Glasgow Cathedral: the remarkable 800-year old church that refused to fall

In 16th century Scotland, Reformation mobs were sweeping through the country targeting Catholic churches, tearing down altars, stripping chapels, and gutting medieval cathedrals that had stood for centuries.

And the most ancient of them all, Glasgow Cathedral, was a prime target on their hit list.

How did it survive this religious and societal upheaval? And what was lost and what was gained?

If you’d like to know more about the Glasgow Cathedral and other notable Glasgow churches, you’re in the right place. Here you’ll find the fascinating stories of history and medieval architecture behind many of the cathedral’s features and artifacts as well as advice about what you need to plan your visit.

All photos by Derek Cadzow and Jacqueline Weatherly-Cadzow, except where noted.

A place of worship for 1,500 years

The site on which Glasgow Cathedral was built has been considered holy ground for a long time. As early as 397 AD, Saint Ninian blessed it for Christian burial.

The first church was small and wooden and it was founded by St. Mungo (also known as St. Kentigern) around AD 550.

The fourth structure is the current one and it was begun by Bishop William de Bondington in 1233, making it almost 800 years old.

But it’s not just its age that makes Glasgow Cathedral remarkable, it’s also that it survived intact for that long.

During the Reformation of the 1560s, mobs intent on converting the country to the Protestant faith from Catholicism tore down altars, stripped chapels, smashed beautiful stained glass windows, and inflicted much damage on the old buildings.

Glasgow Cathedral suffered some of this — the altars were pulled from the fourteen pillars of the nave, leaving holes in the stone that couldn’t be matched for color three centuries later because the original stone was no longer available.

But the building itself survived almost intact mostly due to members of the Trades House of Glasgow. These were the craftsmen and tradespeople who had built it and they were not going to watch it burn. They stood their ground between the cathedral and the mobs and saved the cathedral from the total ruin that had befallen many other churches and cathedrals in the country.

There was also a practical reason to protect it: the towers stored legal documents: land ownership records, wills, marriage licenses, and contracts. Destroying them would have caused chaos for everyone regardless of their religion.

Our arrival at Glasgow Cathedral

We visited the cathedral last spring on our way to a tour of the Scottish Highlands. We’d arrived by train from Edinburgh and spent an all-too-short half-day in Glasgow before continuing on to our week-long highland adventures. After a quick motorized tour around the city we, thankfully, were able to get off the bus for an hour and we were free to explore the cathedral on foot.

The cathedral sits at the top of Castle Street with the Glasgow Necropolis visible on the hill behind it. The Necropolis is a Victorian cemetery that provides the most dramatic backdrop of any cathedral in Scotland and is actually the best spot to view the exterior of the building. Together they create a skyline that stops you mid-stride.

However, when I stepped back and looked at the full facade, the scaffolding faded into insignificance. The medieval stonework is something to behold. And the building is larger than you expect. At 285 feet long and 105 feet high at the nave roof, it is one of the highest naves in Britain.

What’s a nave? See our short glossary for first-time cathedral visitors below.

I remember that, as a child, it seemed enormous beyond belief. Returning as an adult, I had expected it to feel smaller — most childhood places do. And for a moment, standing in the nave, it did seem more contained than I remembered.

But then I looked up. The grandeur of the columns and the construction of the oak roof reinforced just how massive this ancient building truly is.

Walking through the nave

You enter the cathedral and the nave from the west, the long central hall where the congregation has gathered for services since the 14th century.

In pre-Reformation times, fourteen pillars lined this space, each with its own altar dedicated to a different saint: St John the Baptist, St Nicholas, St Kentigern, St Cuthbert, St Andrew, and others.

But the altars are all gone now, pulled down by the Reformation mobs. All that remains are the pillars, still marked by the different-colored patches where the stone could not be matched because, after all that time since the cathedral was constructed, the original stone was no longer available.

The large stained glass windows at the west end were gifted by the Glasgow Corporation in 1958. The two centre panels depict Adam and Eve. The outer panels depict Darkness and Light, Alpha and Omega. On his tour, my grandfather would tell visitors that, together, they represent the Creation.

Beneath the windows hangs a copy of a 17th century Dutch clock — also a gift to the church in 1958, It strikes at the quarter, half, and three-quarter hours.

The cathedral bell

At the west end, in the north-west corner, stands the cathedral bell. It was cast in Holland in 1594 at the commission of Marcus Knox, a Glasgow merchant, and hung in the tower to call people to worship.

From his tour script, my grandfather would read its inscription aloud to visitors, written as if the bell itself was speaking: “In the year of Grace, 1594, Marcus Knox, a merchant in Glasgow, zealous for the interest of the reformed religion, caused me to be fabricated in Holland, for the use of his fellow-citizens of Glasgow, and placed me with solemnity in the tower of their Cathedral.”

The bell rang for 195 years before being broken by, as the inscription records with dignified understatement, “the hands of inconsiderate and unskilful men.” It was recast in London in 1790 and returned to its sacred purpose.

