They are one of the most familiar sites as you drive into Glasgow, whether from the east of the west, but the concrete water towers on the skyline of the city are slowly vanishing. I have used this as an excuse to run around a few of those still standing, and try to document all the ones I can think of in and around Glasgow.
It's hard not to think of War of the Worlds by HG Wells when you see these towers
Looking like alien spaceships, arrived in suburbia from Planet Brutalism, these concrete towers are often much loved local landmarks, despite the less clean lines they now have with the mobile phone masts that they have almost universally sprouted. In and around Glasgow most of the water towers were built to provide reliable supplies to the post-war housing estates that were built in the 1950s. They are filled with water from Loch Katrine, pumped up to a height that lets gravity feed the local houses with reliably pressurised water supplies. They are increasingly being replaced by underground reservoirs, so I have tried to get a few quick photographs of some of those still standing in 2019. If I have missed any, then please add them to the comments below
HMS Thunder Child being destroyed by a water tower
Barloch, Milngavie
As part of the Victorian Loch Katrine waterworks project to supply Glasgow with clean water in the 1850s, the Milngavie water treatment works at Mugdock were constructed at a cost to the city at that time of almost £2 million. Three reservoirs hold water from Loch Katrine, which is filtered and chlorinated and then piped down to Glasgow.
Milngavie Water Treatment Works
The Barloch area of Milngavie has the nearest water tower I could find to Mugdock Reservoir (it is literally a couple of hundred yards away). Standing atop a hill, on the appropriately named Tower Place. Built in 1959 it is not the largest one around but has the nice feature of a children's playpark at the foot of it, perfect for brainwashing your toddlers into connecting happiness with concrete brutalism.
Tower Place, Barloch
Barloch water tower
Barloch water tower
Barloch water tower
Leafy suburbia and concrete functionality
Old Glasgow hospital water towers
I have previously written about the old hospital buildings of Glasgow, many of which are being demolished as the health board modernises its facilities. Often when a hospital is flattened the only part which is listed as architecturally significant, is the old water tower and on many instances these are standing long after the surrounding hospital has vanished. When building a complex of Victorian hospital wards an elevated water tower appears to have been essential to ensuring a reliable water supply to the various units. Here are a few of those still standing at Leverndale Hospital, Ruchill Hospital and Stobhill.
Leverndale Hospital water tower
Leverndale Hospital water tower
Ruchill Hospital water tower
The beautiful Ruchill Hospital water tower
Ruchill Hospital water tower. The land surrounding it awaits re-development
Stobhill Hospital water tower, which has a clock built into it
Cranhill Water Tower
Cranhill water tower, at the junction of Stepps Road and Bellrock Road, was built in 1951 by F.A. MacDonald and partners, elevated to provide water pressure to supply the nearby council estate when it was built. It is unusual now among the city water towers because it is square in shape. It's other oddity is that it has a collection of sculptures at the foot of it. Andy Scott designed the six figures at the base of the water tower, with Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, three sirens and a mermaid accompanied by a fish with a ring in its mouth from the Glasgow coat of arms.
Cranhill water tower, Glasgow
Cranhill water tower, Glasgow
Sculpture at Cranhill water tower, Glasgow
Poseidon and salmon, by Andy Scott, at Cranhill water tower
Garthamlock and Craigend Water Towers
The largest and second largest water towers in Britain stand together at Jerviston Road in Garthamlock. They were built between 1956 and 1958 to designs by F.A. MacDonald and partners (who also built the Dawsholm gas works and the earlier Cranhill water tower). The Garthamlock water tower contains 1,000,000 gallons of water, pumped up to the tank from a feed from Loch Katrine. The height means it supplies the local housing estate using gravity. The reinforced concrete legs look quite spindly and insect-like, and its distinctive appearance makes it a very familiar sight on the Glasgow skyline. Between 1999 and 2003, like several other water towers in the city, it was illuminated as part of an arts project.
Craigend and Garthamlock water towers, Glasgow
Craigend and Garthamlock water towers, Glasgow
Garthamlock water tower, Glasgow
Craigend and Garthamlock water towers, Glasgow
Bishopbriggs (or Bearyards) Water Tower
Just off Boclair Road, on Wester Cleddens Road in Bishopbriggs sits Bearyards Water Tower. This distinctive concrete cylindrical water tower was built by Drummond Lithgow and company in 1959 to familiar designs from F.A. MacDonald and partners. 80 feet in height it contains 600,000 gallons of water.
