Glasgow Cathedral, also known as ‘St Mungo’s’ or ‘The High Church’ is the oldest church in Glasgow and has various memorials to tobacco and sugar merchants, despite the fact that both trades were built largely on slave labour. There is a stained-glass memorial to Alexander Spiers of Elderslie (1714-82), one of the original Tobacco Lords and sometimes called ‘the mercantile god of Glasgow’.
There are also memorials to Sir James Stirling of Keir (1740-1805), who owned plantations and slaves in Jamaica, and to Andrew Cochrane (1692-1777), a Virginia Don, who owned the King Street Sugarhouse and was six times Lord Provost of the city. The burial plot of Andrew Buchanan (1725-83), after whom Buchanan Street is named, is located at the entrance. The Oswald family, who have links to both the slave trade and the abolition movement, have a burial plot within the Cathedral.
