Where Mortal and Immortal Meet: Essays in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral

By Andrew G. Ralston, Mark E. Johnstone and James H. Macaulay

Glasgow's thirteenth-century cathedral is the city's oldest building and one of Scotland's top tourist destinations. The cathedral remains an active congregation of the Church of Scotland and serves as the focus for many events of national significance.

It is, however, many years since a comprehensive overview of the cathedral's history has been published. The standard work, The Book of Glasgow Cathedral, was compiled more than 120 years ago by George Eyre-Todd.

Since then, the interior of the building has been completely transformed, thanks largely to the efforts of the Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral, founded in 1936 by the Rev. A. Nevile Davidson with the aims of "adorning and beautifying" the building and encouraging research into its history.

To mark the eighty-fifth anniversary of the society, this new book traces the story of its achievements and presents the fruits of scholarship undertaken during recent decades, combining essays and lectures on the history of Glasgow Cathedral by eminent historians of the past with new and hitherto unpublished research.

Where Mortal and Immortal Meet will be an invaluable resource for future generations of historians and for all those who have a love for one of Scotland's most significant architectural treasures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Oct 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725299535

Book preview

Introduction

This book has two purposes. The first is to trace the history of the Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral which over the past eighty-five years has sought to improve the adornment and furnishing of the cathedral especially by overseeing the installation of stained glass of worthy quality.

The second purpose reflects another key objective of the Society, the encouragement of research into the history of the cathedral, and with this in mind the book brings together a selection of essays on various aspects of the cathedral’s past. Some of these were originally delivered by eminent historians in the form of lectures to the Friends; others were published in annual reports or in The Innes Review and some were specially written for the present volume, based on new research.

A volume of this kind is long overdue. Where Mortal and Immortal Meet represents the first attempt to present a scholarly overview of the cathedral’s history since Scottish historian and literary critic George Eyre-Todd (1862–1937) compiled The Book of Glasgow Cathedral: A History and Description more than 120 years ago. The cover was by the noted decorative artist and book designer Talwin Morris (1865–1911), a friend of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. This volume is highly prized, not only as a source of information but as a collectors’ piece, and has for long been the standard work on the cathedral.

Since the publication of Eyre-Todd’s book in 1898, much has of course changed with regard to Glasgow Cathedral. The furnishings and stained glass have little in common with those of the late Victorian era. A great deal of research has since been carried out into the history of the cathedral, but the fruits of this scholarship are largely to be found in back-numbers of scholarly journals which are not easily available to a wider readership. While various publications on the cathedral exist (guidebooks for visitors, or studies of specific aspects such as stained glass, archaeological finds, biographies of ministers, etc) there has been no comprehensive volume since Eyre-Todd.

The Society of Friends is very grateful to Dr. Andrew Ralston for all his work in editing this book. We are confident that it provides a compendium of knowledge about the cathedral’s history which will be an invaluable resource both for future generations of historians and for all those who have a love for one of Scotland’s most significant architectural treasures.

Dr. James H. Macaulay

Chairman

The Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral

PART ONE

A History of the Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral

A History of the Society of Friends of Glasgow Cathedral

Andrew G. Ralston

Rev. Dr. A. Nevile Davidson (

1899

–

1976

). Founder of the Society of Friends; Chairman,

1936

–

67

; President,

1967

–

76

. Photo: Glasgow Cathedral.

The weather was typically dull and drizzly on the morning of January 30, 1935 when thirty-six-year-old Nevile Davidson walked towards Glasgow Cathedral on one of the most important days of his life. He was about to be inducted as minister of the mother church of Glasgow and, as he saw the great spire come into view he said that an overwhelming sense of responsibility swept over me, followed by a silent but intense prayer that I might be given the much needed strength to be equal to it.¹ Over the next thirty-two years he proved that he was indeed equal to the task. He was a highly effective minister to his parish and the wider city, a leading figure in the national church, and a pioneer of ecumenical co-operation and religious broadcasting. Yet it is his role in founding a Society of Friends for the purposes of the adornment and furnishing of the cathedral, the installation of stained glass of worthy quality, the safeguarding of the cathedral’s amenity, the beautifying of its surroundings and the encouragement of research into the history of the cathedral² that has proved his greatest legacy. A recent biography, Nevile Davidson: A Life to be Lived,³ traces his life and work in depth but the full story of the Society of Friends remains to be told.