Bishopbriggs water tower
Bishopbriggs water tower
Bishopbriggs water tower
Drumchapel Water Tower
A familiar sight to anyone living in Drumchapel, or driving into Glasgow along Great Western Road, the Drumchapel Water Tower sits on a hill beside Kells Place. Appropriately the water tower up the Drum, has smoother lines than other water towers in and around Glasgow, almost like...eh, a drum, you might say. (Sorry). The empty land around it has several fine pigeon lofts sited there.
Drumchapel water tower
Drumchapel water tower
Drumchapel water tower
Water tower viewed from the red blaes football pitches of Drumchapel High School
Auchinairn Water Tower
As it is at the top of a hill, the Auchinairmn water tower is a bit harder to find on it's shorter stilts. It is hidden behind the Campsie Pub on Woodhill Road. It has more the feel of a 1960s service station restaurant, one which was designed to look futuristic but ended up smelling of cabbage and becoming quickly dated.
Auchinairn water tower
Auchinairn water tower
Auchinairn water tower
Auchinairn water tower
East Kilbride Water Tower, Greenhills
I was advised that there is also a water tower in Whitehills in East Kilbride, but I couldn't find it, and in fact once I had found the Alistair McCoist Complex in Whitehills I stopped looking, shocked at seeing the words "Alistair McCoist" and "Complex" in the same phrase. The Greenhills Water Tower sits on Beech Grove. Unlike the other ones I came across, it is not all fenced in, clearly a reflection of the less anti-social behaviour that our new town neighbours exhibit.
Greenhills water tower, East Kilbride
Greenhills water tower, East Kilbride
Greenhills water tower, East Kilbride
Tannochside Water Tower, Uddingston
In trying to pin down water towers in and around Glasgow, the question starts to become "How far away does it still count?" So I drew a line at Uddingston as again it's a tower you can catch sight of on your way into Glasgow. There are also water towers still standing in Motherwell and Cumbernauld, but I will leave them for someone else. Hovering above a Scotmid supermarket on Aikenhead Road the Tannochside water tower is similar to the larger one at Garthamlock. Like many of them, it is a functional thing where a bit of thought has gone into the design, resulting in a huge lump of concrete carrying tons of water, looming over people's back gardens but managing to look light on its spindly legs.
Tannochside water tower
Tannochside water tower
Tannochside water tower
City Centre Water Tower Designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh - The Lighthouse
And finally The Lighthouse, a Glasgow water tower in the city centre that you can forget is a water tower. The inside has been stripped out and you can ascend it on a spiral staircase to get one of the best views over Glasgow, but the Mackintosh tower at The Lighthouse was originally a water tower which he worked into one of his earliest designs. Now housing Scotland's Centre for Designs and Architecture the Lighthouse building was Charles Rennie Mackintosh's first public commission. Dating from 1895, it was built to house the Herald newspaper. Mackintosh added an 8000 gallon water tower to his design for fire protection due to all the flammable materials that would be in the building. (Thinking about fire protection in a Mackintosh building? There's surely a lesson there.)
Water tower of The Lighthouse building, Glasgow city centre
Water tower of The Lighthouse building, Glasgow city centre, as viewed from the multi-storey car park across Mitchell Lane
Staircase up the Lighthouse water tower
Water tower of The Lighthouse building, Glasgow city centre
And Remembering Those No Longer With Us
As water supply systems change many water towers in Glasgow have become redundant, and vanished in recent years. Here are a few that people may remember, but which are now demolished.
Milton water tower stood from 1949 at the top of a hill in Milton, and was intentionally designed to be functional and an attractive focal point with seating and a garden at the base. At 55 feet in height it held 24,000 gallons of water in a 21 foot deep tank.
Milton water tower 1949, now demolished.
Cochno Hill above Faifley has lovely views over Glasgow and the Clyde. Until 2015 an unusual water tower stood there at the Cochno water plant, a tower which could be spotted from all around Clydebank. As it is still present in satellite shots on Google maps, I went up expecting to find it still there but there are now new houses and an nursing home being built on the site and the tower was demolished in October 2015.
