Why is Glasgow so quiet about one of Europe's greatest treasures?

Share When you behold once more the medieval Gothic splendour of Glasgow Cathedral, an uncomfortable truth becomes apparent. We Glaswegians fondly portray ourselves as loud, vivacious, edgy, jaggy. We identify as Glaswegians first, then by our district: Parkhead, Bridgeton, Queen's Park, Govan. Being Scottish is often only our third most important identifier. We are unapologetically chauvinistic in our Glaswegianism. Every citizen is a self-appointed city ambassador, under an obligation — one no-one has demanded — to proclaim its virtues at all times, solicited or not. It is a sacred undertaking. Visits to Edinburgh become crusades. Yet we seem curiously docile about our treasures. It is almost as though we have come to accept the ukases of Scotland's cultural Sanhedrin, which tell us that Edinburgh's cutesy birthday-cake comeliness — all porridge and sporrans — must always take precedence. When you enter Glasgow Cathedral, you reproach yourself — and not for the first time. Here is the only mainland Scottish cathedral to have survived the Reformation intact. Few other structures in Europe dating from the middle of the 12th century have bequeathed to us so many of their original treasures, so whole and unquenched. Why has it been so long since I last visited this place, where one cathedral is built on top of another; where stained-glass windows invite you to pull up a chair and cancel the next hour; and where four stone pillars, built in the 12th century, guard the spot where St Mungo lies? Read more: And that is before you even get to the terraced Necropolis beyond, perhaps the finest open-air museum in the UK. Is this just my West of Scotland paranoia, triggered by a month of self-gratifying and self-indulgent middle-class unctuousness about third-rate drama at the Fringe Festival, deemed important only because it is happening in August in Edinburgh? It is of no lasting importance whatsoever beyond the lifespan of a truffle-glazed baguette. My guide for today's tour is Neil Baxter: architect, savant, teacher, academic, author and unashamed Glaswegian apologist. And, oh boy, a raconteur. Mr Baxter raconteurs for Scotland. What was intended to be a languorous peregrination down Glasgow's High Street begins and ends in the cathedral. The historic delights — and modern challenges — of Scotland's most culturally significant boulevard will have to wait. I am long overdue this encounter with this man — by about a year, in fact. Mr Baxter wrote one of last year's most enchanting books, Greyfriars, Blackfriars and Deep-fat Fryers!, a literary and pictorial account of how 'Glasgow made the High Street and the High Street made Glasgow'. It was written to mark last year's Glasgow 850 celebrations — such as they were, which, seeing as you are asking, were not much. The 850th birthday of one of Europe's oldest and most culturally important cities passed us by with barely a firework, smooch or shimmy. Where was the big international prom, the celebratory football match, the neighbourhood parties or the open-air exhibitions? Where was the expensively commissioned four-part BBC documentary about the origins of Glasgow and the 24/7 drama of its everyday existence? Perhaps there were not enough drugs, violence or contrived mayhem for the Pacific Quay hipsters to get their foundation garments in a twist. And, by the way, I am as much to blame as anyone. I should have been talking to Neil Baxter about this last year. So, Mr Baxter, am I merely in a post-Fringe funk about them having a festival and us not? 'Not entirely,' he says. Then he goes further than me. 'As far as the Scottish Government is concerned, the Glasgow School of Art rebuild would be funded within a minute if it was in Edinburgh. This isn't the Glasgow cringe; this is simply the case, and I'm always making it. 'What was intended to be a languorous peregrination down Glasgow's High Street begins and ends in the Cathedral' (Image: Staff) 'Glasgow is the middle son, while the eldest son is Edinburgh, which gets everything. Then there are any number of smaller babies who come along later, and they get their share. Meanwhile, the middle child is going, 'Hello, I'm here too.' 'Then there are the different attitudes in Glasgow and Edinburgh. I have lived many years in both cities. Edinburgh is a proper Presbyterian city: in attitude and in climate. It's f**ing cold. 'Glasgow is a warm city, and I know people may kick me for saying it, but this is because of that huge influx of Catholic workers in the Victorian era who transformed the city and changed it. 'People wanted to keep the Catholics repressed. Well, the Catholics weren't for being kept repressed, and so, from 1829 onwards, with Catholic emancipation and freedom of worship, you then had a huge influx from the Highlands, from Ireland, from all over the continent and from England. 