IT HAS survived fire, the Reformation and even some Victorian “vandalism” – Glasgow Cathedral has a fascinating history.

The city’s magnificent Cathedral is one of only two mediaeval buildings to survive in Glasgow Burgh (the other being Provand’s Lordship).

Until the second half of the 19th century, the Cathedral was the largest building in the city.

Glasgow Times:

In around 1115, the diocese of Glasgow was re-established, making the city an episcopal centre of an enormous area, spreading to the border of England and including Cumbria.

Bishop John was appointed to serve the diocese and it was he who erected Glasgow’s first Cathedral.

The site chosen was the burial place of St Mungo, which dictated the size, plan and structure of the Cathedral over the centuries. Its consecration in 1136  was attended by King David and his court.

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Like other grand buildings of the period, Bishop John’s church was Norman in style, with painted decoration. Some of this highly decorative painted work has been recovered from the site. This Cathedral lasted around 50 years, as it was badly damaged by fire in 1189. 

Glasgow Times:

In 1175, Bishop Jocelyn, a man of great energy and ambition, obtained the charter from William the Lion, which established Glasgow as a Burgh.

He wanted the new cathedral building to be on a much larger scale. At about the same time, he commissioned Bishop of Jocelyn of Furness, a Cistercian monk, to write the story of St Mungo’s life. This may have well been to support the financing of his new Cathedral.

Bishop of Jocelyn’s Cathedral was reconsecrated in 1197.  A long series of additions and repairs followed. In 1233 Bishop Bondington began to erect a new building which was the beginning of the Cathedral we know today. At that time, it was the second largest Church in Scotland, only exceeded by the Cathedral in St Andrew’s.

Glasgow Cathedral had long been a great place of pilgrimage. In 1161 Pope Alexander III decreed that all adults in the much-enlarged diocese of Glasgow should make an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of St Kentigern (Mungo). A second papal bull of 1211 restated this requirement. The lower church was laid out to meet the needs of its many pilgrims, who took the north stair leading to the St Mungo tomb.  His shrine was in the upper choir.  King Edward I of England made offerings at both sites in 1301.

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The cathedral was to further expand although there were long delays in completing its construction. There were frequent setbacks, including a major fire in 1400. Bishop Cameron, who was in office from 1426 to 1446, was called ‘the Magnificent’ because of his notable progress in the building. It was he who gave the Cathedral precinct much of its final form.

In the fifty years after 1470 a series of side altars were added as well as the Blacadder Aisle, built at the request of Glasgow’s first Archbishop, Robert Blacadder.

This amazing Gothic project took 25 years to build. It was not until the 16th century that the Cathedral could be described as completed.

Like many grand churches built in the 13th century, Glasgow Cathedral bore similarities to a number of gothic French Cathedrals.  Like many of Europe’s grander cathedrals, it possessed twin-towered west fronts,  although Glasgow’s were unusual in that they did not match, nor were they in line with the frontage, but instead jutted out.

With the departure of Archbishop Beaton at the Reformation in 1560, much of the significance of the cathedral was lost.  The end of masses meant that there was no use for much of the building. Fortunately, the choir, nave  and lower church were occupied by three separate congregations ensuring the building’s continued use.

In the 1840s there was great appreciation of the enormous value of Glasgow Cathedral and a determination to restore to something like its medieval glory.

While much of the work at the time ensured the preservation of the medieval fabric, however, the Victorians disliked the asymmetry of the original west front.

As a result, they demolished the magnificent original towers, which had set Glasgow Cathedral apart from many of the great Gothic cathedrals of western Europe.