Cochno water tower - now demolished
The new Cochno water treatment works, to the east of the older works on current Google maps
Cochno in 2019, the water tower now gone
Cowglen near Pollok shopping centre has also lost its water tower in the past couple of years to development of the site for housing. This tower was visible from Barrhead Road and from the M77 behind the concrete National Savings and Investment bank building (NSI) at Cowglen. My granny worked here for years, and I hadn't realised that it had been demolished (in February 2017) until I went out looking for the water tower last week. The water tower was actually supplying water to Cowglen Hospital, which operated here from 1931 until 2000. The "redundant water tower" can be seen in the Glasgow City Council 2011 plans to redevelop the site. Again it was an unusual looking one, smaller and heavy on the functionality.
2011 Glasgow City Council plans for Cowglen redevelopment
"redundant water tower" at Cowglen before demolition
Nearby in Pollok was a large, rectangular water tower which has now made way for a housing development. At the top of the hill in Crookston Forest (or Stirling Maxwell Forest Park) off Lyoncross Road this had been lying derelict for many years, a regular haunt for the local youths.
Pollok water tower 2007 - now demolished
Pollok water tower 10 years ago - now demolished
Springburn had a similar looking large, rectangular water tower, which resembles the Parthenon on aerial photographs from the 1950s. It was located in Springburn Park and the concrete foundations where it stood can still be seen. Though now underground, the Cockmuir Reservoirs in Springburn Park still store 1,000,000 litres of water to supply the local area.
Springburn water tower, behind the old cricket pavilion in Springburn Park, demolished in 1978
Again trawling through the aerial photographs on the Britain from above website you can find a water tower that used to stand over the houses of Ruchill. Lying between Leighton Street and Curzon Street in Ruchill it can be seen above the back gardens between 45 and 47 Leighton Street, near to the golf course..
Ruchill 1953
There were also water towers, now demolished, in Queenslie, Preisthill (in fact two towers here) and yet another in Crookston ( where Markdow Drive now sits - demolished in 1998).
Those were the only ones that I could think of or find. I would be happy to hear about any that I have missed, past or present. The water towers are one of those things you maybe don't notice until you start looking.
In the preface to his Orwell Prize winning book, Poverty Safari, Darren McGarvey talks about the residents of Grenfell Tower. They had been warning for months about the fire dangers they could see in their flats. They were a group of people whose voices were not listened too. After the tragedy, in which 72 people died, the media, and even Theresa May tried to visit the community, but retreated away quickly. Theresa May was criticised for not speaking to any victims of the tragedy, citing security concerns. For her "poverty safari" she kept her distance, the poor were a dangerous and unpredictable alien species, best approached cautiously, and with protection nearby. Certainly not listened to or understood.
The image below of two kids playing in a manky Glasgow close is repeatedly used in the media to illustrate stories about poverty. I fear that it is overly reductive and plays to stereotypes, without being an accurate representation of poverty in the UK. It plays to ideas of poor people not being like "us", best viewed from afar, in their own world, rather than people who should be understood and listened to.
What is poverty?
The most commonly used definition of poverty is based upon income. The OECD defines those living "below the poverty line" as those in households living on less than half the median household income of the country.
("Median"? Brief diversion into statistics. The mean is what most of us understand as the average - you add up all the numbers in a sequence and divide by how many numbers you had. The median is the middle number in a range, used when there are extreme outliers that can skew an average, eg the very rich. If your numbers are 1,3,3,4,5,7,10,17,40 the mean is 90 dived by 9 = 10. Whereas the median is 5 in this example. "Poverty" is not those living below half the "average" income, but HALF the MEDIAN income).
By this measure of poverty over a third of the population of Britain is living below the poverty line (a ratio of 0.3555, which is among the worst ratios in Europe). Newer definitions of poverty add in calculations for childcare costs, as the previous measure overestimated the disposable income of households with children.
Statistics are slippery beasts however, so what does this mean in reality if you are living in poverty?
Poverty means lacking food, lacking heat, lacking secure housing, lacking adequate clothing. It means being excluded from things others in society take for granted, such as holidays, trips to the cinema or even using public transport. It means having a lot less than other people, including opportunities to change your position. This leads to mental health problems, physical health problems, feelings of worthlessness, insecurity and feelings of being judged by the media, and by society.
Children from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be born premature, more likely to suffer chronic illness and disability in childhood. Children living in deprivation fall behind in education at every stage in life. Childhood poverty also has a hugely significant effect on life expectancy. The BBC news article above, from 2018, shows that those living in the most affluent areas of England can expect to live 8 years longer than those in the poorest areas (although the article is about England, have a look at the photograph they use - does it look familiar?).