An opportunity which might never recur: The Formation of the Society of Friends, 1936–39

After successful ministries at St. Mary’s, Aberdeen and St. Enoch’s, Dundee, Davidson had received a call I could not refuse to become minister of Glasgow Cathedral, a church which for stateliness, size and architectural beauty can hold its own with almost any of the great cathedrals across the Border.⁴ Though the son of a United Free Church minister, Nevile Davidson was a High Church Scoto-Catholic presbyterian, a group characterized by one ecclesiastical historian as being devoted to seemliness and dignity in worship, and by no means averse from a little pomp and circumstance.⁵ There could hardly be a better setting for such a ministry than Glasgow Cathedral.

But the new minister did not like what he saw inside the building which he considered to be entirely unworthy of its external grandeur. The pews and organ gallery are of clumsy Victorian design, he wrote. The chapels are bare, damp and with one exception unfurnished; and the nineteenth-century stained-glass windows belong to a period when that art was at a low ebb.⁶

Nevile Davidson was by no means the first to remark on this state of neglect. On his first visit to the cathedral in 1927, Rev. James Bulloch, who later became one of Davidson’s assistants, remembered the atmosphere of Victorian gloom that pervaded the place; a hand laid on Archbishop Law’s tomb left a visible imprint in the deposit of grime.⁷ Another visitor entering the building in 1932 was struck by the fact that the resting place of Glasgow’s patron saint, St. Mungo, was not properly marked, the sole provision for tourists being a chart of the cathedral hung in an inconspicuous corner of the nave which he only discovered on his way out.⁸

The interior of the cathedral became a matter of controversy on the very day of Nevile Davidson’s induction when, at a kirk session luncheon afterwards attended by the Lord Provost and other civic figures, Rev. Dr. Charles Warr of St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, provocatively stated that the whole of the magnificent interior should be opened up by removing the stone screen or pulpitum dividing the nave from the quire—a feature dating from the early fifteenth century and reckoned to be the only one of its type left in any secular (i.e. non-monastic) church of the pre-Reformation period in Scotland. This immediately put the new incumbent in an awkward position and he was forced to dissociate himself publicly from the suggestion made by his clerical friend and mentor from Edinburgh (whose influential backing had been one of the reasons why he got the job in the first place!) A few weeks later, during a visit to the cathedral by members of the Glasgow Elders’ and Office-bearers’ Union of the Church of Scotland, Davidson took the opportunity to make clear that no-one who knew the history of the cathedral and who knew anything of medieval architecture could ever contemplate for a moment such an act of sacrilege as the removal of the rood screen.⁹

Warr’s intervention was nevertheless significant in that it ignited debate and contributed to a growing feeling within the city that it was high time something was done to improve the cathedral’s furnishings. The state of the stained glass windows was of particular concern. Between 1856 and 1864 windows in the quire and nave had been replaced with the then-fashionable Munich glass. According to Iain Macnair’s history of the windows, these had aroused controversy right from the start as their strength and glow of intense color were seen to be ‘disturbing and distracting elements.’¹⁰ By the 1930s, however, the windows were a source of controversy for precisely the opposite reason: a combination of poor manufacture and years of atmospheric pollution meant that the intense color had given way to a dim religious light, suffusing the interior with an atmosphere of melancholy.

