Glasgow History 

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Founded in 583 A.D. by St.Mungo, the settlement was then known as ‘Glasgu’ meaning ‘beloved green place’, which is utterly at odds with the grey and grimey reputation it earned after the industrial revolution, when it was one of the greatest industrialised cities in the world.

In the 12th century the first stone building was consecrated on the site of St.Mungo’s tomb. During the Reformation the last Catholic Bishop absconded to France with most of the cathedral’s treasures and shortly afterwards Glaswegian reformists marched on the cathedral and destroyed altars, vestments and windows in a bid to cleanse it of symbols of idolatry. However, the main structure survived and it is the only remaining medieval cathedral on the Scottish mainland. Pope Nicholas V authorised the founding of a university at Glasgow in 1451 and lectures were held in the cathedral crypt and the adjacent monastery until the 17th century when the university moved to a new site in the High Street. In 1870 it moved again to Sir George Gilbert Scott’s neo-Gothic building, which is one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

In 1783 William Hunter bequeathed his considerable and diverse collections, including fossils and Roman and Viking relics, to the university along with funds for the building of an appropriate museum to house them in. The Hunterian Museum opened its doors to the public in 1807 and in so doing became Scotland’s first ever museum. Glasgow boasts a very high number of museums and galleries, most of them free, the best includethe Art Gallery & Museum, the Transport Museum, the Burrell Collection and St. Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life & Arts.

• The city underwent a massive commercial boom after the Americas were discovered as Port Glasgow was ideally placed for westward trade. The industrial revolution advanced this trend still further as shipbuilding and heavy engineering put Glasgow among the greatest industrialised cities in the world. As people poured in from the Highlands and Ireland seeking employment, shoddy tenement buildings went up and these quickly became slums. What life was really like in the run down ‘single-ends’ is graphically illustrated at ‘The People’s Palace’. By the 1930s the numbers employed on Clydeside had fallen away dramatically and the area fell into an extended period of decline that it didn’t really shake off until the ultimate decade of re-invention, the eighties. The Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988 was a great success and heralded Glasgow’s Year as European City of Culture in 1990. More recently in 1999 it won the accolade of UK City of Architecture & Design.