News article in Glasgow Herald 23rd February 2019
In Scotland the difference is more stark. In the most deprived areas of Glasgow life expectancy for men is 67.8 years, in the least deprived areas of East Dumbartonshire (less than 10 miles away in Bearsden and Milngavie) it is 81.2 years. Remember that for ALL of these men, you won't be able to start collecting your state pension until the age of 66.
In the UK work does not guarantee a way out of poverty. Two thirds of children living in poverty are in a house where at least one family member is working. People with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than their peers, and people from certain ethnic minorities also suffer higher rates of poverty than the UK average.
Okay, without labouring the point, poverty is bad, has a huge effect on people's lives and costs the UK billions of pounds in lost revenue as vast numbers of people lack opportunities to live productive, healthy lives.
Media images of poverty
When it comes to media images of poverty, in newspapers and online articles, the same stock photographs are used again and again and again. And again. It gets dusted off more often than the chunky couple bulging out of their clothes and eating ice cream cones that gets used for every "obesity story".
A couple of faceless young boys play football, or climb a fence beside a graffiti-daubed tenement. The windows are boarded up, the garden is unkempt and overgrown, a shopping trolley is sometimes seen. The unsupervised kids sometimes look like they are actually adding to the graffiti or kicking a ball against the door; "feral" you might say. For the audience and for the editors that keep picking these images it ticks all the boxes.
It's a shorthand, an image that tells the story to the audience. It is also one that looks very familiar to me, for two reasons.
Firstly the tenement is recognisably from Glasgow. It reminded me of buildings in Garthamlock and Dalmarnock, and I spent a bit of time out and about trying to find out where it was. I did find it eventually, although I was wrong, it lies south of the River Clyde, as I will explain later.
Secondly, it looked familiar to me personally as I have a photograph of my brother and me at similar ages, outside a graffiti-daubed tenement, unkempt back court and boarded up windows. I was that media stereotype.
Me with the carrier bag in 1970s Glasgow
Except this photograph of me only tells part of the story. Our tenement was virtually uninhabitable at the time this photo was taken. Rat-infested, no bath or shower, no central heating, no hot water, and (importantly) awaiting demolition shortly after this picture was taken. We were soon to be re-housed to a newly built council house (ask your dad), in Maryhill.
The photographs that have been used continuously for over 10 years to illustrate news stories of poverty are likewise not what they seem. The other thing I know about the type of tenements I recognised in these pictures, is that they too were demolished shortly after the pictures were taken in 2008. Nobody lived in those boarded up flats. Nobody was there to care for the garden or keep an eye out for vandalism. The images fit a handy stereotype, which I believe is harmful and not particularly accurate or representative.
POVERTY - as illustrated in The Guardian, Sky News, The Independent,
The Times, Daily Record...and ,eh, David Icke's website.
A poverty of ideas
The Joseph Rowantree Foundation issued a report in 2008 criticising media reports on poverty as drawing on...
"...stock phrases and a familiar journalistic repertoire which portrayed government as active, while people experiencing poverty (when not overtly stigmatised) were represented as passive victims. Even when coverage was generally sympathetic, it risked differentiating those experiencing poverty from mainstream society, and portraying them as lacking initiative, unproductive and a burden on 'us'."
I would argue that the pictures used repeatedly to present an image of poverty reinforce this idea that the story is not about "people like me". I don't live in a house like that. I supervise my kids, clean my close and cut my grass. These images feed a narrative of "them and us".
Other analysts have looked at how the media stigmatises those living in poverty, describing how media representation...
"...contributes to the public's perception that people living in poverty are at fault for their financial circumstances due to individual character flaws and weaknesses, as opposed to structural constraints...framing techniques that present poverty as an individual problem rather than a societal issue rooted in economic and political inequality further reinforce the perceived undeservingness of the poor"
Read all about it. The undeserving poor
An LSE research paper in 2014 analysed how British newspapers represent poverty, and came to some interesting conclusions. In domestic stories the focus was limited to stories of poverty in the elderly and in childhood. The causes of poverty in these stories was unknown or unreported. However in stories on poverty outside the UK the socio-political inefficiencies responsible for the poverty were examined and analysed. I was struck by that today when I was driving home from work and poverty in Venezuela was being discussed alongside debate about the political and governmental situation that was causing it. The LSE researchers also concluded that British newspapers had a...