The process of installing one new window was in fact already under way. A Glasgow stockbroker, Ronald W. Mowat, died in 1929 and left a proportion of his estate to the cathedral amounting to £3737 for the erection of a stained glass window in memory of himself and his wife and sons. Finding an appropriate space for the window caused some difficulties and the kirk session minutes for March 1931 record a simple if drastic solution: it was proposed to remove a window in the nave that had been erected in memory of someone else, James Buchanan, a Glasgow merchant who had founded the Buchanan Institution for destitute boys in the mid-nineteenth century. In the absence of any living descendants, the kirk session approached the Trades and Merchants Houses and the Buchanan Trust, none of whom, it seems, were able to provide any further information. A somewhat uneasy arrangement was reached in October 1931 when the Trades House stated that, while deprecating the removal of the window, they did not propose to raise any objection, provided that an inscription on the new window made it clear that it replaced Mr. Buchanan’s.¹¹ It appears that endowing a window in memory of an individual is no guarantee that it will remain in situ for ever. The new window, on the theme of Moses’s leadership, was by the foremost Scottish stained glass designer of the day, Douglas Strachan, and it set a precedent for what would follow by showing the standard of workmanship that was now available. In his dedicatory prayer in February 1936, Nevile Davidson voiced the hope that the new window might bring refreshment, delight and heavenly thoughts to all who looked upon it.¹²

In other ways, too, the tide was flowing in the direction of those who favored an upgrade of the cathedral. Not only did 1936 mark the 800th anniversary of the dedication of an earlier cathedral building in the reign of King David I in 1136 but the city was looking ahead to a huge influx of visitors to the Empire Exhibition to be held at Bellahouston Park between May and October 1938. Hitherto, Glasgow was seen as a grimy, industrial city rather than a tourist destination but the Exhibition drew in more than twelve million visitors and many of them took the opportunity to visit other local places of interest, not least the cathedral and the adjacent Provand’s Lordship, the oldest house in Glasgow and originally part of the cathedral’s complex of buildings.

All that was needed was a visionary figure who could pull these forces together. That figure was Nevile Davidson and, barely four months into his ministry, he had met with the city’s Lord Provost, Sir Alexander Swan, with a view to holding a public meeting for the purpose of the formation of a Society of Friends with the aim of improving the adornment and furnishings of the cathedral.

There was a precedent for such an organization and in a sense, the story of the Society of Friends really begins, not in Glasgow, but Dunblane as it was here that Rev. J. Hutchison Cockburn, the minister of Dunblane Cathedral, formed a Society of Friends in 1930. This was apparently the first time the idea had been applied to a Scottish cathedral, following a model already used in Canterbury and York. The plan was welcomed by those interested in preserving Dunblane’s heritage: by October the society was able to hold its first annual festival and the number of members grew steadily, reaching 750 by 1938.¹³ Nevile Davidson was one of them.

A dignified, patrician figure with aristocratic connections to the Agnews of Lochnaw Castle, Wigtownshire and the Kinnaird family of Rossie Priory, Perthshire, Davidson mixed easily with the great and the good and by the time of the public meeting to launch the Glasgow Society in October 1936 he had on board a wide variety of prominent individuals and public bodies such as the Trades and Merchants Houses. He had even secured the agreement of the Duke and Duchess of York—soon to be King George and Queen Elizabeth—to be the Society’s first members and patrons, which he described as a very happy augury for the success of the new venture.

Equally fortunate was the willingness of two of the most respected benefactors of the city of Glasgow to serve as vice-chairmen of the Society: Sir James MacFarlane (1857–1944), the cathedral’s senior elder and chairman of the biscuit makers MacFarlane Lang and Co., and Sir John Stirling-Maxwell (1866–1956), philanthropist and former Conservative MP. Sir John was one of the founders of the National Trust for Scotland and after his death Pollok House and much of the surrounding estate was donated to Glasgow Corporation, while Sir James served for many decades as chairman of the Board of Managers of the Royal Infirmary and gave land at Canniesburn, Bearsden for a new hospital to help reduce the pressure on the main institution.

