Bombs may fall and governments may change but the washing will always need hung out to dry.

For several hundred years Glasgow Green was the place were the women of the city gathered to bleach, wash, dry and gossip about the events of the day.

In Glasgow, 'keeping a mangle' could be a lucrative business and the town's common washing area was usually filled with an army of women trampling clothes and bed linen in tubs.

They were there when the city's first wash-house affectionately known as the "Steamie" opened on the banks of the Camlachie Burn and stood by while Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops lined up in the cold winter air.

They were up to their elbows in soap suds when James Watt strolled by musing about his idea for the Steam Engine and often scolded the young lads kicking a ball near their washing lines by Flesher's Haugh.

The young men would go on to become the founding formation of the Glasgow Rangers football club.

Throughout rent strikes, riots, weddings and funerals the washerwoman washed on, remaining unobtrusive witnesses to history.

All that remains of their work now is their laundry poles, still standing tall on the Green, and a local artist keen to make sure the mark they made on history doesn't fade away.

Glasgow-based artist and writer Penny Anderson has created an art installation out of imagined and living witness testimonies to the life of the washerwomen.

Titled Words of Washerwomen the exhibit features billowing sheets of muslin hung on the historic laundry poles on Glasgow Green, intricately emblazoned with the memories and words of those women who would have spent their time there over the centuries.

"I've taken a little snippet of what women might have thought of what was going on around them, of what they would have seen," says Penny, who lives nearby.

"I spoke to one woman who remembered her mum doing the washing there during the Second World War, probably during the bombing of Clydebank.

"But she remembers the scent of the clothes, the fresh smell of the laundry and how beautiful it was to take that scent from the Green back to the tenements."

Penny's work is sewn onto white muslin, referencing the traditional skill of white work as well as the old muslin mills, an industry which was once close to the site.

Ghostly memories are then shared as spectral words displayed on delicate embroidered banners.

"Going through my research on the area was fascinating," says Penny.

"From hot air balloon crashes which must have seemed as though a space ship was landing, to executions and the suffragette marches, I just keep thinking how much these women must have seen."

With support from Glasgow Women's Library, Words of Washerwomen will remain on display in the Green each day until August 29, from noon to 5pm with Penny staying close by the sight to discuss the work with passersby.

One frequent theme she says which seems to have come out of the work has been how strong and fierce the washerwomen were and how much they would not put up with any nonsense, particularly from men.

There are several historic accounts of young men trying to catch a glimpse of the women with their skirts hitched up above their knees during the wash, only to be chased with very real menace by a horde of angry women armed with whatever makeshift weapon they could find.

"There were moments when I was thinking, do not mess with the women of Glasgow," laughs Penny.

"There was one account when soldiers on the Green marched over their washing so they just poured their dirty laundry water right over them, even though they were armed with guns."

"It's made me love Glasgow even more."

Words of Washerwomen will be on display on the laundry poles on Glasgow Green from Augusy 22 to 29 from noon until 5pm.