was empty at the time of the incident and there were no reported injuries. The site has since fallen into dereliction and the land has been acquired by the luxury retailer Selfridges of London, although plans to build a department store there have been shelved until further notice. In late 2013, Selfridges began demolition of the former Goldbergs buildings and works began in early 2014 to landscape the area.
