Home / Timeline
543 — Present
The timeline of Glasgow
Fifteen centuries on one thread. Follow the whole story from the top, or jump to the era you're after. Linked titles lead to their full pages; the rest are being written.
Prehistory – 1100
Origins & Early Medieval
- —Settlement at the lowest ford of the River Clyde
- 5th–9th c.Glasgow lies within the Kingdom of Strathclyde, ruled from Dumbarton
- c.142The Romans build outposts and the Antonine Wall nearby
- c.543Saint Mungo founds Glasgow by the Molendinar BurnThe monk Kentigern establishes his church — the traditional birth of the city.
- 1153Somerled, Lord of Argyll, sacks Glasgow and its countryside
1100 – 1500
Medieval Glasgow
- 1136The first stone cathedral is consecrated before David I
- c.1175William the Lion makes Glasgow a burgh by charter
- 1190The Glasgow Fair is established — ancestor of today's Fair holiday
- 1301Edward I of England visits Saint Kentigern's tomb
- 1350The Black Death reaches the town
- 1451The University of Glasgow is founded by papal bull
- 1471Provand's Lordship is built — the oldest surviving house in Glasgow
- 1492Glasgow's see is raised to an archbishopric
1500 – 1700
Reformation & the Troubled Century
- 1560The Reformation ends Catholic ritual in the cathedral
- 1568Mary, Queen of Scots is defeated at the Battle of Langside
- c.1600The Trongate reigns as the merchant town’s main street
- 1611A charter of James VI confirms Glasgow as a Royal Burgh
- 1638The Glasgow Assembly defies the king and shapes the Covenanter cause
- 1646Plague strikes the growing town
- 1652A great fire leaves about a thousand families homeless
- 1677A second great fire tears through the timber streets
1700 – 1800
Tobacco, Enlightenment & Union
- 1705Bridgeton laid out for weavers beside the Green
- 1707The Act of Union opens direct trade with the American colonies
- 1711John Scott starts building boats at Greenock — the world’s oldest shipbuilders begin
- 1720sAnderston founded as a weavers’ village
- 1725The Shawfield Riots erupt over the malt tax
- 1740s–70sThe Tobacco Lords build vast fortunes on the Virginia trade
- 1753The Foulis brothers open Britain’s first fine-art academy in the Old College
- 1755The Saracen’s Head inn opens on the Gallowgate
- 1755The Saracen Head established on the Gallowgate — the ‘Sarry Heid’
- 1762Glasgow professor Joseph Black describes latent heat — the science behind Watt’s steam engine
- 1764Glasgow’s first theatre opens in Grahamston — and is burned
- 1765James Watt conceives his separate condenser for the steam engine
- 1776Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations
- 1783Glasgow founds Britain's first Chamber of Commerce
- 1790The Forth and Clyde Canal is completed
- 1792The Scotia Bar opens on Stockwell Street, a pub of folk and radicals
- 1794Glasgow Royal Infirmary opens
1800 – 1850
Industry, Radicals & Reform
- c.1804William Harley’s public baths give Bath Street its name
- 1797Sloans begins as a coffee house — Glasgow’s oldest bar-restaurant
- 1812The Comet begins Europe's first steamship serviceHenry Bell's paddle steamer opens the age of Clyde-built power.