The first meeting of the Friends was chaired by Lord Provost Swan himself and right from the start the various strands of the cathedral’s role—spiritual, civic, and aesthetic—were stressed. As Swan pointed out, a key principle was that the cathedral did not belong so much to the congregation as to the entire city. The resolution to institute the Society was moved by the painter and etcher Sir David Young Cameron (1865–1945), a son of the manse and a well-known figure in artistic circles. He delivered a passionate if at times idiosyncratic speech in which he interpreted the moves to improve the cathedral as not merely a plan to improve the furnishings of the building but as something prophetic of a desire to return to the greater things of life.

Let Glasgow seize that opportunity which might never recur . . . and fashion its cathedral into a shrine of exceeding beauty, alluring and leading towards the pathway where truth is beauty and beauty is truth.

As an artist, Cameron set out a vision of the new Society. It should be

guided and inspired by the thought that many worshiped in large part through the eye rather than through the ear. The Church today only appealed to those who hear and never to those who see. The early Church understood that better than we did, hence we found that from the very earliest all that was finest and most significant in the Arts had a place in temples and places of worship.

In a final flourish, Cameron looked forward to a great universal revival of the Church as a place of appealing beauty . . . when all the Arts would contribute their parts in the mighty chorus. I see our cathedral once again glorious, a rhapsody of praise.¹⁴ Sadly, Cameron died in 1945 and would not see the fruits of his vision.

Sir D. Y. Cameron (

1865

–

1945

). Photo courtesy of Annan Photographs.

The Society had the active support of leading figures in the political, cultural, and business worlds but it also depended on the involvement of ordinary Glaswegians who could join on payment of five shillings (25 pence) per annum. By the time of the first Annual Meeting (or Festival as it was then called) in January 1937, 577 had signed up and they in turn were constantly encouraged to recruit more. In addition, the Constitution of the Society ensured that, initially at least, there was a significant representation of both the kirk session and ordinary membership of the cathedral congregation.¹⁵

The idea of restoring the cathedral’s interior had thus aroused keen interest in the city—but that did not mean everything would go smoothly. Everybody had an opinion on what form the improvements should take and various interest groups were not slow to stake their claims. In spite of weighty matters like a general election campaign, rearmament, and the rise of Nazism, there was no shortage of letters to the Glasgow Herald during 1936 on the subject of remodeling the cathedral, giving a foretaste of the issues that the Friends would have to thrash out over the years to come. The combative Thomas Innes of Learney who, as Lord Lyon between 1945 and 1969, would have responsibility for regulating heraldry, weighed in by demanding to know what was going to happen to the donors’ coats of arms if windows were replaced. Not mincing his words, he wrote that it will be a dastardly shame and insult to the memory of those distinguished citizens . . . if their armorial bearings are now to be ruthlessly ‘dashed out of’ the cathedral windows as if they had been traitors.¹⁶ This led one whose ancestor lies in the cathedral yard to retort that Church windows are understood to be to the glory of God but those at present are more to the glory of those who presented them, judging by the blatantly large and obtrusive coats of arms upon them.¹⁷ One minister inquired why a General Assembly Committee on Artistic Questions should have input on such matters rather than Glasgow presbytery; someone else thought stained glass artists from Glasgow should be doing the work and not those from Edinburgh or England; still another considered that the new windows should reflect the spirit of St. Mungo (whatever that may mean). It was already clear that the Friends would only be able to please some of the people some of the time.

