Glasgow Cathedral & The Necropolis

I got the hop-on-hop-off bus tour’s senior discount which gave me a second day for free, so today I went back on the tour to explore some of the stops. The choice of the city planners to use one of Glasgow’s highest hills for a graveyard for the wealthiest Victorian Glaswegians makes this part of the city feel like the setting of a gothic thriller. The signage for the Necropolis is quick to point out that these people made their fortunes through the slave trade and on the backs of the poor working class of Glasgow. I doubt it’s the tribute they were hoping for back in the day, but Glasgow tells it like it is. There’s a definite narrative of oppression here despite its rise in history to the second most powerful city in the British Empire. With this theme in mind, I took a short walk to the People’s Palace, a museum dedicated to the history of working people in Glasgow. Again, they tell a good story here — oppressive work environments, tragic loss of life, disease, wartime sacrifice, and always a wee bit of Glaswegian humor in spite of it all. There were the banana boots of Billy Connolly and a picture of Robbie Burns as Che Guevara. A trip to the gritty Barras Market fit this morning’s theme rather well.Read more