Glasgow
Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in west central Scotland. It is the third-most populous city in the United Kingdom and the 27th-most populous city in Europe, and comprises 23 wards which represent the areas within the city boundaries. Glasgow is a leading city in Scotland for university education and research, finance, industry, commerce, shopping, culture and fashion, and was commonly referred to as the "second city of the British Empire" for much of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
In, it had an estimated population of. More than 1,000,000 people live in the Greater Glasgow urban area, while the wider Glasgow City Region is home to more than 1,800,000 people around a third of Scotland's population. The city has a population density of 3,562 people per km2, much higher than the average of 70/km2 for Scotland as a whole. Glasgow grew from a small rural settlement close to Glasgow Cathedral and descending to the River Clyde to become the largest seaport in Scotland, and the tenth-largest by tonnage in Britain. Expanding from the medieval bishopric and episcopal burgh, and the later establishment of the University of Glasgow in the 15th century, it became a major centre of the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th century.
Glasgow became a county in 1893, the city having previously been in the historic county of Lanarkshire, and later growing to also include settlements that were once part of Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire. It is now one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, and is administered by Glasgow City Council. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Glasgow's population grew rapidly, reaching 1,034,174 people in the census of 1921. The population continued to be over 1 million from then until 1965. Up until 1911 the historic area of the city was 12,975 acres. In the major boundary extensions of 1912, 1926, 1931 and 1936 the city has trebled in size to 39,725 acres. The population was greatly reduced following comprehensive urban renewal projects in the 1960s which resulted in large-scale relocation of people to designated new towns, such as Cumbernauld, Livingston, East Kilbride and peripheral suburbs.
Glasgow's major cultural institutions enjoy international reputations. They include the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, the Burrell Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Ballet, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Citizens Theatre and Scottish Opera. The city was the European Capital of Culture in 1990 and is notable for its architecture, culture, media, music scene, sports clubs and transport connections. It is the fifth-most-visited city in the United Kingdom. The city is also well known in the sporting world for association football, particularly for the Old Firm rivalry.
Etymology and heraldry
The name Glasgow is Brittonic in origin. The first element glas, meaning "grey-green, grey-blue" both in Brittonic, Scottish Gaelic and modern day Welsh and the second *cöü, "hollow", giving a meaning of "green-hollow". It is often said that the name means "dear green place" or that "dear green place" is a translation from Gaelic Glas Caomh. "The dear green place" remains an affectionate way of referring to the city. The modern Gaelic is Glaschu and derived from the same roots as the Brittonic.The settlement may have an earlier Brittonic name, Cathures; the modern name appears for the first time in the Gaelic period, as Glasgu. It is also recorded that the king of Strathclyde, Rhydderch Hael, welcomed Saint Kentigern, and procured his consecration as bishop about 540. For some thirteen years Kentigern laboured in the region, building his church at the Molendinar Burn where Glasgow Cathedral now stands, and making many converts. A large community developed around him and became known as Glasgu. The coat of arms of the City of Glasgow was granted to the royal burgh by the Lord Lyon on 25 October 1866. It incorporates a number of symbols and emblems associated with the life of Glasgow's patron saint, Mungo, which had been used on official seals prior to that date. The emblems represent miracles supposed to have been performed by Mungo and are listed in the traditional rhyme:
St Mungo is also said to have preached a sermon containing the words Lord, Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word and the praising of thy name. This was abbreviated to "Let Glasgow Flourish" and adopted as the city's motto. In 1450, John Stewart, the first Lord Provost of Glasgow, left an endowment so that a "St Mungo's Bell" could be made and tolled throughout the city so that the citizens would pray for his soul. A new bell was purchased by the magistrates in 1641 and that bell is still on display in the People's Palace Museum, near Glasgow Green. The supporters are two salmon bearing rings, and the crest is a half-length figure of Saint Mungo. He wears a bishop's mitre and liturgical vestments and has his hand raised in "the act of benediction". The original 1866 grant placed the crest atop a helm, but this was removed in subsequent grants. The current version has a gold mural crown between the shield and the crest. This form of coronet, resembling an embattled city wall, was allowed to the four area councils with city status.
The arms were re-matriculated by the City of Glasgow District Council on 6 February 1975, and by the present area council on 25 March 1996. The only change made on each occasion was in the type of coronet over the arms.
History
Early history
The area around Glasgow has hosted communities for millennia, with the River Clyde providing a natural location for fishing. The Romans later built outposts in the area and, to protect Roman Britannia from the Brittonic speaking Caledonians, constructed the Antonine Wall. Items from the wall, such as altars from Roman forts of Balmuildy, are now located at the Hunterian Museum.Glasgow itself was reputed to have been founded by the Christian missionary Saint Mungo in the 6th century. He established a church on the Molendinar Burn, where the present Glasgow Cathedral stands, and in the following years Glasgow became a religious centre.