Undeterred, Davidson and his supporters forged ahead and by the time of the first Annual Festival, held in the cathedral on St. Mungo’s Day, January 13, 1937, there was already much progress to report. The Blacader Aisle which protrudes from the south side of the cathedral had, for the first time in almost four hundred years, been restored for use as a place of worship and daily services were soon to take place in it (though problems of dampness would still be encountered for many years to come). The Friends had also gifted 400 chairs for the furnishing of the nave enabling a series of informal People’s Services to be held there during the winter. Plans were being considered for an ambitious scheme to remove the cumbrous and unsightly Victorian woodwork from the quire screen; and to replace the narrow, crowded pews by carved oak stalls of seemly design and comfortable dimensions.¹⁸ Furthermore, the Society had the external surroundings of the cathedral under consideration and had a vision of a tree-lined avenue or processional way leading to the west door. But the priority was the replacement of the stained glass, beginning with the ten large windows in the quire. Donors for seven of these had already come forward and artists would be commissioned as soon as the Office of Works gave the go ahead. By 1938, the cathedral was ready to welcome visitors to the Empire Exhibition; the building had been thoroughly cleaned inside, a guide book prepared and signs put up, together with a memorial listing the bishops, archbishops, and ministers of the cathedral over the previous 800 years, and a competition was being devised inviting ideas for a redesign of the chancel area with stalls on medieval lines.

An impressive enough list of achievements for a Society that had only been founded two years earlier—but Nevile Davidson felt that more could have been done. A hint of future tension can been seen from his remark to the 1938 Annual Festival that the Office of Works had still not given its approval in spite of having had the plans for almost a year. Being Crown property,¹⁹ the cathedral building was at that time maintained by the Office of Works, the equivalent body today being Historic Environment Scotland (HES). This relieves the congregation and the Society of Friends of responsibility for the burden of maintaining the fabric, but plans for replacing the glazing required to be approved by the Office of Works and the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland, all of which took up much time and involved patient negotiation.

In any event, the plans of the Society of Friends ground to a sudden halt in September 1939 with the outbreak of war. The competition for furnishing the quire was postponed, but Herbert Hendrie of Edinburgh College of Art continued to work on several of the windows which were put in storage until after the war. However, one of Hendrie’s windows was dedicated on May 5, 1940: Christ and the World’s Work in the north aisle of the quire, donated by Sir John Stirling-Maxwell to replace an earlier one presented by his great uncle and aunt, Sir John and Lady Matilda Maxwell. While the threat of damage during wartime was real, the Society had nevertheless decided to go ahead with this installation on the grounds that seeing it in position would be of great assistance to artists working on the other windows.²⁰

A very comprehensive program of work: Cathedral Improvements, 1946–61

After the war, the Society’s activities resumed, albeit slowly. In May 1946 the two windows made by Hendrie six years earlier were dedicated, an event attended by Sir John Stirling-Maxwell in his bath chair on account of his deteriorating health. Later that year window designs by three new artists were chosen. The Annual Festival continued each January on St. Mungo’s Day, usually consisting of a service at the saint’s tomb, an AGM and, in the evening, a concert or recital which was sometimes broadcast on the radio. However, a 1947 report from the Ancient Monuments Board states that friction and confusion have arisen owing to lack of proper coordination between (a) the Ministry, (b) the Friends of the Cathedral and (c) the Minister of the Cathedral, and it is vital that no effort should be spared to remove causes of misunderstanding. 1948 was deemed a disappointing year, with official restrictions on many schemes which were consequently still held in suspense.

It was not until 1949 that the restoration program recommenced with new vigor. A meeting in the Central Hotel on May 6, 1950 unanimously agreed that

the attention of the Committee should be concentrated on the Quire and Transepts, with the exception of the Cameronian Window in the south-west corner of the Nave and the Great West Window of the Nave for which negotiations should now be instituted by Lord Bilsland with the Lord Provost as the leading representative of the Corporation of Glasgow.

The achievement of these aims was to a great extent due to the contribution of two significant figures who between them had the very different skills required to make the project a reality: Lord Bilsland, President of the Society of Friends, and Professor Albert Richardson.

Steven,

1

st Baron Bilsland (

1892

–

1970

), President of the Society of Friends,

1947

–

67

. Photo ©National Portrait Gallery, London.

