As part of Scottish Archaeology Month, Glasgow Archaeological Society organised tours of Govan Old Parish Church and Glasgow Cathedral on Saturday 22nd September 2001. It being more than 20 years since I had last visited the Cathedral, and never having been to the Govan Church, I decided to avail myself of this opportunity.
The tour of Glasgow Cathedral was led by Hugh McBrien, an archaeologist working for Glasgow City Council, and formerly of SUAT – the Scottish Urban Archaeology Trust.
The emphasis of the tour was on looking at the existing building for clues about its history and development. By way of introduction, HMcB told us that Glasgow Cathedral is unusual in that it is substantially of one build, with little in the way of addition or alteration at later dates. However, that one build is not from the date of the original foundation. The first two constructions on the site seem to have burned down, and by 1200 the Cathedral was on to its third build. The present imposing edifice is the fourth construction on the site, but what remains is almost all from the thirteenth century.
HMcB walked the small group around the outside of the Cathedral pointing out various details which proved in what order different parts of the building were completed. The windows in the choir, for example, when inspected from the south, are of a more simple and earlier style than those of the nave, whereas you might expect the part of the church that was exclusively for the use of the clergy to have the more elaborate decoration. But naturally the clergy’s part of the church would be finished first, so that worship could begin as soon as possible. The nave windows, when they were crafted later in the century (because of course no-one can build a Cathedral using Mediaeval technology in five minutes!), were completed in the latest style, since every Cathedral builder wanted to keep up with the latest trends. The nave itself, when viewed from the north, has an earlier style of window on the north wall than on the south. HMcB gave an eminently practical explanation. The mediaeval masons always completed a north wall first, otherwise they would be working in the shadow of the south wall, since the sun was their only light! The layout of the building is slightly unconventional, since it would appear from a ground plan as if there were no transepts. From the exterior it is evident that transepts do exist, it is just that they do not protrude out beyond the walls of the side aisles – the roofs, however, do go much higher than the aisle roofs.
Because the site of the Cathedral slopes quite dramatically down towards the Molendinar Burn to the east, floor levels had to be treated carefully.
This created a huge undercroft at the east end beneath the choir, and in fact in pre-Reformation times this formed an entirely separate church, which was a place of pilgrimage containing the remains of St. Kentigern (or Mungo) to whom the Cathedral was dedicated.
This Church had its own entrances, and an ambulatory around the east end, which allowed the pilgrims to move through in a kind of one-way system.
Despite its mainly thirteenth century date, the Cathedral does have some later “extensions”. One of these is the so-called Blacader (pronounced Blackadder!) aisle on the south side.
The lower section of this was laid out in the thirteenth century,at the same time and in the same style as the rest of the building, and apparently was intended eventually to be a two storey construction. For whatever reason the project was abandoned with the walls completed only to one storey height. When Blacader was Archbishop (Glasgow’s first) from 1483-1508, he had the vaulting put in and brought the aisle into use. At the N.E corner of the main building is a two storey tower added in the fifteenth century but with a sympathetic eye to the earlier architecture.
It houses the sacristy on the upper floor and the chapter house below. Also on the northern side of the building is a sturdy low structure. This was originally of two storey height and held what was probably the original sacristy with a treasury/strong room below – which for security reasons had no ground floor access – it could only be reached by descending from the upper floor. The reduction in height probably occurred at the time the chapter house was built.
HMcB then took us to the west front where differences in the weathering of the stone pointed to the fact that something had been demolished. He told us that there had been two towers at the corners which had been demolished in the mid-nineteenth century as it had been believed that they were sixteenth century additions. Old engravings showed that the N.W tower had risen as high as the central tower does now (minus the fifteenth century stone spire built to replace a fourteenth century wooden one burnt down after a lightning strike), but that the S.W tower had only been as high as the aisle roof. HMcB excavated the foundations of these towers during the 1980s and discovered that the founds of the N.W tower were of thirteenth century date, although the demolition had effectively destroyed the connection between the tower and the rest of the building so it couldn’t be proved that they were exactly contemporary.
The S.W tower however, was a fifteenth century addition, probably mirroring the chapter house. It is possible that it was built at the time Glasgow University was established, in order to free space elsewhere within the building to allow the early classes to take place.
In contrast to the wealth of information that can be gleaned from the exterior, the interior of Glasgow Cathedral reveals few of its past phases.
Excavations in 1992-3 for new central heating ducts revealed traces of the earlier cathedral buildings, as well as the remains of a wall put across the nave at the time of the Reformation, when the Cathedral had been divided into three working churches.
The Choir became the parish church of the upper part of Glasgow, the west end of the walled-off nave was the church for lower Glasgow, and the space between was allowed to fall into disuse. The undercroft retained the separateness it had always had and became the church for the Barony parish.
The Blacader aisle is lime-washed and has brightly painted roof-bosses. It gives a good idea of what the main body of the church would have looked like in Mediaeval times. In the undercroft, HMcB pointed out twelfth century pillars which marked the ends of the aisles as Bishop Jocelyn had envisaged them, and before they were extended to the full length of the building. The site of St. Kentigern’s tomb is marked by a modern altar and investigations showed a pipe linking a nearby basin to the well in the S.E corner which probably allowed the “miraculous” dispensing of holy water to pilgrims.
The choir is today used as a parish church, and so is fitted out with pews facing the altar rather than the choir stalls ranged along the sides facing each other that it would have had in pre-Reformation times.
As HMcB finished talking and answered a couple of questions from his enthralled audience we realised that the time was fast approaching 6pm, and the Cathedral was about to be locked for the night. We made our way out of the building marvelling that two hours could have gone so swiftly, and thanking HMcB for passing on so much fascinating information about what he candidly told us was his favourite building. I, for one, suspected that he could have talked for a lot longer!