Omega Project

The reason for this Survey is to preserve, at least in photographs, what is left of the monuments of the Glasgow Necropolis. Over the years there has been vandalism and other issues in the Necropolis. This survey ensures that all the monuments and features that remain will be recorded.

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 before they were lost to weathering and vandalism. 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.

THE OMEGA PROJECT

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.

The first burial in Omega took place on 12 November 1833 but uptake of plots was slow. By the end of the 1840s only 170 people had been buried in Omega primarily of a middle class nature. Merchants made up the largest group followed by medical men, lawyers of various sorts, soldiers (including 7 who died during the First World War) and clergy.

OMEGA PROFILES

Profiles of some of those interred within Omega. Of the twenty-six profiles listed below, seventeen of them are brand new. The remaining nine, which include six WW1 Roll of Honour entries, have existed on our website for some time.