TheGlasgowStory 

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Michael Moss is the project manager of TheGlasgowStory project and is research professor in archival studies in the faculty of Arts at the University of Glasgow. He is chairman of the West Region of the National Trust for Scotland and has written widely about the history of the area. His most recent book is a history of the Kennedy family and Culzean castle in Ayrshire.

Michael Moss has written the following TheGlasgowStory essays:

Early times to 1560 - Learning and Beliefs: University
The University of Glasgow was founded by Pope Nicholas V on 7 January 1451. Although this was part ...
 
Early times to 1560 - Trade and Communications: Retail Trade
Glasgow obtained a charter in 1190 authorising a week long fair to be held ever year. It was not un...
 
Early times to 1560 - Buildings and Cityscape: Educational Buildings
There were no purpose built educational buildings in the city before the Reformation. Both school a...
 
1560 to 1770s - Culture and Leisure: Prayer and Fasting
After the Reformation the old Catholic religion died hard, largely because the bulk of the populatio...
 
1560 to 1770s - Learning and Beliefs: University
The Protestant reformers were as much committed to higher education as their predecessors of the "ol...
 
1560 to 1770s - Trade and Communications: Retail Trade
In the 17th and 18th centuries, as in the past, most people in Glasgow would buy their goods from ma...
 
1560 to 1770s - Trade and Communications: Wholesale Trade
During this period a distinction gradually began to appear between producers, wholesalers and retail...
 
1560 to 1770s - Trade and Communications: Smuggling
Smuggling was rife in the west of Scotland during the late 17th and 18th centuries and was often car...
 
1560 to 1770s - Industry and Technology: Shipbuilding
With its deeply indented coastline and numerous lochs, boats have been an important means of transpo...
 
1560 to 1770s - Buildings and Cityscape: University of Glasgow
The construction of the new buildings in the High Street during the troubled times of the mid-17th c...
 
1560 to 1770s - Personalities: Daniel Campbell of Shawfield
Daniel Campbell of Shawfield (1670-1753) was the second son of Walter Campbell, Captain of Skipness ...
 
1560 to 1770s - Personalities: John Glassford of Dougalston
John Glassford was recognised by contemporaries as the greatest of Glasgow's tobacco lords. Tobias ...
 
1560 to 1770s - Personalities: Master Peter Lowe
Little is known about Peter Lowe's early life. He seems to have been born in Scotland, probably in ...
 
1560 to 1770s - Personalities: Alexander Speirs
Alexander Speirs was one of Glasgow's leading tobacco lords. The son of an Edinburgh merchant, he b...
 
1770s to 1830s
During these years Glasgow was transformed from a small merchant town into a burgeoning industrial c...
 
1770s to 1830s - Learning and Beliefs: University
At the University of Glasgow the great professors of the mid-18th century were succeeded by less wel...
 
1770s to 1830s - Learning and Beliefs: Episcopalians
Episcopalians, who used a prayer book and bishops in authority, all but disappeared in Glasgow after...
 
1770s to 1830s - Trade and Communications: Retail Trade
When Dorothy Wordsworth, the sister of the poet William Wordsworth, visited Glasgow in 1803 she was ...
 
1770s to 1830s - Trade and Communications: Wholesale Trade
During the late 18th century Glasgow became the wholesale capital of western Europe. Its merchants ...
 
1770s to 1830s - Trade and Communications: Smuggling
Although smuggling had declined by the 1770s, it increased rapidly after the French Revolution in 17...
 
1770s to 1830s - Industry and Technology
During this period manufacturing in Glasgow and the west of Scotland was transformed from domestic h...
 
1770s to 1830s - Industry and Technology: Shipbuilding
Until the American War of Independence (1775-83), Glasgow merchants had most of their ships construc...
 
1770s to 1830s - Buildings and Cityscape: Educational Buildings
Remarkably no school or university buildings from this period survive, even though in 1816 there wer...
 
1770s to 1830s - Neighbourhoods: Anderston
In the early 1720s James Anderson, who owned Stobcross, tried to establish a village there that he m...
 
1770s to 1830s - Neighbourhoods: Blythswood
The laird of Blythswood, James Campbell, died a bankrupt in 1773. It took almost twenty years to so...
 
1770s to 1830s - Neighbourhoods: Camlachie
In 1770 Camlachie was a small weaving village to the east of Glasgow with a small mansion house, whi...
 