'And you had the Italians, the Italo Scozzese, who have become among the best of us. They are some of the greatest people we've got.' He agrees that, in any other great European city, a cathedral as old, grand and beautiful as Glasgow's would drive renewed cultural and educational impetus. Today, there are visitors of many nationalities, but nowhere in the vicinity is there anything to entice them to stick around: no café or restaurant, save for the stalwart former police box that is now the Copperbox kiosk. 'The numbers at Glasgow Cathedral are steadily rising,' says Neil Baxter. 'I reckon that the cathedral will soon be the second most visited tourist destination in Scotland after Edinburgh Castle. The cathedral is mobbed all summer long now. Historic Environment Scotland has its issues, but they're trying to make the very best of it. And the Friends of Glasgow Cathedral do a bloody good job in terms of providing free guides and engaging with visitors to the cathedral. They are real heroes.' Read more: The cathedral sits at the centre of what is effectively where Glasgow's economic and social history began. 'It was first of all a pilgrimage city,' says Mr Baxter, 'which is the medieval city. It was set in motion by King David amid tensions between the Archbishop of York, the Pope and the King of England. So it's all big power plays gathering around this key strategic location. 'King David wants to consolidate it, so they create the Mungo mythos, built on a real holy man who lived and died in Glasgow. I've been very careful about how I explain that in the book. I've told the truth, but I haven't laid it on with a trowel because a lot of people have faith and believe. Neil Baxter, author of the book Greyfriars, Blackfriars and deep-fat fryers: 850 years of Glasgow's High Street. Neil is pictured on the High Street. (Image: Colin Mearns) 'There's the heavy industrial city, the pilgrimage city, the city of trade and influence. And in the final chapter of my book, I ask: 'What the fu*k is Glasgow now?' It's undoubtedly a world city because we have international education unlike anything outside London, with so many institutions of higher learning that attract a tremendous influx of international young people. I get massively frustrated, though, that we invite the best in the world to come here, make them even better and then pump them all back out. 'So sorry: you're black. Away you go, back to Nigeria.'' Do we shout enough about the historic glories of the High Street, where Glasgow started and from where it would first have its being? 'No, and here's why,' he says. 'The city moved away from it because the city was ashamed of it for a long time. It was a massive slum until the early part of the 20th century.' He uses a quote by Sir John Hammerton, the great Victorian encyclopaedist. He does not hold back: 'The Trongate and Argyle Street, and worst of all the High Street, were scenes of disgusting debauchery, where there were drunken brawls at every corner, and a high proportion of the passers-by were reeling drunk; at the corners of the darker side streets, the reek of vomit befouled the evening air, never very salubrious. Jollity was everywhere absent: sheer, loathsome, swinish inebriation prevailed.' Sir John could have been a BBC Scotland scriptwriter. Now this wonderful, gregarious ancient thoroughfare is disfigured by the relentless ingress of charmless brick-and-chrome student accommodation. I recall a conversation with Professor Sir Tom Devine, the doyen of Scottish historians who made the story of Scotland renowned throughout the world. I had wondered why a full, probably multi-volume history of Glasgow had never been attempted. Alan Taylor, the Edinburgh author and biographer, had ventured much the same. 'It would be a massive undertaking lasting several years,' the professor had replied. Glasgow Necropolis (Image: Agency) I am asking the same now of Neil Baxter. After all, this city celebrates its three major universities and dozens of high-achieving colleges. Mr Baxter has produced one of the most readable biographies I have encountered in recent years, and yet it is about only one old street and one medieval cathedral. You could give the same treatment to another 50 such places in Glasgow. There is your major scholarly history, waiting to be commissioned and undertaken. And there are still many surprises and discoveries interred in its stones. One of them is a rascally little stone carving at the foot of one of the 12th-century pillars in the cathedral crypt — the lower church. It depicts a rather robustly endowed chap who, how can I put this delicately, seems to be looking after himself rather vigorously. You cannot use the immediate words that come to mind on consecrated ground. 'Don't tell anyone I showed you,' says Mr Baxter, while I affect Catholic discomfiture. As with Glasgow, where there is sanctity, the profane is usually not far behind. Kevin McKenna is Scotland's Columnist of the YearShare Get involved with the news