“Glasgow’s like Nashville, Tennessee: it doesn’t care much for the living, but it really looks after the dead” Billy Connelly.
Kilbarchan group visited the Necropolis in Scotland’s largest city Glasgow, as part of NWR’s Walk event. We followed the Women’s Heritage Walk (provided by Glasgow Women’s Library). The walk highlighted some of the graves of notable females – notably only acknowledging their roles as Wives and Mothers.
The Necropolis opened in 1833. Whilst there are 50,000 buried, 3,500 with visible tombs, the majority are in unmarked communal graves. There have been very few burials after 1900.
The Necropolis is dominated by a statue of John Knox, erected in 1835, it predates the Necropolis. Instrumental in the Reformation in Scotland, Knox wrote ” The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regimen of Women”. We gave him a wide berth and concentrated on exploring many of the ornate gravestones and mausoleums. Sadly many are now in disrepair or completely overgrown. We found a memorial to Corlinda Lee – known as Glasgow’s Gypsy Queen. She was widely respected and remembered for her acts of charity. There’s a photo of her epitaph in the images below.
Here’s a link to the walking information and map we followed. https://womenslibrary.org.uk/gwl_wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/05GWL-Necropolis-Map.pdf