Steven, 1st Baron Bilsland, could draw on a lifetime’s experience of business and public service. The Cambridge-educated son of former Glasgow Lord Provost, Sir William Bilsland, he inherited the family bakery business, but his dismay at the waste of human potential in the depression of the inter-war years led him to devote his career to stimulating the Scottish economy and, in addition to a host of directorships and philanthropic roles, he served for more than thirty years as President of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry. He had been a member of the Council of the Society of Friends since its formation in 1937 but his contribution as President between 1947 and 1967 was crucial as he patiently led negotiations with individual donors, military authorities, and public bodies, each of whom had their own specific desires.

Glasgow Corporation required particularly careful handling. Things began well, with Nevile Davidson reporting to the sixteenth annual meeting in January 1952 that the City had made a magnificent offer to donate the Great West Window which would form a permanent symbol of the link between Church and City. The joint committee approved of the minister’s idea of the Creation as a suitable theme and four artists were invited to submit designs for a fee of £50 each. After some delay, the commission was eventually given to Francis Spear, who lived in Reigate, Surrey and taught at the Royal College of Art in London.

A depiction of the Creation would necessarily include representations of Adam and Eve and one obvious decision had to be made at the start: would they be shown as they were before or after they sinned? Mr. Spear helpfully produced two alternative versions of his design, showing the figures naked and clothed. After considerable discussion, the committee decided [on September 23, 1955] that the nude figures be retained. However, when the design was presented to a sub-committee of the finance committee of Glasgow Corporation there was some criticism of the fact that the artist was neither a Glaswegian nor a Scot and that the Corporation’s coat of arms did not feature in the design. Eighteen months later, a contract had still not been signed as the Corporation was unhappy that there was no provision for insuring the window. In turn, the artist had become perturbed and stated that he could not continue work on the window unless by May 31, 1957 a contract with the Ministry of Works or the Society of Friends had been concluded. Once again, the committee placed its faith in Lord Bilsland, in conjunction with the Honorary Treasurer, to sort the matter out, giving him discretionary power to enter upon a Contract with the Artist on the Society’s behalf.²¹

Even when all these issues had been dealt with and the window installed, problems persisted. After inspecting the window in October 1958, the committee decided that certain aspects did not look quite right: the figures of Adam and Eve were too muscular. The tonality of the glass might with advantage be reduced and a lighter tint given to Eve . . . and so on. Fortunately, the artist turned out to be accommodating and readily agreed to make alterations, with certain panels being temporarily replaced with clear glass while the changes were made. Lord Bilsland assured the Committee that there had been no pressure on Mr. Spear and there was no question of yielding by him. He would go so far as to say that Mr. Spear would like to lighten the window and had said the alterations must be made.²²

The diplomacy exercised by Bilsland when handling the Corporation and the artists was equally necessary when it came to the armed services. The windows of the north and south transepts, by William Wilson and Gordon Webster, commemorate those who lost their lives in the 1939–45 war and it has been suggested that on account of these Glasgow Cathedral can lay claim to being Scotland’s national memorial to the Second World War.²³ This phase of the window replacement program involved Lord Bilsland in protracted collective and individual discussions with the twelve Scottish Regiments, the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and the Merchant Navy, who did not always appreciate the complexity of the process and sometimes expressed frustration at the seeming lack of progress, becoming, as Bilsland tactfully said of the RAF at one point, somewhat restive. With his own military record in the 8th Battalion of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) during World War I and his current position as an Honorary Colonel, he would have been listened to with respect by the military top brass.

