Back green
April 19th 2025
A back green, sometimes shortened to “backie”, is defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as a “back garden, especially of a tenement or council house”.
The term dates back to the eighteenth century, as seen in this ‘For sale’ notice from the Caledonian Mercury in May 1796: “That large house in the West End of George Street, on the south side, being No. 59, with the Coach house, Stables, Washing-house, Back Green, and other conveniences belonging thereto”.
In 1847, Robert Chambers complained about house hunting (and back greens in particular) in Essays familiar and humorous: “Very often you are removed from a comfortable and every way excellent house, because it wants a back-green, and taken to one every way inferior, and, indeed, wretched but which, in the eyes of your sweet spouse, is rendered equal to a palace – because it has a back-green”.
Although designated by the authorities as drying areas, back greens were often used by children as playgrounds. Any grass would soon be trampled into submission by young, aspiring footballers. The result is memorably captured in Alan Sharp’s A Green Tree in Gedde (1965): “Looking out he could see the back of another tenement and below a set of washing houses and back greens, some with washing out but none of them green”.
The term remains in use, with a recent example taken from Billy Kay’s memoir Born in Kyle (2023): “There wis nae horse there, but maybe it wis roon in the back gairden, jist ower the hedge fae ma ain back green?”
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
