It should be obvious by now that I enjoy exploring a good cemetery and Glasgow’s Necropolis is one of the best. Established in 1832 it’s located on a hill next to Glasgow Cathedral (featuring in a future post) that, like Highgate in London, was inspired by Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Spread over 37 acres with over 50,000 people buried here it’s free to enter and though there are (paid) guided tours on some days, it’s easy to do what I did and just wander around as you like.
The Merchants House of Glasgow, which still exists today, had bought the land in 1650 and by 1831 had held a competition to find a design for the cemetery with David Bryce of Edinburgh winning first prize. They decided that a landscape gardener should do the work though and hired George Mylne as Superintendent.
The burial ground is interdenominational and the first burial was actually of a Jewish man Joseph Levi, a jeweller; he is buried in what is now the Jewish Enclosure.
There are some lovely and moving monuments – some of my favourites include that for William Miller, the author of Wee Willie Winkie, a poem my parents used to read to me when I was a child.
This impressive mausoleum is the resting place of Major Archibald Douglas Monteath and his brother James – every window design is different but inside are two lowered vaults without any inscription, nor are there any dates outside the monument. The design is based on that of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Cambridge.
This monument commemorates members of the fire services in Glasgow who have lost their lives saving others.
There are also some lovely individual statues such as these
It’s a lovely place to visit, even in the cold, and completely free. You can find more photos here.
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