Provand's Lordship
Provand's Lordship
3 Castle Street
Glasgow
Strathclyde
G4 ORB
Scotland
Website
www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/index.cfm?venueid=11
See Provand's Lordship online.
www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/showExhibition.cfm?venueid=11&itemid=63
Telephone
0141 552 8819
Fax
0141 552 4744
At Provand's Lordship you can step back into Glasgow's past in the only house to survive from the medieval city. Now open to the public, Provand's Lordship has been extensively restored to give a real flavour of life in medieval Glasgow.
The house was built in 1471 as part of St Nicholas's Hospital by Andrew Muirhead, Bishop of Glasgow, and you can still see the bishop's coat of arms on the eastern side of the south gable. It later became the town residence of one of the canons of the cathedral chapter. This clergyman is thought to have drawn his income from the rents and taxes of Balernock, and was known as the 'Lord of the Prebend of Balernock', later corrupted to 'Lord of Provan'. The house takes its name from this title. All the other medieval buildings that once surrounded the cathedral had been demolished by the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was only through the work of the Provand's Lordship Society that the house was saved from the same fate.
Venue Type:
Museum, Historic house or home
Additional info
The upper two floors are only accessable by a spiral staircase, therefore wheelchair users can only visit the ground floor.
Provand's Lordship
3 Castle Street
Glasgow
Strathclyde
G4 ORB
Scotland
Website
www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/index.cfm?venueid=11
See Provand's Lordship online.
www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/showExhibition.cfm?venueid=11&itemid=63
Telephone
0141 552 8819
Fax
0141 552 4744
The building was offered to the City of Glasgow District Council by the Provand's Lordship Society in 1978. Thanks to the donation of a fine collection of seventeenth-century Scottish furniture by Sir William Burrell, you can experience what a domestic interior of around 1700 would have looked like, as well as admiring the medieval fabric of the building. A room on the first floor contains a display about Cuthbert Simson, a priest who lived in the house in the early sixteenth century century. Provand's Lordship stands opposite Glasgow cathedral and the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art.
Behind the house is the St Nicholas garden, built in 1997. It is a medical herb garden, containing medicinal plants in use in the fifteenth century, designed to reflect the original purpose of the house.
Collection details
Archaeology, Architecture, Decorative and Applied Art, Medicine, Religion, Social History, Trade and Commerce
Collections services
- Object identification and/or written enquiry service
