50 | FEATURES
ICONIC GLASGOW
The Tolbooth words Andrea Pearson
F
or many people it might just be a slightly irritating kink in the road. But as we shunt past in the traffic it is worth
stopping and looking up at one of Glasgow’s most remarkable medieval survivors. The Steeple at Glasgow Cross is all that remains of Glasgow’s medieval tolbooth, or town hall, once the burgh’s mightiest and most important buildings as Gordon Urquhart, architectural historian with Glasgow City Heritage Trust confirms. “This building is one of the city’s most remarkable survivors, and one of which we should be very proud. "During the first world war, and also in the late 1950s, there
were serious attempts to have it demolished, but these threats were always met with strong and vocal opposition." Its position here was close to the town’s ‘tron’, or weighing
beam, a vital focal point that ensured all measures of goods brought in or out of the town were accurate. Around Glasgow Cross would have thronged as merchants traded foodstuffs and goods brought in up the Clyde at the weekly market. Some local names, holding clues to the area’s past such as Saltmarket and Gallowgate, have survived down the centuries. To the east of the tolbooth was once the Gallows Gate - the easternmost entry point of the town through which traffic heading from Edinburgh would have travelled. The gallows, positioned outside the gate, showed new arrivals into the town that thievery and bad behaviour would not be tolerated. The tolbooth served as a further warning to those considering a life of crime. As was traditional at the time, the administrative building also housed the town’s prison. Food was not given to prisoners so desperate souls would have been spotted each day lowering shoes and baskets from the windows in the hope that passers by or family members would give them some bread.
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