RITUAL AND RELIGION St Mungo’s, Glasgow Dating from the thirteenth century, St Mungo’s Cathedral dominated the summit of medieval Glasgow – a small hilltop settlement on the site of St Mungo’s sixth century church and seventh century grave. A precious monument from the past, St Mungo’s is the only medieval cathedral to have survived the Reformation largely intact. Most of the structure dates from the 1200s, although the Reformation saw the removal of many decorative features. Gradually the modest town of Glasgow extended downhill towards the Clyde, before the trading boom of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries transformed the city fabric. As merchants created a new centre to the west, the old High Street and Upper Town descended into decay and squalor, and the cathedral became an increasingly isolated figure on the fringes of a rapidly expanding urban environment. The Necropolis, Glasgow’s great Victorian garden cemetery, reputedly modelled on Père Lachaise in Paris, now seems a potent symbol of the ultimate decline of the first city. Today, the origin point of the city of Glasgow is surrounded by modern development, as motorway sliproads and high-rise housing close in on the dark, gothic grandeur of the cathedral.
DP075388 / 2010