1770s to 1830s - Neighbourhoods: Hutchesontown, Laurieston and Tradeston
In 1790 the Town Council split up the lands of the Gorbals amongst the Trades House, Hutchesons' Hos...
 
1770s to 1830s - Personalities: James Watt
James Watt was born in Greenock, the son of an engraver. Encouraged by his father, he studied geome...
 
1770s to 1830s - Personalities: Robert Napier
Robert Napier (1791-1876) came from a distinguished family of smiths and engineers in the west of Sc...
 
1770s to 1830s - Personalities: James Beaumont Neilson
James Neilson was born in Shettleston and after leaving school at the age of fourteen became a gig b...
 
1830s to 1914 - Learning and Beliefs: Universities and Higher Education
Between the 1830s and the outbreak of the First World War the University of Glasgow, like the city, ...
 
1830s to 1914 - Trade and Communications: Retail Trade
Between 1830 and 1914 Glasgow shopping was revolutionised. As the city grew people could no longer ...
 
1830s to 1914 - Trade and Communications: Wholesale Trade
The most striking feature of the wholesale trade in the second half of the 19th century was the emer...
 
1830s to 1914 - Industry and Technology: Agriculture and Fishing
This was a period of unprecedented difficulty in the agricultural and fishing industries throughout ...
 
1830s to 1914 - Buildings and Cityscape: Educational Buildings
This was a great period for educational building in Glasgow. From the late 1840s the University was...
 
1830s to 1914 - Neighbourhoods: Anderston
The character of Anderston changed from the late 1830s as a host of engineering shops and foundries ...
 
1830s to 1914 - Personalities: Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
William Thomson was born in Belfast, the son of James Thomson, professor of mathematics at the Unive...
 
1914 to 1950s - Everyday Life: Parks and Commons
At the outbreak of the First World War Glasgow legendarily had more open spaces (totalling over 1,50...
 
1914 to 1950s - Learning and Beliefs: Universities and Higher Education
After the First World War higher education changed fundamentally with the provision of state funding...
 
1914 to 1950s - Trade and Communications
Outwardly the commerce and communications of Glasgow changed little between the wars. There were st...
 
1914 to 1950s - Trade and Communications: Retail Trade
During the inter-war years the pattern of shopping in Glasgow remained relatively unchanged, even th...
 
1914 to 1950s - Trade and Communications: Wholesale Trade
During the depressed period of the inter-war years the wholesale trades experienced many changes and...
 
1914 to 1950s - Industry and Technology
The outbreak of war in 1914 placed great strain on Glasgow's shipbuilding and engineering industries...
 
1914 to 1950s - Industry and Technology: Shipbuilding
During the First World War the shipbuilding industry on the Clyde was greatly enlarged for the const...
 
1914 to 1950s - Neighbourhoods: Possilpark
Until about 1870 Possilpark was nothing much more than a mansion house and home farm with few reside...
 
1914 to 1950s - Neighbourhoods: Parkhead
The expansion of the businesses and other engineering works in the vicinity completely changed the c...
 
1914 to 1950s - Personalities: Marion Gilchrist
Marion Gilchrist (1864-1952), the daughter of a farmer in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, left school at the ...
 
1914 to 1950s - Personalities: John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir
John Buchan (1875-1940), the son of a Free Church minister, was born in Perth, but later the family ...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Everyday Life: Parks and Commons
The recent history of Glasgow's once proud tradition of parks and open spaces has been one of strugg...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Learning and Beliefs: Universities and Higher Education
The foundation of the University of Strathclyde in 1964 heralded massive changes in higher education...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Trade and Communications
In the early 1950s Glasgow's commerce was much as it had been at the end of the 19th century. There...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Trade and Communications: Retail Trade
As in every other British city shopping in Glasgow has been transformed out of all recognition in th...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Trade and Communications: Wholesale Trade
Shortly after wartime controls of the food industry were finally dismantled in the 1950s, the govern...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Industry and Technology
This period was the most traumatic in Glasgow's industrial experience. At the end of the war the ci...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Industry and Technology: Shipbuilding
In 1963 William Denny & Brothers of Dumbarton closed their yard, which had a reputation for inno...
 
1950s to The Present Day - Personalities: Matt McGinn
Matt McGinn was born in Ross Street at the corner of the Gallowgate in Calton in 1928, one of a fami...