HISTORY: 1700 and Before

Ancient beginnings
Once upon a time beautiful forests, deep valleys and rolling hills existed where the city of Glasgow stands today. The first people to inhabit this verdant landscape were a handsome, druidic and warlike tribe known as the Damnonii who ruled the lands from Galloway in the South to Perthshire in the North. Then, in around the year 543, a young monk named Kentigern arrived from Ireland, after an angel had told him that his destiny lay in this pagan land. He built his first church of wattle and wood on the top of a hill from which he could gaze down the green valley to the sparkling river below. He loved his new home so much that he called it ‘Glaschu’ which meant ‘dear green place.’ The pagan population liked this young monk and gave him the nickname ‘Mungo’ meaning ‘Dear Friend’ and so the history of Glasgow began.

St Mungo sculpture on the Tron Steeple © Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery

Kentigern is believed to have been a nephew of the legendary King Arthur.

A few hundred years later Mungo had become the city’s patron saint and his little wattle and wood church was replaced by a grand stone-built cathedral. Glasgow was now one of the most important ecclesiastical centres in Scotland, so important that in 1451 a university was founded within the precincts of the Cathedral.


Glasgow Cathedral © 2008 Glasgow City Council (Archives and Special Collections)

Mungo’s green valley gave way to a high street, houses, workshops, monasteries and fragrant gardens; it seemed that life was sweet, but a dark cloud loomed on the horizon. The very church which had been the city’s foundation came under attack in 1560 when the Reformation swept across Britain, destroying every place of Catholic worship in its wake. The people took their lives in their hands defending the fabric of their beloved cathedral and it survives today as the oldest Cathedral on main-land Scotland.

The first battle
But this was not the first battle of the dear green place. In 1298 the Bishop’s palace had been commandeered by a garrison of English soldiers who terrorised the people of Glasgow, until the great hero William Wallace chased them off in the brief but bloody ‘Battle of the Bell ‘o’ the Brae’.


William Wallace

Legend has it that after the garrison had been defeated, they cut the heads off the English soldiers and Wallace ordered that they should be stuffed down a well. “Stock it well with English men” had been the order, giving rise to the name ‘Stockwell Street’.

The Casket Letters
Mary Queen of Scots caused a great scandal during her first visit to Glasgow, for whilst staying in the Provand’s Lordship, opposite the Cathedral precinct, she wrote a series of letters called the ‘casket letters’ to her lover, the Earl of Bothwell, which would later implicate her in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley.


Mary Queen of Scots

In 1568 Mary Queen of Scots fought for her crown in Glasgow, against her half brother, Moray, in the ‘Battle of Langside’ which resulted in her defeat and eventual capture.

The darkest of times: Witchcraft, Plague & Fire
A few years later, Mary’s son, King James VI of Scotland (later James 1st of England) was to lead the way in a hate campaign which was to find Glasgow gripped in mortal terror for decades; the witch persecutions.

Witches were so feared in the city that a witch finder general was employed; the Reverend Cooper. The Reverend Cooper was so efficient at gaining confessions from accused witches he was locally known as ‘Burning Cooper.’

The The Bubonic Plague was also ravaging the population, with the merest sneeze resulting in people being bricked up in their houses. This was followed by two great fires which swept through the city and although the first destroyed one third of the town and the second left over a thousand families’-homeless, the ancient streets were at least scourged of the plague.


The Toggenburg Bible 1411

The mid 1600s also saw the founding of Hutchesons’ Hall, which was established by the brothers George and James Hutcheson to house the poor craftsmen of the city unable, for whatever reason, to earn an income. Hutchesons’ Hall moved to its current location on Ingram Street in 1802. Incidentally, the statues of the brothers Hutcheson that flank either side of the first floor were modelled in 1655 by James Colquhoun, who also invented Glasgow’s first fire engine.

Hutchesons' Halls Ingram Street

One of the buildings to survive the great fires of Glasgow was the 15th century Collegiate Church of St Mary and its adjoining steeple which once held the city’s ‘Tron’ or weighing beam. Fire did however finally destroy the church in 1793 when the drunken members of the Hellfire Club accidentally burnt it down. They had entered the church to get out of the cold February night, but as they warmed themselves on the open fire, they began to boast about how hot they could take the fires of hell. To prove their boast they built the fire up until it spilled over and set fire to the whole church. It was rebuilt by James Adam the following year and is now the Tron Theatre, bar and restaurant.

© 2008 Glasgow City Council (Development + Regeneration Services)

The rebuilding of the City
The city that rose from the ashes prompted Daniel Defoe to write “The four principal streets...are the fairest for breadth and the finest built that I have ever seen...’tis the cleanest, most beautiful and best built city in Great Britain... The lower storeys, for the most part, stand on vast doric columns with arches which open into the shops - adding to the strength as well as to the beauty of the buildings.”

The latter part of this description refers to the Trongate and lower part of the High Street; these were the first paved areas of Glasgow.

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