If patience and tact characterized the contribution of Lord Bilsland, the second key figure during the 1950s was of a completely different caliber. Professor, later Sir, Albert E. Richardson (1880–1964), Professor of Architecture at the University of London and later President of the Royal Academy, was appointed as an artistic consultant on the recommendation of the Ancient Monuments Board. This was something of a gamble, for although Richardson’s eminence and expertise were not in doubt, he was reputed to be a difficult character—bombastic, self-centered, a reactionary conservative who hated Modernism as much as he loathed modern society²⁴—and that was in the opinion of one of his admirers. To Richardson, the celebration of progress at the 1951 Festival of Britain was more like the festering of Britain and he thought the design for the new Coventry Cathedral was so frightful to look upon that he never visited the city again. There are many tales of his eccentricity: his home at Avenue House, Ampthill, Bedfordshire was crammed with antiques and for a long time he resisted having electricity installed. He not only loved Georgian architecture but liked to dress up in full period outfit and be carried to dinner parties in a sedan chair.²⁵

Sir Albert E. Richardson (

1880

–

1964

). Photo ©National Portrait Gallery, London.

For nearly a decade Richardson’s advice to the Society of Friends on the artistic merit of proposed designs was decisive and it would not be going too far to suggest that both the glazing and the furnishing of the cathedral reflect his tastes. He regularly traveled to Glasgow for meetings of the joint committee made up of representatives of the Friends, the Ministry of Works and the Ancient Monuments Board. Considering that the professor worked on the principle that it was for the committee to state what treatment was desired and for the artist to submit to direction and discipline²⁶ conflict was unavoidable. Minutes of meetings do not generally make for lively reading but it is not necessary to read between the lines to detect the opinionated professor’s dominance of the proceedings. Time and again, we read that Richardson made a suggestion and the committee agreed. The artists’ designs were placed under very close scrutiny with surprisingly detailed modifications being demanded. On almost every occasion, it seems, the professor had the last word. Artists were summoned to the cathedral to show their designs—ostensibly so that they could see each others’ work and understand the degree of correlation which was essential²⁷ though it appears that at times they were treated as students undergoing an examination. Regarding the drawings for the North Transept window by William Wilson of the Edinburgh College of Art, Professor Sir Albert Richardson advised that Mr Wilson ought to subdue some of the excitement in his design.²⁸ Another design in the Blacader chapel was criticized on the grounds that the figure representing a ‘sinner’ was ‘too doleful.’²⁹

Sadie McLellan (Mrs Pritchard), who taught for a time at the Glasgow School of Art, seems to have had a particularly hard time. She was working on a window depicting St. Mungo’s childhood for the south aisle of the quire, but certain aspects did not meet with Richardson’s approval:

Mrs Pritchard’s attention had been directed to the position in the arms of his mother of St. Mungo as an infant. . . . As drawn one could mistake it for the Madonna and Child and it was only after lengthy discussion on the legendary aspect of the one and the factual aspect of the other that Mrs Pritchard agreed to consider some means by which the depiction would be identified with St. Mungo and not Our Lord.³⁰

Mrs Pritchard again fell foul of the professor in 1952 with her design for Christ and the World’s Beauty in the north aisle. He did not admire the claw-like appearance of the hands and feet and considered that the figure of Christ was excessively untraditional. Two years later, the argument had still not been settled and Sadie had had enough. The artist had declined to make any further alteration to the figure and requested a fee of £150–£200 for her abandoned work. But she had a strong and determined personality³¹ and was not prepared to go quietly. She and her husband Walter, also a lecturer at the Art School, asked for a meeting with Lord Bilsland and showed him correspondence which made it clear that her design had been accepted. Once again, Bilsland’s skills of people management came into play. Statements had been made which were, I’m afraid, much more specific in this respect than had been authorized, he told the committee, and recommended that Mrs Pritchard should be given another opportunity of amending her drawing.³² This was agreed to and by September the committee was unanimous that her latest version expressed the beauty and spiritual quality which it had always been desired to achieve.³³

Needless to say, there was no hint of any of these disagreements when the window was dedicated the following year. Nevile Davidson praised it as rich in color and charming in design and believed that it was perhaps the finest example yet seen of her craftsmanship.³⁴

