Page 39 - All About History - Issue 12-14

Tour Guide

08 Honouring GEORGE SQUARE
Rabbie
Without doubt Scotland’s most
celebrated cultural figure, Robert 07 For king and country
Burns is celebrated each year on The spiritual
Burns Night, 25 January. The Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore’s statue was
square is lit up with grand among the first to be unveiled in the square, heart of
illuminations and crowds commemorating the war hero’s service and
gather around the national death in 1809, during Wellington’s Peninsula Glasgow
poet’s statue. war. At the Battle of Corunna, during a hasty
retreat from a much larger French force, Once a boggy waste ground, George Square
Moore led the rearguard to allow his army swiftly became a cultural focus of Scotland’s
time to escape, but lost his life in the process. largest city and is now home to 12 statues and
His daring was not only numerous commemorative plaques honouring
honoured in his home writers, war heroes, scientists and freedom
city of Glasgow, fighters alike. Notably, though named in his
but also by honour, there is no statue of King George III in
the French the square, supposedly due to pressure from
commander
Marshal powerful tobacco merchants who were outraged
Soult who at their recent loss of the American colonies.
ordered a Officially opened to the public in 1786, its
monument importance as an expression of the city’s own
built for the voice, both in celebration and protest, can’t
Scotsman. be overstated. Its practicality as a centre of
trade and commerce is still visible in the sets of
official measurements constructed for the use
of merchants and customers. The square has
endured as the key location for the city’s New
Year’s, Hogmany and Burns Night celebrations,
as well as demonstrations against wars and
austerity. It’s also the centrepiece of Glasgow’s
Start here hosting of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
06 A SPARK OF GENIUS

01 James Watt, the inventor and
03 mechanical engineer, after whom
02 the electrical measurement is
06 04 named, is said to have

08 conceived the idea for a
05
07 new steam condenser
while wandering
End here around Glasgow

Green in 1765.

05 Remembering
the fallen
The city’s cenotaph honours
those Glaswegians who died
during the First and Second
World Wars. It was from George
Square that scores of young men
were recruited into the armed
forces to serve their country to
a backdrop of British propaganda.
Soldiers also took the salute in the square
when they returned from conflicts overseas.

04 Laying the
foundations
A public holiday was held throughout
Glasgow when the City Chambers’
first foundation stone was laid in 1883.
The ceremony saw dozens of processions
throughout Glasgow culminating in George
Square, with over half a million onlookers lining © Getty; Thinkstock
the streets. The key government building was finally
inaugurated by Queen Victoria five years later.
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