"...tendency to distance poverty from general society and portray it as a problematic Other."
That's the problem I have with these unsupervised children in a neglected building illustrating every single story we read on the topic, this "othering". They are not like "us", these poor people. We wouldn't end up in that situation. It must be the fault of the parents, not society or government.
In a lecture in 2017 Ruth Lister, Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University, talked about "Othering the poor". She described it as a process...
"...through which 'the poor' are treated as different from and inferior to the rest of society....a line is drawn between 'us' and 'them'...It is not a neutral line, but one imbued with negative value judgements that diminish and construct 'the poor' variously as a source of contamination, a threat to be feared, an 'undeserving' economic burden, an object of pity or even as an exotic species to be explored. Broadly, 'othering' condemns 'the poor' for what they do or looks down on them for the qualities or capacities they are considered to lack."
A counter narrative can be constructed, based on a politics of redistribution. This needs recognition of the causes of the problem, and recognition of the attributes and strengths the people being discussed. It also needs their voices to be heard and their opinions listened to.
Agencies working in this area are trying to challenge misconceptions about poverty, and present a different image, such as this video produced by Poverty Alliance.
Reality versus the photos
I do not mean any criticism of the photographer who created these stock photographs for Getty Images. The are a very good piece of photo-journalism that clearly struck a chord with editors up and down the land who continue to use these images over a decade after they were taken. Shot in September 2008, the images clearly state on the Getty Images website "note to editors - since these images were taken the street pictured has been demolished".
So I went to see what image of "Child poverty in the UK" we could use if we went back to the street in these images today.
I vaguely recognised the high flats seen behind the fence in one of the pictures as blocks in Govan and with some help from Twitter I was able to locate the street and find the fence, which is the only part of these images standing today.
These kids again illustrating stories of child poverty in the UK.
Same fence today, at Ibrox football complex, behind Ibrox primary school,
The flats and tenements behind it were demolished in 2009 and 2010
The photograph of the kids climbing on the fence is the one that helps locate the street where the original pictures were taken in September 2008. The fence is still there, but the tenements and silhouetted tower block behind the children are long gone. The tenements photographed lined the streets between Hinshelwood Drive and Paisley Road West in Govan.
However these photographs of children playing amidst boarded up and vandalised houses are deceptive. Like my 1970s tenement in Whiteinch the picture was taken at a time when they were awaiting demolition and were empty. The tenements are visible in the photograph below from early 2009, taken from Broomloan Court, looking east. The petrol station which is still there on Broomloan Road helps you orientate yourself.
Broomloan Court, 2009
By late 2009 the streetscape had totally changed, as this photo below demonstrates. By then 400 tenement flats had been demolished and preparations were being made to demolish the tower blocks (photos posted on Hidden Glasgow forum). Yet every few weeks, these derelict tenements awaiting demolition are re-built in the pages and websites of the national media to illustrate "childhood poverty".
Looking west towards Broomloan Court flats, Ibrox, Glasgow. 2009
By 2010 the multi-storey flats at Broomloan Court were also going, going, gone.
The demolition and regeneration of these areas is something I have watched with interest, as after my Victorian slum demolition in Whiteinch, I have subsequently watched my former block of high flats being demolished, where I lived for about 10 years. I revisited the high flats in Knightswood that I used to live in several times to watch my old block being rightly torn apart and I have written about it here.
From visits to my old flats in Knightswood. Gone, but not forgotten, but definitely not there now
So what is the reality today of the street reproduced repeatedly in media to tell us about poverty in the UK? Do these images still represent a fair version of areas of deprivation today? Here are more stories from the past 12 months that show the poor as "an exotic species" for our delectation.
But here is the reality of that derelict street today. It may still be an area with problems, but I think we need to find a more nuanced way to talk about poverty. The stereotype we get accompanying these news stories is just that. A stereotype.
Then and now
Stereotypes are widely held and oversimplified ideas that can be harmful and stigmatising. If you are wanting to tell a story about child poverty, it would be more accurate to have a photograph of an ordinary class of 30 school children bent over their work, but point out that 9 or 10 of them will be destined to fall behind their peers because of disadvantages beyond their control. Not because they are out in the street playing football, not because they are different from your kids or my kids. Simply because they have less money coming in to their household than their classmates.