The early 1960s marked the end of the first chapter of the Society’s history and the 1961 annual report drew a line under the previous twenty-five years by referring to the completion last year of the very comprehensive program of work which has occupied the Society since its formation.³⁵ The windows were of course the most important aspect of this, and Davidson quoted with pride a remark made to him by Dr. Eric Milner-White (1884–1963) who, as Dean of York, had overseen the replacement of windows at York Minster: I expect you know that you now have here in your cathedral the most comprehensive and representative collection of modern stained glass anywhere in Britain.³⁶ A full description of all the windows, and the artists who made them, can be found in the book written in 2009 by the cathedral’s librarian and archivist, the late Iain Macnair³⁷ and in the latest edition of the guidebook A Walk Through Glasgow Cathedral.

Chancel with reredos, from a Valentine’s postcard of

1893

. Image courtesy of the University of St. Andrews Library, ID JV-

18140

.

In addition to the windows, the furnishings of the cathedral had been transformed. Refinishing of the pews required much trial and error, various experiments with wax and staining being undertaken. An appeal was made to the various incorporated bodies of the city, schools and other institutions who were invited to contribute to the cost in return for having their heraldic arms displayed on the pew ends. There was a good response to this, but once again delicacy was required in dealing with the important matter of precedence of the various bodies and organizations who had sponsored pews.³⁸ The chancel area also took on a very different look. Since 1893 a reredos of Caen stone and alabaster had sat behind the communion table; Nevile Davidson had never liked it and was pleased to record in his diary on February 8, 1945 that the unsuitable Victorian reredos was at last removed.³⁹ The pulpit was replaced by one which had originally been used by the congregation of the Barony which met in the Lower Church between 1595 and 1798. It had once been occupied by Zachary Boyd (1585–1653), preacher, devotional writer, and Vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow and Davidson felt very honored and excited as I stood and preached from it for the first time in November 1952. Wylie and Lochhead, cabinetmakers, donated the Royal Pew and, more controversially, a carved cross was positioned on the central pillar behind the Chancel. Responding to expressions of marked reluctance or antagonism to this idea, Davidson took pains to stress that it was a cross and not a crucifix, while Sir Albert Richardson noted that it was customary in Lutheran churches to have hanging crosses of a similar style.

The activities of the Society of Friends during the 1950s encompassed practical as well as aesthetic matters. Things like the condition of the graveyard and the replacement of railings and gates all came within the remit of beautifying the surroundings of the cathedral. The ever-present problems of heating and drafts, too, were endlessly discussed, though to this day a solution has proved elusive. £1,000 was spent on red leather covered doors at each side of the quire and it is amusing to note that Richardson, who supposedly hated all things modern, suggested that the space above the doors might be filled by transparent plastic material like the window in the cockpit of an aeroplane,⁴⁰ though eventually glass was used for this purpose. Of course, not every idea worked: experiments in lime washing sections of the interior walls were unsuccessful; the suggestion of installing a revolving door between quire and nave was quickly rejected, while Nevile Davidson’s dream of a peal of bells rather than a single mournful one came to nothing after years of discussion, mainly because of structural concerns related to the weight of bells.

Now that the quire had been refurnished, the lower church brought back into use, and the windows reglazed, it appeared that the period of intensive renovation of the cathedral has passed but no less important is the rather less spectacular but necessary work of caring for and preserving the fabric of the ancient building.⁴¹ Sir Albert was no longer needed in his advisory capacity and at his final meeting in March 1960 he was profusely thanked for his invaluable services and presented with a Georgian silver salver.

Meanwhile, the structural maintenance required by such an ancient building was endless and major tasks such as the replacement of the copper sheeting of the roof between 1962 and 1965 were undertaken at the expense of the Ministry of Works. For a time the Society was mostly concerned with contributing decorative gifts and furnishings. A chancel carpet commissioned from the famous Glasgow Templeton’s factory and many other