University of Glasgow & Gilmorehill
Atreides83 / CC BY-SA 4.0
The University has been part of Glasgow since 1451, but its move to Gilmorehill in 1870 helped create the West End that visitors recognise today.
The University gives you a wonderful route through Glasgow's history, from its early connections around the Cathedral and High Street to the move west and the development of Gilmorehill. The campus connects naturally with Kelvingrove and the wider West End. I particularly like the stories that come through the Hunterian and Lord Kelvin. One minute you are talking about great architecture and Mackintosh interiors, the next you are talking about temperature, engineering and the wake behind a moving boat.
The University of Glasgow was founded by papal bull in 1451. Teaching began near the Cathedral and later moved to the High Street, placing the early University inside the medieval and commercial city. By the nineteenth century that site had become cramped. The move to Gilmorehill in 1870 followed Glasgow's wider expansion westwards and helped anchor a new academic and residential district around the West End. Gilmorehill remains a working university rather than a preserved monument. Teaching and student life sit beside collections, scientific history and design, allowing several periods of Glasgow to occupy the same campus.
From the south, George Gilbert Scott's building rises above the River Kelvin and the West End, commanding the skyline in a way the University's earlier city-centre homes could not. Within the campus, nineteenth-century cloisters and quadrangles sit alongside much newer buildings. More than five centuries of institutional life have left an architecture of continual change. The University's move west is also part of Glasgow's wider movement away from its historic eastern core.
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