- 1817Calton, the weavers’ district, becomes a burgh
- 1819The Clutha opens by the river in the Stockwell Street area
- 1820The Radical War ends at the Battle of Bonnymuir
- 1823Glasgow chemist Charles Macintosh patents waterproof cloth — the ‘mackintosh’
- 1825The Knox monument rises on the Fir Park — eight years before the Necropolis around it
- 1828Neilson's hot blast transforms Scottish ironmaking
- 1832Cholera sweeps the overcrowded city
- 1836A Blantyre mill boy named Livingstone enrols at Anderson’s College
- 1836Lauder’s opens on Sauchiehall Street — later the theatre pub of ‘Poverty Corner’
- 1840The Southern Necropolis opens in the Gorbals
- 1842The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway opens
- 1842The Botanic Gardens take root in the West End
- 1842The Cowlairs incline opens — Springburn’s railway age begins
- 1845The Old Ship Bank pub opens on the Saltmarket, on the site of Glasgow’s first bank
- 1849The Stirling Maxwells begin feuing Pollokshields — villas west, tenements east
1850 – 1900
Second City of the Empire See the era page →
- c.1850Glasgow becomes the world’s largest maker of clay tobacco pipes
- 1850sThe Ordnance Survey maps Glasgow inch by glorious inch
- 1851Glasgow becomes Scotland's largest city
- 1855Charles Wilson begins crowning Woodlands Hill: the Park district
- 1856Maryhill, the canal burgh, incorporates
- 1859The Loch Katrine scheme brings clean Highland water
- 1860sAlexander Dennistoun plans his garden suburb — and gets tenements
- 1860The Arlington opens on Woodlands Road — later ‘home’ of the Stone of Destiny
- 1866The City Improvement Trust begins clearing the slums
- 1867Queen's Park FC, Scotland's oldest football club, is founded
- 1867The Hope Street pub that becomes the Pot Still opens
- 1869Macfarlane’s Saracen Foundry founds Possilpark
- 1870The University moves to its landmark Gilmorehill campus
- 1870sThe Molendinar, Glasgow’s founding burn, is culverted out of sight
- 1870sGrahamston vanishes beneath Central Station
- 1871Tom Lipton, 21, opens his first shop on Stobcross Street
- 1871A pub opens on the Islay Inn’s Argyle Street corner in Finnieston
- 1872Rangers FC is founded
- 1876Partick Thistle founded in the independent burgh of Partick
- 1877‘No Man’s Land’ incorporates as the burgh of Govanhill
- 1878The City of Glasgow Bank collapses, ruining thousands
- 1879Glasgow surgeon William Macewen performs one of the first successful brain-tumour operations
- 1884The Horse Shoe Bar takes its name and its great island counter
- 1884Tennent’s Bar established on Byres Road in the West End
- 1886William Beardmore jnr takes charge at Parkhead Forge
- 1887Celtic FC is founded to aid the East End poor
- 1888The International Exhibition opens; the City Chambers are completed
- 1890The Glasgow Boys triumph at Munich’s Glaspalast
- 1893The Old Toll Bar opens at Kinning Park, a palace-pub jewel
- 1894Jessie Newbery founds the GSA embroidery department — the Glasgow Girls’ engine
- 1895The Harbour Tunnel opens beneath the Clyde, rotundas and all
- 1895The Park Bar opens in Finnieston — later the heart of Gaelic Glasgow
- 1896The Glasgow Subway opens — the world's third-oldest underground
- 1899John Brown’s of Sheffield buys the Clydebank yard
- 1899MacSorley’s grand Edwardian music pub opens on Jamaica Street
1900 – 1914
Mackintosh & the Edwardian City
- c.1900Glasgow reaches the peak of its industrial production
- 1897–1909Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art is built in two phases
- 1901Kelvingrove Art Gallery opens with the great 1901 Exhibition
- 1902The first Ibrox disaster: a terracing collapse kills 25
- 1902The State Bar opens near Charing Cross, its comedy cellar to come
- 1903The Griffin is built with the King’s Theatre opposite on Bath Street
- 1905Kelvinside-born Henry Campbell-Bannerman becomes Prime Minister
- 1906The Lusitania, fastest ship in the world, launched at Clydebank
- 1906–08Yarrow’s shipyard moves, whole, from the Thames to Scotstoun
- 1911The Scottish Exhibition draws millions to Kelvingrove
1914 – 1945
Red Clydeside & the World Wars
- 1915The Glasgow Rent Strikes — led largely by women — win rent controls
- 1915The Lusitania torpedoed off Ireland: 1,198 die
- 1918HMS Hood, largest warship on earth, launched at Clydebank
- 1919The Battle of George Square: the 40-hours strike and "Bloody Friday"
- 1919Beardmore’s R34 makes the first east–west Atlantic flight
- 1926Glasgow-trained John Logie Baird demonstrates television to the world
- 1935No Mean City brands the Gorbals for a generation
- 1938The Empire Exhibition fills Bellahouston Park
- 1938Queen Elizabeth, largest liner of the century, launched in Munich week
- 1940The Tail of the Bank becomes the Atlantic war’s gathering anchorage
- 1941The Clydebank Blitz devastates the shipbuilding townTwo nights of raids bring the worst civilian loss of life in Scotland.
