The Provands Lordship is the only house to survive from the medieval city. It is located on High Street, close to the Royal Infirmary, and is easy to reach from the M8 motorway at Jct15, or from High Street train station, although that includes a walk up the High Street hill.

The house was built in 1471 by Andrew Muirhead, Bishop of Glasgow, and you can still see the bishop's coat of arms on the eastern side of the building. 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.

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.

This museum like most of the museums around our city is free entry, and close to it is St Mungos Museum of Religion, Glasgow Cathedral and the Western Necropolis Cemetery, which has graves of famous people from the city.


A few pictures of Provands Lordship are found below.