Disneyland of the departed

January 7, 2023, 8:47 am , by Richard Lutz

By Richard Lutz

‘The dead live suspended above space and time…’ – Ian McEwan

Step fifteen minutes from the centre of Glasgow and enter a city of the deceased.

It is the municipal necropolis, built 190 years ago to house the memories and remains of the great, the good and the powerful. Monuments, mausoleums, gravestones all jostle for space on the hill overlooking the city- the famed Tennents Brewery one way, the cathedral in another direction, and the urban skyscrape due west.

Glasgow is proud of its necropolis. It’s a major tourist target in fact. Each day, strings of curious visitors, some on guided tours (NB: book early to avoid sepulchral disappointment), rubberneck at the huge statuary or try to read the epitaphs fading with time. Lovers stroll hand in hand among the tombstones, local historians decipher inscriptions, travellers refer to guide books, kids play hide and seek among the monuments that reach to the sky or are tattooed with the faces of ancient gods or mourning angels. It is a Disneyland of the dead.

The 37 acre graveyard is crammed into a maze of grassy paths, broad avenues and tilting terraces that house the remains of the commercial and political leaders of the Victorian period.

Some are intriguingly exotic such as a Moorish memorial (left of picture, below) dedicated to writer Charles Rae Wilson:

Others are simple, elegant, attractive to the eye:

While some are mournfully lugubrious, like this memorial to Victorian uber-chemist Charles Tennent:

No football stars, no entertainers, no online influencers here. The Necropolis is dedicated to the commercial minds who built 19thc Glasgow to become the richest city in The Empire after London. They are the shipbuilders, mill owners, inventors, along with the politicians who ensured that the city remained open for business.

On the January day we visited, winter winds whipped us. The sky was sombre. Flecks of snow dotted our vision as we passed over the suitably named Bridge of Sighs to enter the graveyard. Off to the side, an old Jewish section, full of Cohens and Levis, lay separate with a Star of David embedded on an entrance.

Above were tier after tier of the graves and memorials of the dead. Some are oddly interesting such as the stone to William Miller who devised the nursery rhyme Wee Willie Winkie. It sat near a stark memorial dedicated to 13thc rebel William Wallace. An uncompromising upright sword is carved deep into the stonework. An inscription calls for days of freedom; it rings true today among the separatists wishing for an independent Scotland.

We find the grave of Joseph Coats, the son of a Paisley ham curer, who rose to become a professor of pathology.

He died at only 53 and was a ‘much admired teacher but was known to have a coldness of demeanour and habit of scrutinising his students which instilled a bit of fear.’ But says the necropolis newsletter, he was also a man with ‘an inflexible sense of justice..’

There was Ebenezer Bell, who worked for an engineering firm and died in 1835. He was fatally injured while working on a wooden Clyde steamer called The Earl Grey which exploded while at sea.

And then the tomb of Isabella Elder.

She ran a family shipbuilding business. Then she turned her hand towards creating St Margaret’s College which ultimately was the first institute to offer medical training for Scottish women. She personally funded chairs in both naval architecture and engineering at nearby University of Glasgow (which ironically refused her as a student because she was a woman). And, at her personal expense, she ensured her local Govan neighbourhood had its own district nurse.

And there’s this no nonsense mausoleum almost embedded into the rock and soil of the hilly grounds:

It Is the final resting place of an equally no nonsense town boss called Angus Turner.

He ran Glasgow as chief clerk clerk for 15 years until 1872. It’s said that ‘he treated councillors and elected officials with disdain.’ And kept the public purse on the up and up as trade rolled in from around the world.

In all, there are 50,000 men and women interred or remembered on the necropolis site. There are 2500 headstones and monuments. Some graves are unnamed, their inhabitants forgotten. They rest in ignored peace. Others enjoy eternity with reputations intact, their earthly achievements carved in stone unmoved by wind and weather and solemnly welcoming the 100 visitors a day that climb the knoll overlooking the city.