Glasgow grew over the following centuries as part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde and the Kingdom of Scotland. The Glasgow Fair reportedly began in 1190. A bridge over the River Clyde was recorded from around 1285, where Victoria Bridge now stands. As the lowest bridging point on the Clyde it was an important crossing. The area around the bridge became known as Briggait. The founding of the University of Glasgow adjoining the cathedral in 1451 and elevation of the bishopric to become the Archdiocese of Glasgow in 1492 increased the town's religious and educational status and landed wealth. By the fifteenth century the urban area stretched from the area around the cathedral and university in the north down to the bridge and the banks of the Clyde in the south along High Street, Saltmarket and Bridgegate, crossing an east–west route at Glasgow Cross which became the commercial centre of the city.
Scottish Reformation
Following the European Protestant Reformation and with the encouragement of the Convention of Royal Burghs, the 14 incorporated trade crafts federated as the Glasgow Trades House in 1605 to match the power and influence in the town council of the earlier Merchants' Guilds who established their Merchants House in the same year. Glasgow was subsequently raised to the status of Royal Burgh in 1611. Daniel Defoe visited the city in the early 18th century and famously opined in his book A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, that Glasgow was "the cleanest and beautifullest, and best built city in Britain, London excepted". At that time the city's population was about 12,000, and the city was yet to undergo the massive expansionary changes to its economy and urban fabric, brought about by the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.Economic growth
Its early trade was in agriculture, brewing and fishing, with cured salmon and herring being exported to Europe and the Mediterranean. Trade greatly expanded and, starting in 1668, the city's magistrates created a new town and deep water port at Port Glasgow about down the River Clyde, as the river from the city to that point was then too shallow for seagoing merchant ships. After the Acts of Union in 1707, Scotland gained further access to the vast markets of the new British Empire, and Glasgow became prominent as a hub of international trade to and from the Americas, especially in sugar, tobacco, cotton, and manufactured goods, to be followed by trade with India and Asia. The city prospered from its involvement in the triangular trade and the Atlantic slave trade that the former depended upon. Glasgow merchants dealt in slave-produced cash crops such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton. From 1717 to 1766, Scottish slave ships mainly operating out of Glasgow's early satellite ports of Greenock and Port Glasgow transported approximately 3,000 enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas. By the late 18th century more than half of the British tobacco trade was concentrated on the River Clyde, with more than of tobacco being imported each year at its peak, to be re-exported to England and Europe, most notably France.From the second half of the 1700s, and onwards, textile manufacturing and exporting dominated trade in Glasgow and its surrounding counties on a par with Manchester. Local coalfields provided the energy to support mechanisation and expansion. Glasgow’s connected chemical industry achieved world-status. In 1801 the discovery of ironstone within the vast coalfields to the east of the city started iron manufacturing and exporting, helped by the invention in 1828 of hot-blast furnaces, to be followed by the creation of steel-making. The new sciences and inventions, much coming from its universities and technical colleges, opened all branches of engineering. Glasgow and the Clyde became the undisputed world centre of shipbuilding. Its port increased to 12 miles of quays and docks and 500 miles of railway. Dozens of new shipping companies were formed, including Cunard, Allan, British India, Union-Castle, City Line, Clan Line and others. And Glasgow became the largest centre of locomotive building in Europe. Commerce and banking flourished.
From the mid-eighteenth century the city began expanding westwards from its medieval core at Glasgow Cross, with a grid-iron street plan starting from the 1770s and eventually reaching George Square to accommodate much of the growth (with that expansion much later becoming known in the 1980s onwards as the Merchant City. The largest growth in the city centre area, building on the wealth of trading internationally, was the next expansion being the grid-iron streets west of Buchanan Street riding up and over Blythswood Hill from 1800 onwards.
The opening of the Monkland Canal and basin linking to the Forth and Clyde Canal at Port Dundas in 1795, also facilitated access to the extensive iron-ore and coal mines in Lanarkshire. After extensive river engineering projects to dredge and deepen the River Clyde as far as Glasgow, shipbuilding became a major industry on the upper stretches of the river, pioneered by industrialists such as Robert Napier, John Elder, George Thomson, Sir William Pearce and Sir Alfred Yarrow. The River Clyde also became an important source of inspiration for artists, such as John Atkinson Grimshaw, John Knox, James Kay, Sir Muirhead Bone, Robert Eadie and L.S. Lowry, willing to depict the new industrial era and the modern world, as did Stanley Spencer downriver at Port Glasgow.