Ramshorn Kirk

Thomas Rickman, 1826

Ramshorn Kirk, 19th century etching.

St David’s Church, at no. 98 Ingram Street, now
the Ramshorn Theatre, is an early example of the Gothic architectural revival. The older Ramshorn cemetery, now partly covered by Ingram Street, was the ‘fashionable’ – and expensive – place to be buried in Glasgow in the eighteenth century. A variety of prominent merchants were buried there, including two Tobacco Lords, John Glassford (1715-83) and Andrew Buchanan (1690-1759), one of the founders of The Ship Bank, Glasgow’s first bank.

Other notables buried here include Robert (1707- 76) and Andrew Foulis (1712-75), Glasgow’s leading booksellers, printers and publishers in the age of the Enlightenment, producing 586 editions between 1774-75. They founded an Academy of Fine Arts in Glasgow, based on a large collection of paintings acquired on their European book selling tours. It opened in 1753 with the financial help of Glassford and Archibald Ingram (c.1699-1770), another Tobacco Lord. The first of its kind in Scotland, it gave tuition in drawing, painting, engraving and sculpture. It also helped bankrupt the brothers, who are located under the pavement in Ingram Street, the place marked by the initials RF & AF.

Ramshorn, 2009.