Fair representation?
The flats pictured again and again in the papers were demolished 10 years ago. They were photographed just before their demolition. The kids in the pictures must be about 18 and 14 years old now. The space where these flats used to be is still in part a building site, with more new flats still under construction (below).
The Skene Road side of the Govan redevelopment. Ibrox Stadium just poking over the rooftops.
Conclusion
If you were to create an image to illustrate poverty in the UK there would be a myriad ways to represent it. You could use a family where both parents are in low-paid, insecure jobs, one parent working night-shift, one working day shift to save on childcare, yet still having to rely on benefits in the form of Working Tax Credit to get by. A person with a disability struggling to find paid employment, but continuing to volunteer for 20 hours a week in a charity shop. Or why not a 70 year old surviving on a state pension, but looking after his grandchildren 5 days a week to let his daughter get out to work. Don't forget that in Britain the poor pay a far higher proportion of their income in tax than the wealthy. It has also been shown that the poorest in our society also give a far higher proportion of their income to charity than the wealthiest in society do.
If you casually stigmatise certain sections of the population, you undoubtedly reduce people's understanding of their lives.
There is an increasing lack of people from poorer backgrounds getting their voices heard - whether in the media, in politics or in professional positions. If the endless succession of gibbering idiot politicians wittering on about Brexit has demonstrated anything, it is now clear to everyone that Britain is certainly NOT a meritocracy.
If you feel that your voice and opinions are not being listened to, why bother taking part? If the journalist or politician that you hear does not talk like you or have any insight into how your life works, it is hard not to be cynical about what they say. There therefore needs to be increased opportunities for people from different backgrounds to contribute to a more diverse society that represents all of the people in it.
I hate ghettoised areas, where people don't share shops, cafes, schools and streets with their fellow citizens, whether it's people of different class, or lifestyle or ethnicity. I fear that these media images of poverty falsely push poverty into a ghetto, to "other" those affected by it and absolve the rest of society from solving the problem.
Ordinary woman carrying an ordinary child on an ordinary street. This is how The Big Issue illustrated a story on child poverty this week. Easy.
Two new murals in Glasgow city centre have been getting a lot of attention. These modern depictions of Saint Mungo and his mother, Saint Enoch, have been painted by Glasgow-based Australian street artist Smug on High Street and nearby George Street. This new perspective on two saints associated with the city made me seek out the stories behind these characters.
Murals of a mother and child, and a man contemplating a bird...or is it St Enoch and St Mungo?
Saint Mungo, Patron Saint of Glasgow.
Glasgow bus shelter
Here is the bird that never flew,
here is the tree that never grew,
here is the bell that never rang,
here is the fish that never swam.
The Glasgow coat of arms in one form or another is dotted about all over the city - from adorning the sides of Victorian bridges to modern bus shelters. The salmon with a ring in its mouth, the tree, the bell and the bird all tell stories of the city's patron saint, Saint Mungo. Almost 1500 years ago he established his church just north of the River Clyde, and over time the city of Glasgow built up around this site. The words of Glasgow's motto "Let Glasgow Flourish" come from one of his early sermons, more fully rendered as "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word."
Glasgow coat of arms in a stained glass window at Glasgow Cathedral
Also known as Kentigern, Mungo was the nickname he was given as a child when under the tutelage of Saint Serf, in Fife. "Mungo" derives from the Gaelic Mo Choë, taken to mean "My Dear". I think you would agree that this is a more affectionate name than Kentigern, which means "high lord".
Glasgow coat of arms adorning a bin
In medieval times Kentigern was venerated as the local saint, with pilgrimages regularly undertaken to his tomb, which still lies in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral. His death in the early years of the 7th century is recorded in contemporary records (the Welsh Annals) but what is known about his life comes from two 12th century biographies. The mixture of fable and truth in these tellings is therefore hard to unpick, but still informs us of how people in that time wanted to picture their saint.
More recently we have a contemporary imagining of Saint Mungo, in a mural painted on the side of a tenement on High Street in Glasgow, facing up towards the cathedral where his tomb lies. This tells us how we want to imagine the legendary founding father of the city, with Mungo seen as an ordinary man, a bit bedraggled, maybe even a homeless man, benignly smiling down on the robin from one of his stories. The discrete halo behind his head tells us of his saintly nature.