- 1943James Bridie founds the Citizens’ Theatre company
1945 – 1980
Post-War Glasgow
- 1950s–60sThe peripheral schemes rise: Easterhouse, Castlemilk, Drumchapel, Pollok
- 1950sCastlemilk rises on the Stuarts’ castle estate
- 1950sBuilding begins at Easterhouse — houses first, everything else later
- 1954Children armed with stakes hunt the Gorbals Vampire
- 1960The Cheapside Street whisky bond fire kills 19 — Britain's worst peacetime fire-service disaster
- 1962Alexander Gibson founds Scottish Opera
- 1963The Empire — the comics’ graveyard — closes
- 1966Glasgow-born June Almeida produces the first clear image of a human coronavirus
- 1968The James Watt Street fire claims 22 lives
- 1969Milton-born Jackie Stewart wins the first of his three Formula One world titles
- 1971The Ibrox disaster: 66 die in a crush on Stairway 13Britain's worst football-ground disaster of its era.
- 1971–72The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in, led by Jimmy Reid, saves the yards
- 1972Jimmy Reid’s ‘Alienation’ address: a rat race is for rats
- 1973The Apollo opens; the balcony bounces
- 1975Connolly tells the bike joke on Parkinson — comedy changes
- 1976Parkhead Forge closes after 139 years
1980 – 2000
Regeneration & the Modern City
- 1980Bennets opens on Glassford Street — Glasgow’s foremost gay club for decades
- 1983"Glasgow's Miles Better" launches; the Burrell Collection opens
- 1985Babbity Bowster opens in a saved Adam townhouse — the city’s oldest folk session begins
- 1987The Sub Club opens on Jamaica Street — now the world’s longest-running underground club
- 1988The Glasgow Garden Festival draws millions to Govan's old docks
- 1988Peter Brook’s Mahabharata fills the Tramway
- 1990Glasgow is European City of Culture; the Royal Concert Hall opens
- 1990The Cathouse and the Tunnel open — Glasgow’s rock refuge and its first superclub
- 1991The Arches opens beneath Central Station, funding art with clubbing
- 1993An unknown band called Oasis is signed at King Tut’s
- 1994Celtic Connections fills January for the first time
- 1994The Garage opens on Sauchiehall Street — Scotland’s largest nightclub
- 1996Douglas Gordon’s Turner Prize opens the ‘Glasgow Miracle’
- 1998The Tuxedo Princess — the floating club with a revolving dancefloor — leaves the Clyde
- 1999Glasgow is UK City of Architecture and Design
- 1999Donald Dewar reconvenes the Scottish Parliament as Scotland’s first First Minister
2000 – Present
Twenty-First-Century Glasgow
- 2001The Save Our Pool occupation begins at Govanhill Baths
- 2004The Stockline Plastics explosion kills nine in Maryhill
- 2004Glasgow’s Edwin Morgan is named Scotland’s first Makar
- 2007A vehicle-borne terror attack on Glasgow Airport is foiled
- 2007Govan-born Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister
- 2008Glasgow named UNESCO City of Music
- 2013A police helicopter crashes into the Clutha bar; ten die
- 2013The SSE Hydro opens on Finnieston’s old dockland
- 2014Glasgow hosts the Commonwealth Games
- 2014 & 2018Fire twice ravages Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art
- 2014A runaway bin lorry kills six in Queen Street
- 2014Glasgow Southside’s Nicola Sturgeon becomes First Minister
- 2015The Arches loses its licence and closes, mourned across Scotland
- 2019Queen’s Park end 152 years of amateurism
- 2021Glasgow hosts the COP26 UN climate summit
- 2021The Old College Bar, claimed as Glasgow’s oldest, is demolished after fire
- 2022HMS Glasgow, first of the Type 26 frigates, floated out at Scotstoun