Glasgow is one of the most ancient areas of Scotland

The National

13-05-2025

I will complete the series in a few weeks' time with Edinburgh.
Living for the first time in Glasgow, the city in which I was born, it's been impossible to miss the publicity that is slowly building about the celebration of Glasgow 850, a year-long programme of diverse events which according to the official website is marking the 'birthday' of Glasgow in 1175.
I am particularly pleased that the 850th celebrations are going to mark the transformation of the city over the past 50 years since the Glasgow 800 programme, as I have recently been writing a weekly column about just exactly that massive period of change in The National's sister paper, the Glasgow Times. Do subscribe and you can read all my columns on Glasgow's history on the Times website.
I am also delighted that pride of place during Glasgow 850 will go to the River Clyde, for I've always believed and stated that the Clyde made Glasgow, not the other way round.
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That being said, I must take issue with those who say we are celebrating Glasgow's 850th 'birthday' for as you are about to learn, the anniversary is only that of Glasgow's elevation to the status of royal burgh in 1175 – a huge development in Glasgow's history for sure, but this city is far older than that. As I have stated throughout this series, I am concentrating on the ancient history of our cities and I am writing about nothing that happened after 1800.
Anyone who knows anything about Glasgow will realise that means I will not be featuring the city's greatest period when it rose to become the Second City of the Empire as a result of its industrial growth.
In one sense Glasgow is one of the most ancient areas of Scotland. Fossil records show there was life of sorts in what is now Scotland more than 400 million years ago, and several fossils indicate that there were forms of early life in and around Glasgow.
Fossils and geological findings also show that at one point the Glasgow area was south of the Equator, before continental drift moved Scotland to its present position.
The most important single fossil is that of the Bearsden Shark, now held in the Hunterian Museum. It proves Glasgow was under a warm lagoon 330 million years ago. There are also the fossilised trees in Victoria Park – the Fossil Grove – which date from the same era.
We do not know for sure who the first human inhabitants of the Glasgow area were but we can be pretty certain they were immigrants from the south and ultimately the Continent who came to populate Scotland in the Stone Age.
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They came as hunter-gatherers and developed a lifestyle that included early forms of agriculture – and they seem to have found the natural crossing point on the River Clyde an irresistible attraction.
We know from the findings from the remains of canoes during excavations that took place in the 18th and 19th centuries that native people, most probably Brythonic-speaking Celts, inhabited the Glasgow area and fished in the Clyde in the time before the Romans arrived.
We can surmise that legionaries must have been in the Glasgow area for some time, because between 142AD and 154AD they built the Antonine Wall, named after Emperor Antoninus Pius, who ruled Rome from 138CE to his death in 161CE.
The earthen wall with its 16 forts was constructed just north of Glasgow, running between what is now Old Kilpatrick in West Dunbartonshire and what is now Bo'ness in Falkirk district.
The Romans built the wall to defend themselves against the incursions of the fierce warrior tribes who lived north of the Forth and Clyde valleys in a land the Romans called Caledonia.
They tried at least three times to conquer Caledonia but eventually had to admit defeat and abandoned the Antonine Wall after just 20 years to retreat to the stone-built Hadrian's Wall further south. But in the 1970s, the remains of a stout Roman bath house dating from around 150CE were found in the centre of Bearsden.
Other finds indicating a Roman presence in Glasgow include a 'distance stone' discovered at Summerston and a Samian-ware bowl dating from the second century AD which was found 41ft under Glasgow Green during excavation work in 1876.
Again the Hunterian Museum is the best place to go if you want more information about this period in the history of the Greater Glasgow area. The Roman Empire officially departed Britannia province in 410CE, leaving behind Romano-Britons who intermingled with local tribes. At this point in its history Glasgow very much played second fiddle to a town just 15 miles down the Clyde.
Readers of my series on the ancient history of Scotland's towns will recall that Dumbarton was for centuries the capital of Strathclyde and due to its rock and fortification was known as Alt Clut, the height of the Clyde, the river on which Glasgow would be founded. Alt Clut or variations of it was indeed known to the Romans.
The derivation of the name of the River Clyde is fascinating. West Dunbartonshire Council's internet pages on local history state: 'This name emerged out of the so-called 'Dark Ages' in the time of the Strathclyde Britons. They were a Celtic people who spoke a Brythonic language related to modern Welsh. Their word for the river we call 'Clyde' is thought by scholars to have derived from an old Indo-European root clut that meant something like 'wash'.'