The ladybug carving

If you look carefully at one of the two Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve chairs in the nave you might see a carved ladybug (called a ladybird in Scotland). It’s a memento of the apparent good luck brought to a WW2 British cruiser escorting merchant ships to Russia by one of those small creatures.

The ladybug landed on the captain’s map as he was plotting their course. As one of his officers moved to kill it, the captain stopped him saying that alive, it will bring us good luck. Some hours later the cruiser was torpedoed, but every man on board was saved. It seemed the captain knew what he was talking about.

The last surviving quire screen in Scotland

Halfway along the cathedral, between the nave and the quire, stands the quire screen, also called the Pulpitum. It is the only one left in Scotland.

During the Reformation, quire screens were among the first things the mobs destroyed. The reason was social as much as religious: in pre-Reformation times, the screens divided the cathedral by class. The nobility worshipped in the quire on the east side. The working people worshipped in the nave on the west side. The reformers saw this as snobbery made in stone, and they were determined to tear quire screens down wherever they found them.

Glasgow Cathedral’s was partly destroyed but survived and was rebuilt.

On its face stands eleven figures representing the apostles with Judas being the one left out, for obvious reasons. Around the perimeter are seven carvings representing the seven deadly sins: anger, avarice, covetousness, greed, lust, pride, and sloth.

My grandfather had a story about the screen that I suspect he enjoyed telling rather too much.

At weddings, the bride enters through the west door, walks the full length of the 285-foot nave, ascends the quire screen steps, and continues into the quire for the ceremony. “By the time she gets halfway,” he told his tour groups, “she has the time to change her mind.”

My mother walked that aisle. My father waited for her at the far end.

The lower church and St Mungo’s crypt

I’d never gone down to the lower part of the church before and walking down the worn stone steps is like descending into a different world.

Old, discolored, and worn handcrafted stone surround you on all sides. Just the look and the feel of the place underscores its age.

It’s dark: it’s built into the hillside below the main cathedral and the windows are smaller and let in less light. If the upper church looks historic, the lower church is definitely ancient.

At the bottom of the stairs you first come across two stone coffins. They are cracked and worn in the way that only a thousand years of existence can explain.

It was in the lower church that the University of Glasgow held its first classes in 1454, before the university had a building of its own.

The lower church is also where St Mungo, a missionary and the founder of Glasgow, was laid to rest. He died, depending on who you listen to, sometime between 603 and 614 AD, and was buried on this site long before the cathedral was built.

His shrine is the centerpiece of the lower church and it’s well lit and hard to miss. His remains are said to still rest in the crypt, which was a great centre of Christian pilgrimage until the Reformation. Covering the crypt is a colorful carpet that was used at the wedding of Princess Mary and the coronation of King Edward VII at Westminster Abbey.

It would be here that my grandfather ended his tour, walking his visitors through the Chapter House, the four chapels dedicated to St Nicholas, St Peter, St Paul, and St John the Evangelist, and the Blacader Aisle — the last part of the cathedral to be built, completed between 1483 and 1508, and notable for what my grandfather called “one of the finest collections of carved bosses in Scotland.”

A family connection I’m still uncovering

When we arrived at the cathedral last year, the first thing I did was ask about where baptisms took place. I wanted to see where I’d been as a baby so many years before.

A volunteer pointed me toward two possibilities — a baptismal font near the entrance and another near the high altar. I contacted my godmother afterwards, my aunt, to ask if she remembered where my christening had taken place. She was apologetic. After so many years, she simply didn’t remember.

Click the thumbnails to see larger versions of the images

The baptismal font – was it here that the deed was done?

But there was another long-forgotten memory waiting for me inside the nave.

Standing in the main chapel, I was suddenly five years old again, sitting between my parents in these same pews, restless and bored while the sermon dragged on. I remembered the rush of relief when the children were called to Sunday school, and then the sinking realization that I’d forgotten to get collection money before leaving my parents.

I ran back. My parents fumbled for coins. By the time it was sorted out, the other children were gone. I had to stay with the adults — trapped in the slow crawl of a sermon with no escape. Ugh.

Even after that length of time, the memory returned suddenly and vividly and connected me again with my parents, both now long gone.

A gallery of my cathedral photos

Click the thumbnails to see larger versions of the images

Oh, and don’t miss…

Conclusion

If you have half an interest in history and things medieval, this is the place for you. And if you don’t, it might just spark it for you.

Even if you don’t know the history, just looking at the construction of the building, the craftsmanship of the stone and wood, the oak roof, the lower church, will fill you with wonder if nothing else.

But I would recommend reading a bit to know the cathedral’s history beforehand, or take the guided tour. For me, I wish now that I had read my grandfather’s tour script before I visited. I walked through the same spaces he described, looked at the same details he pointed out to visitors for years, and understood almost none of what I was seeing.

I walked past all of it.

If I go back — and I will go back — I’ll take a private tour with my grandfather and his script.

FAQ

Have you visited Glasgow Cathedral, or does it belong on your Scotland list? Leave a comment below — and if this post helped you understand what you were looking at, save it for your next visit.