Saint Enoch
To know Saint Mungo's story, you need to go back to his mother, Teneu. In the 6th century, when Scotland was a collection of disparate fiefdoms, she was daughter of King Lleuddun or Loth, who may have given his name to the Lothians where he lived. Loth also appears in Arthurian legends as the father of Sir Gawain. There are very few ancient hill forts in Scotland where we know who lived on them, but Traprain Law in Lothian is one of them. It was home to King Loth, and his daughter, Teneu.
There are different stories of her life, but a recurrent tale is that of her rape by Welsh prince Owain. When she discovers that she is pregnant, her father punishes her, the victim of this crime, and sentences her to death. She is hurled down the cliffs at Traprain Law, the hill fort in East Lothian where they lived.
Miraculously she is found to have survived, and is exiled, cast adrift in a coracle upon the River Forth. She washes up in Fife, where she is taken in by the community of Saint Serf at Culross. It is here that her son Kentigern was born, and given the nickname of Mungo, my dear one or beloved one, by Saint Serf.
Serf lived in the first half of the 6th century, and stories of his life stretch from his being the pope for seven years, to him killing a dragon with his staff in the town of Dunning. He is widely credited with establishing the religious community in Culross (pronounced Coo-riss), a picturesque town still made up of many 17th and 18th century buildings with their distinctive crow-step gables.
Culross, Fife
Teneu and Kentigern grew up here, with Kentigern studying under Serf, and some of the miracles that feature in the Glasgow coat of arms took place during his childhood here.
St Enoch's church beside St Enoch's hotel and station, early 20th century
Later venerated as a saint, Saint Teneu's name became corrupted as Saint Enoch. In medieval times there was apparently a chapel near to her supposed burial place at modern day St Enoch's Square. The later St Enoch's church pictured above was demolished in the early 20th century. Where the grand St Enoch's station and hotel once stood, there now stands the bland St Enoch's shopping centre. I'm sure it's how she would have wanted to be remembered.
St Enoch shopping centre
The mural of St Enoch, in modern garb, which has now been painted on the side of a tenement on George Street has won a lot of love. She is feeding or comforting young Kentigern, whilst a robin looks on. Robins have a lot of tales told about them in folklore, and early Christian beliefs. Some tales tell of the robin getting its red breast from drops of blood spilled from Jesus as the bird tried to remove the thorns from his crown from harming him. The robin was seen as a storm-cloud bird in Norse times, associated with Thor. In Celtic folklore, harming a robin was bad luck, and any injury to a robin, would soon befall the one committing it. Robins also feature in the miracles performed by Saint Mungo.
Mural of St Enoch, by Smug
Saint Mungo
Mural of Saint Mungo on High Street, Glasgow
By the age of 25 Kentigern/Mungo had finished his training with Serf in Culross. Christianity was a new religion for the people of Scotland, with early missionaries Saint Ninian and Columba spreading the word. He set out on his missionary work along the banks of the River Clyde. The story of his life goes that his first task was to go to the house of Fergus, a holy man who lived at Kernach. Fergus died the night that Mungo arrived, and respecting the man's last wishes he took his body by a cart hitched to two wild bulls, to be buried at a place called Cathures that had previously been consecrated by Ninian.
The hearse of Fergus, on the roof of the Blacader Aisle in Glasgow Cathedral, which once housed a shrine to Fergus
Here in about 550AD, in a green place beside the Molendinar Burn, which Mungo referred to as "glas cau" or green valley he established his church. The site today is where Glasgow Cathedral still stands, and the burn is also still there, though culverted underneath Wishart Street, behind the cathedral.
Glasgow Cathedral
Mungo preached here for 13 years, before being driven out by the pagan King Morken of Strathclyde. He then traveled to Cumbria and Wales. When King Morken was overthrown by King Rhydderch Hael of Strathclyde, Mungo was invited back to Glasgow and appointed Archbishop of Strathclyde. His church became the centre of a growing community that would eventually become the city of Glasgow.
Tomb of St Mungo in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral
To be declared a saint, miracles have to be uncovered in your life. Later bishops keen to declare the sanctity of their founding father told the stories of Mungo that we know from the city's coat of arms.
