20th Anniversary and Glasgow 850 Tour on Sunday 22nd June at 10.30am

The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis are delighted to announce that in the culmination of special events for our 20^th anniversary celebrations, and in marking Glasgow’s 850^th birthday our Cemetery Historian & Sculpture Consultant, Gary Nisbet has offered to take a unique tour on Sunday 22^nd June @ 10.30am.

Gary’s tour will focus on the sculpture & architects of the Glasgow Necropolis, highlighting on the research and restoration projects of the Friends, and why the funds we raise and the work we do is so important in the protection of the Glasgow Necropolis, a cemetery of international significance.

Places for this tour will be limited, and will book out fast, so we would recommend booking early to avoid disappointment. Please e-mail tours@glasgownecropolis.org

Alexander Stoddart tour of Necropolis – photo courtesy of Jess Lucas

Did you know the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis, will be celebrating its 20^th Anniversary this year? It’s 20 years since the public launch on the 22^nd June 2005 at the Merchants House of Glasgow

As part of our celebrations we are delighted to announce that our Patron, Alexander Stoddart, the King’s Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland, has generously offered to undertake a very special tour on Saturday 21^st June @ 2.00pm. All donations from which will help raise much needed funds which will continue to support our conservation and restoration work within the Glasgow Necropolis.

Places will be limited and we expect this tour will be very popular, so get in quick to secure your place!

All places must be booked in advance and Bookings can be made by emailing tours@glasgownecropolis.org.

We look forward to seeing you Saturday 21^st June @ 2.00pm.

Glasgow Science Festival 25 –  Walking Tour by The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis & the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing at the University of Glasgow on Sunday 8^th June @ 1.00pm – The Health of a City & Those Who Shaped It

As part of the Glasgow Science Festival 25, and in this, Glasgow’s 850^th Birthday year, the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis are delighted to announce that in partnership with the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing at the University of Glasgow, we will be undertaking a special themed tour on Sunday 8^th June @ 1.00pm, which will focus on The Health of a City and Those Who Shaped It.

Join us at the Glasgow Necropolis as we hear the stories of pioneering healthcare providers who navigated poverty, poor sanitation and overcrowding to bring healthcare to the Citizens of Glasgow. This is health in its widest sense, from healthcare to childcare, from education to philanthropy, from medical advancements to the work of the City Improvement Trust, come and hear the stories of those who shaped and changed the health of the City of Glasgow forever.

Be inspired by the nurses of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and those women and men whose contributions are too often forgotten and lost from history.

Places will be limited and we expect this tour will be very popular, so get in quick to secure your place!

All places must be booked in advance and Bookings can be made by emailing tours@glasgownecropolis.org.

We look forward to seeing you Sunday 8^th June @ 1.00pm.

As we remember those who perished in the Cheapside Street Disaster on this the 65th Anniversary, two new articles have been added Profiles section of our website.

https://www.glasgownecropolis.org/profiles/cheapside-street-disaster/

https://www.glasgownecropolis.org/profiles/ian-archibald-cormack-mcmillan-1929-1960/

(c) Scott Kerr (The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis)

28th March 2025

The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis reflects on the weekend that has just passed. We were once again honoured to have laid over 160 symbols of remembrance at the monuments of the fallen as well as leading a Remembrance Sunday tour undertaken by our volunteer tour guides. Thanks to all of you who attended the tour.

We Will Remember Them.

Gunner John Buchanan Monteith

Private Robert Duncan Wilson and Chief Engine Room Artificer Thomas Fyfe Grant

Posted 11th November 2024

Published May 2024

In 2017 Morag Fyfe, FoGN’s researcher, initiated a project to index the Burial Registers of the Glasgow Necropolis and in February 2024 the indexers reached a milestone when the burial of 9 months old Mary McFadyen in common ground in Compartment Eta on 5 October 1872 was added to the database. This burial marked the end of the use of common ground in the Glasgow Necropolis; from then on all burials took place in family owned lairs. Between 19 June 1833 and that date 21,856 burials took place in common ground, 69% of the total number of burials for that period. Over the course of these 39 years plots of common ground opened, closed and re-opened in various parts of the Necropolis. The numbers buried varied from 235 squeezed into Compartment Delta to 4,674 in Compartment Iota and 8,094 in Compartment Eta.