As with the rest of Strathclyde, Christianity first arrived in the area in the fifth century via missionaries sent by St Ninian of Whithorn. But it was another Christian missionary who came to found Glasgow a century later and Mungo – originally known as Kentigern – is still the patron saint of the city.
All of our cities had religious institutes and royal patronage in their early times and Glasgow had both of these advantages earlier than most.
One king of Alt Clut who we know a lot about was Rhydderch Hael – Rhydderch the Generous, the name often translated to Roderick – who ruled over Strathclyde in the sixth and early seventh centuries.
He was a big supporter of Mungo, whose life is the subject of much speculation and legend, due to the fact that the first written history of him was penned six centuries later by a monk, Joceline (or Jocelyn) of Furness, who wrote the Life Of St Kentigern in the late 12th century.
Mungo is said to have been the illegitimate son of St Thenew or Teneu, better known as Enoch. She in turn was supposedly the daughter of King Loth (Lot), after whom the Lothians are named.
He was so enraged at her pregnancy that he had her thrown off Traprain Law – only for divine salvation to occur with Thenew/Enoch being miraculously transported across the Forth to Culross where Mungo was raised by the monk St Serf and took holy orders before going west around the 540s to start a settlement at the confluence of the River Clyde and the Molendinar Burn.
HE was not greeted well at first and had to leave for Wales, where he rose in the church ranks before returning to the Clyde and establishing a chapel at the place he called 'Glas-chu', meaning 'dear green place'.
He was able to do this after gaining the support of King Rhydderch, who features in several legends about
St Mungo. It was said that Rhydderch suspected his queen, Languoreth, of adultery as she had 'lost' her wedding ring in the Clyde. St Mungo duly summoned a salmon which had the ring in its mouth, and the fish and the ring appear in the city's coat of arms to this day.
So much for legend, but what about the facts?
Apart from Jocelyn of Furness, there is no written or archaeological evidence to support this supposition, but I believe that first chapel was established by Mungo in the year 543, as good a date as any for the real foundation of Glasgow.
When he returned to his dear green place he came as bishop, having been elected to that post by the clerics of the kingdom of Strathclyde which, don't forget, stretched all the way down to Wales.
As bishop of Glasgow, Mungo still lived a simple life and spent some time founding other churches – St Kentigern's in Lanark was said to be one of his foundations.
Mungo developed Glasgow on the banks of the Molendinar, then some distance from the Clyde. Where that burn joins the Clyde is now quite different from where it originally did so, having been rerouted and culverted in the 19th century.
We do not know exactly where or what the original settlement consisted of, but there was certainly a church that developed from the original chapel. It was here that Mungo is said to have stated, 'Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of thy word', which became the motto of the city.
According to Jocelyn, Mungo met with St Columba. The latter died in 597, while Mungo himself suffered severe ill-health later in his life and died in 603, though some say he lived until 614.
As happened in the church in Scotland at that time, Mungo was acclaimed a saint by the people, and his burial place is where Glasgow Cathedral – the oldest cathedral in mainland Scotland, which survived the Reformation mostly intact – now stands. It became a place of pilgrimage, which again helped Glasgow develop, and successors to Mungo as Bishop of Glasgow continued the saint's work albeit slowly but surely.
Even as the Scoti and the Picts united under King Kenneth Mac Alpin in the 840s, Strathclyde remained a separate kingdom and Dumbarton remained its capital until a savage Viking raid from Dublin carried off many of its people in 870, after which the capital became not Glasgow but Govan.
As with most of Scotland, Glasgow largely disappears from view in what we call the Dark Ages, but in the then-separate settlement of Govan – which was only incorporated into Glasgow in 1912, against the views of many Govanites – Christianity had already taken root by the 9th century which we know thanks to the astonishing Govan Stones.
Now contained mostly inside Govan Old Church, the Stones are, in the words of Glasgow University's archaeology website, 'the most remarkable relics of the early Middle Ages.'
It adds that the 47 sculptured stones are 'ornamented with Celtic designs. Analysis of the carving style indicates that the entire collection date to the 9th-11th centuries AD.
'Thirty-one of the best-preserved stones are on display inside Govan Old, while the others are still in the churchyard. The collection on display consists of the sarcophagus, two cross-shafts, two upright cross-slabs, five hogbacks, and 21 recumbent cross-slabs.'
The extent of the Govan Stones, and the fact that Govan parish also included the royal parkland across the Clyde, suggests that Govan was indeed the capital of Strathclyde and the city may have developed there had it not been for a bishop of Glasgow and a famous king.