The bird that never flew - St Serf had tamed a pet robin, and it was killed by some of Mungo's classmates who tried to blame its demise on him. As he took it in his hands, and prayed over the robin, it came back to life and flew to St Serf. As Karine Polwart put it, robins are symbolically "the birds that mind hearth and family" so I am glad that we've a wee robin as part of our city's story.
The tree that never grew- One night Mungo was left in charge of the holy fire in the monastery at Culross. Once he had fallen asleep, his jealous fellow students put out the fire to get him into trouble. On waking, he broke off some cold branches of a hazel tree, and praying over them they burst into flame.
The bell that never rang - The bell was one used by Mungo, possibly given to him by the pope. A handbell was commonly used in Celtic churches to call people to prayer. In 1450 John Stewart, the first Lord Provost of Glasgow left an endowment for a "St Mungo's bell" to be purchased, and rung through the city for people to pray for him. This bell was rung out for over 100 years afterwards, and although it no longer exists, a replacement bought in 1641 can be seen in the city's People's Palace.
The fish that never swam - If you could accept the burning hazel branch and the robin resuscitation, you will like this one. The ring in the fish's mouth was a gift from King Rhydderch Hael to his wife Queen Languoreth. She gave it to a knight, and the king suspecteded she was being unfaithful. On a hunting party he took the ring from the knight whilst he slept and threw it into the River Clyde. Returning home the king demanded the ring from his wife, threatening her with execution if she could not produce it. The queen sought it from the knight, who did not know where it was. She then confessed all to Mungo. Mungo sent one of his monks to fish in the Clyde, and the first salmon pulled out of the river was found to have the ring in its mouth, which was returned to the queen. It's a good story, so good in fact that it has been recycled in the life of Saint Asaph. It also bears a lot of similarities to the plot used by Alexander Dumas, where he has his Three Musketeers rush to London to retrieve the diamond studs which Queen Anne of France has given to her lover the Duke of Buckingham, to show her king that she still has them.
Mural of Saint Mungo by Smug on High Street, Glasgow
Versions of Mungo
In the early days of the church in Glasgow, the tomb of Saint Mungo and associated relics attracted many pilgrims. They were seeking salvation and cures, and in return they provided funds for the growing church. Glasgow Cathedral was one of very few medieval cathedrals in Scotland to survive the Reformation, and it has continued as a Protestant church to this day. This means that the Catholic saints and relics are not part of the worship in the cathedral. The tomb of Saint Mungo is therefore rather downplayed in the cathedral today, a modern tapestry thrown over it and a plain cross on top. Also a slightly dour information board beside it avoids glorifying any fake prophets.
"...many pilgrims followed a stage-managed route to get here....Their offerings helped to swell church funds and the cathedral developed around the tomb. Stories about St Mungo are largely the creation of enthusiastic biographers in the 1100s. Important saints were promoted by the church to bolster the faith of believers. Mungo's legendary deeds were exploited during the early days of Alba, the unified Scottish kingdom in th elate 9th century. This was repeated, 500 years later, to reinforce the identity of the Scottish church after the Wars of Independence."
So within the cathedral we are cautioned to be wary of religion being used for political or economic purposes. As if!
In fairness Mungo's miracles, do seem slightly mundane in the grand scheme of things, more like conjurers tricks. Not for him the glory of curing the blind and infirm. Although the deeds of St Mungo and St Enoch are generally only vaguely known about, the coat of arms of the city has been used for centuries. The thrusting, modern, industrial Glasgow could show outsiders its coat of arms, linking it back to an origin story many centuries before.
Coat of arms on Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall opened in 1990, and has one of the largest of Glasgow's many coats of arms for public consumption. The tree, the fish and the bird link Glasgow to a green and leafy past. The motto, "Let Glasgow Flourish" seems to have a slightly different meaning when clipped of its "...by the preaching of the word." Instead of requiring religious duty to grow the city, it becomes a more declamatory. Stop holding us back, let Glasgow flourish.
Kelvinbridge, Glasgow
A version of the coat of arms used by the University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow was established in 1451 as part of the cathedral complex on High Street, and uses a version of the city's coat of arms. The university mace and an open book compliment the tree, the bird, the bell and the fish.
The new murals of Enoch and Mungo are a surprise as they do not show the old history, but give us a modern day mother and child, a modern day middle-aged, and bearded man. The robin and the halos give clues as to who they are, but these founders of Glasgow are average, ordinary people. I quite like this version of the Glasgow story.
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