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history |
Glasgow Cathedral, or St Mungo?s Church, was built in the 12th-15th centuries and until the 1590s was the parish church, not only of the city, but also of the adjoining Barony (or Regality) of the archbishops. After the Reformation the revenues of the Archbishopric were used to provide two, later three ministers, but at first without a geographical division of the parish. With the appointment of a fourth minister in 1595, however, the landward part was separated from the city as Barony, and the crypt of the Cathedral assigned to it as its parish church. In 1599 the city ministers petitioned the town council for the division of the city into two separate parishes. This was agreed to, but for the time being without effect. It was not until 1647, after a call to Patrick Gillespie as minister, that the council agreed to the walled division of the Cathedral into the Outer High Kirk (the nave) and the Inner High Kirk (the choir). Two years later the city was formally divided into four parishes, all in the presbytery of Glasgow and the synod of Glasgow and Ayr (later Clydesdale). The Outer High Kirk was the parish church of the East parish. The Cathedral was now the parish church of three separate congregations and this remained the case until Barony acquired its own building in 1798. St Paul?s (Outer High) did likewise in 1836 and thereafter drastic alterations were made to the structure, including the demolition of two towers in the west wall. Government aid had been obtained for the cost of the work, eventually resulting in an assertion of ownership by the Commissioner of Works. Control of the structure passed from the town council to the crown in 1857. It is in the presbytery of Glasgow and was formerly in the synod of Glasgow and Ayr (later Clydesdale). |