BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 31st ANNUAL EDITION 17 SAVING THE GLASGOW NECROPOLIS Ruth Johnston THE GLASGOW Necropolis sits at the medieval heart of its city, alongside the Cathedral of St Mungo which was started in the early 12th century. The Merchants House of Glasgow, a merchants’ guild established in 1605, bought the site in 1650 and created this garden cemetery in the early 19th century. Its logo still stands on the main gates. The 37-acre site provided some of the much-needed additional burial spaces in the 19th century for Glasgow’s growing population of some 360,000. People of all faiths could be buried here as, like most of the new urban cemeteries, the land was not consecrated or dedicated to a particular denomination. When it officially opened in 1833, the Glasgow Necropolis was the first garden cemetery in Scotland, contemporary with London’s Kensal Green Cemetery (1833), St James’ in Liverpool (1829) and Glasnevin in Dublin (1832). Its form, like Kensal Green, was inspired by the garden cemetery which opened in Paris in 1804, Père Lachaise. Glasgow Corporation (now the City Council, GCC) took over the management of the site from The Merchants House in the 1960s. Although initially relatively well maintained, by the millennium its many admirers had become alarmed at the way the landmark site was being allowed to deteriorate. As a result, in 2005 a small core of supporters got together to form the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis (FoGN) as a Scottish registered charity, with the aim of giving the cemetery the careful, committed attention it so clearly needed. The charity comprises people from a wide range of backgrounds including members from The Merchants House (now a registered charity), a researcher from the Family History Society and a member of the Natural History Society. The ten volunteer trustees and tour guides promote awareness and raise funds for the conservation and restoration of this working cemetery. The main entrance to the Glasgow Necropolis is through a remarkable pair of black and gold leaf main gates designed by architect David Hamilton. They were restored to their original colour scheme by the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis and GCC in 2011. Kirk Lane, which leads from the gates, was originally designed as a funeral processional route, and its basalt cobblestones are from the quarry which forms part of the Necropolis. The lane passes neglected rose beds which border relatively modern monuments commemorating still-born children, the men from Glasgow’s regiment, the Highland Light Infantry, those who died during the Korean war and those awarded the Victoria Cross, whose bodies rest mostly in unmarked graves in cemeteries throughout the city. The hill of the Necropolis rises above the ‘Facade’, a sandstone memorial designed by architect, John Bryce in 1836 as an entrance to catacombs. It was restored in 2019 by the City Council. According to Professor James Stevens Curl, “The cemetery is spectacular, a remarkable architectural ensemble constituting one of the most memorable compositions of townscape anywhere in the British Isles, and its name, a ‘city of the dead’, is appropriate, for it looks like a splendid hill town embellished with grand tombs and monuments.” (The Victorian Celebration of Death, 2004)
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