Glasgow Green looks like an ordinary stretch of grass beside the River Clyde, but it quietly shaped world history. Here, on an illicit Sunday walk in 1765, James Watt dreamed up the separate condenser that transformed his steam engine, and with it the Industrial Revolution. Not bad for a stroll that could have landed him in jail for breaking the Sabbath.

Glasgow's oldest park, given to its citizens in 1450 by Bishop Turnbull, has always belonged to the people. Women hauled river water here to wash clothes while having a blether (idle chit-chat), and a 19th-century journalist noted its use by courting couples with nowhere private to go. It's Doulton Fountain, the largest surviving terracotta fountain anywhere, once lost its Queen Victoria statue to a lightning bolt.

VoiceMap's Glasgow through the ages walk follows the Clyde from the Cathedral to the Green, tracing how this washing spot helped forge Glasgow's industrial rise.