The precise location of the common graves within the various compartments is unknown but in 2017 the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis obtained funding from HLF for a geophysical survey of five of the possible areas. That identified an area to the north east of the large open triangular area of Compartment Eta in the lower Necropolis which contains the unmarked graves of over 8,000 people. We subsequently approached GCC for permission and assistance to mark the boundary of this area with a Wildflower Border and, in 2021, further bulbs and wildflowers were planted with the help of volunteers. The final touch will be to place a stone marker at this site with the numbers of people buried there on it.

Eta Wildflower Border Memorial in 2023

In 2023 Angus Farquhar, creative director of Aproxima Arts, a Scottish arts based charity, launched Glasgow Requiem, a three year creative programme. One aspect of this was to embellish our earlier efforts and make the whole area of Eta a flower meadow as a memorial to those unremembered thousands. Planting started in December 2023 and further planting occurred in May 2024.

Morag concentrated on investigating further into the occupants of the unmarked graves and has published many of these stories on our Newsletters Grave Matters (available from our website).

We now have further GCC funding and a donation from Aproxima Arts to mark another area and our plan is to continue until all areas of common ground are marked with a Wildflower Border and a stone marker. The Marker will also give relatives visiting family members in unmarked graves a focal point for the visit and a place to remember.

Artist’s impression – How the Eta Wildflower Memorial will look in the future

Between 2012 and 2019 the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis ran a project with the assistance of 12 students from the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland in partnership with Page\Park, Architects, and funded by the Erasmus programme to survey, and record the condition, of the surviving monuments in the Glasgow Necropolis. Under this programme surveys of two thirds of the 22 compartments of the Glasgow Necropolis were completed.

With Erasmus funding no longer available, in 2019 the Friends obtained funding from the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities for a PhD student, Michelle Craig, to continue the survey and this brought the total of completed surveys to 15.

In 2021 the Friends applied to Glasgow City Heritage Trust (GCHT) for funding to allow the same surveyor, Michelle Craig, to Survey another compartment and Compartment Omega was chosen. Situated in a prime position on top of the Necropolis hill with the monuments of many prominent 19th century Glaswegians and no provision for common ground, Omega was the only compartment in the oldest part of the Glasgow Necropolis which had not been surveyed.

Please see our Project Omega webpage for further detail and profiles of some of those interred within Omega.

Omega Project

Two new profiles have been added to our website. Both are about people who were buried in common graves in compartment Iota.

Private Thomas Dobbie was buried on 28 December 1846.  William Everette Allenby, a 56 year old artist, died from typhus fever and was buried in May 1847.

Read their stories and those of many others on the profiles page of our website.

Joseph Hume, MP by William Allenby

Explore one of Glasgow’s top tourist destinations, with the official GLASGOW NECROPOLIS TOUR app. This app has been produced to enable visitors to take an informed guided solo tour through the grounds of Glasgow’s most renowned cemetery – the City of the Dead. Monuments include; William Miller Memorial, John Knox Monument & Hutchison Family Mausoleum.

Please note that all proceeds from the app sale will be used by the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis to carry out conservation and restoration work at the Necropolis. The app will allow you to donate more to the charity if you’d like to help us further.

Visit the app page for full details: https://www.glasgownecropolis.org/glasgow-necropolis-tour-app/

Disappointed that you didn’t manage to get a place on one of our Doors Open Tours? Fear not, we have tours throughout the year. We’ll be announcing our 2023 tour programme very soon. https://www.glasgownecropolis.org/tours-events/

Check out our You Tube channel. We have a wonderful drone film of the Necropolis as well as a presentation showing some of the work we’ve done over the years. https://www.youtube.com/glasgownecropolis 

We also have Glasgow Necropolis books for sale.
https://www.glasgownecropolis.org/books-guides/