Glasgow Green, its music, football and political history

Glasgow Green dates to 1450 when it was given by King James II to the Bishop of Glasgow and its people. At the time, it hardly resembled a public park, let alone the stunning landscape we see today.

It was a series of ‘greens’ – the High, the Low, the Calton and the Gallowgate Green – and the land was more like a large swamp. It was given a major makeover in the early 19th century when the town council hired 324 staff to remodel the area. They built culverts over the park’s Calmachie and Molendinar burns, levelled out the space and drained it.

Children on Glasgow Green

Some of the instantly recognisable monuments dotted around the park include the McLennan Arch, which used to be part of the Assembly Rooms on Ingram Street. It was inspired by the triumphal arches of ancient Rome, and the Ionic columns of Greece.

Nelson’s Monument was erected in 1806 as a tribute to Admiral Horatio Nelson. It is the first in the UK, predating London’s by three years.

Glasgow Green developed into a popular hub for people to fish, swim, and wash. It is quite apt that in the People’s Palace, you can learn about the history of the city’s iconic washrooms, or ‘steamies’, as Glasgow’s very first opened just a stone’s throw away in the Green in 1732.

The Green was expanded in 1792 to include Flesher’s Haugh, which was previously privately owned and was once occupied by Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army during the Jacobite rising in 1745.

Flesher’s Haugh is more commonly associated with its links to Glasgow’s sporting history. The Glasgow University Rowing Club was established there in 1867, and the Clydeside Amateur Rowing Club formed a football team and played their first-ever match there in May 1872 against Callander, which ended in a goalless draw. They would later become known as Rangers Football Club.

The Glasgow Green Football Centre opened in November 2000 and features 18 pitches of varying sizes. It is also home to the Glasgow National Hockey Centre which was built for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Such a vast green space in the heart of the city meant a lot to the people of Glasgow. Several proposals to disrupt the land were rejected over the years, from an idea to build a canal to multiple attempts to undertake a mining operation on the land.

In the 19th century, the park became a hub for political unrest and change in Glasgow. Groups gathered in the park to demonstrate, protest and celebrate during some of the most testing times in the city’s economic and political history.

In 1816, 40,000 people gathered to demand an end to high food prices, and it was the meeting place for conspirators in the Radical War, a series of strikes in 1820 urging the Scottish Parliament to reform.

Women’s suffrage groups regularly met on the Green, anti-war groups demonstrated there during the First World War, a demonstration was held in support of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and protests were held against rent increases in 1920.

Michael Jackson fans at Glasgow Green (Image: Newsquest)

In recent years, Glasgow Green has served the city’s bustling music scene. Some of the biggest acts in the world have performed in the park, from Metallica, Slipknot and Korn at the Download Festival in 2004 to Coldplay, Katy Perry and Calvin Harris at Radio 1’s Big Weekend 10 years later.

Michael Jackson did his only live show in Scotland there in 1992 as part of his Dangerous World Tour, with 65,000 people turning up to see the King of Pop in Glasgow’s East End.

Since 2017, Glasgow Green has been the host of TRNSMT, an annual three-day festival founded as a replacement for T in the Park. The event has seen the likes of Liam Gallagher, Stormzy, Paolo Nutini, Radiohead and Arctic Monkeys in the park.

This summer we can expect Pulp, Sam Fender and The 1975 to headline as the festival returns.