The most famous and recognisable people buried in Glasgow Necropolis

The Necropolis is Glasgow’s own Victorian garden cemetery on the hill behind Glasgow Cathedral - and is host to many of the city’s greatest figures of the Victorian era.

The Necropolis was modelled on the Père-Lachaise in Paris - and it’s estimated that around 50,000 burials have taken place in the cemetery since its inception, with around 3,500 tombs.

Designed as a multi-faith burial ground, both catholics and protestants are interred in the site - along with many other bodies belonging to other faiths and religions.

The first person to be buried at the site according to records was a Jewish merchant named Joseph Levi in 1832.

The land was owned by the Merchant’s House since its conception in 1831, until the garden cemetery was handed over to the council in the 60s.

To have a tomb in Necropolis, you had to be somewhat of a big deal - with designers like Glasgow’s own Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson.

Former Lord Provosts, artists, lawyers, architects, explorers, and other members of the Victorian elite all have prominent positions upon the Necropolis hill.

Here’s a list of some of the graveyards most significant figures:

• The Tennent family, including founder Hugh Tennent, with their graves facing the brewery - which lies very close to the hill.
• Scots Poet William Miller, the man behind children’s nursery rhyme ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ - which is still sung to bairns across Scotland to this day.
• Magician and theatre owner David Prince Miller, who founded the ‘Adelphi Theatres’.
• Prof Francois Foucart, Professor Of Fencing at the French Royal Academy in Paris.
• Altruist and philanthropist Isabella Ure Elder - who built a library, school, hospital and even a school for nurses in Govan using her own money.
• James McCall, founder and principal of the Glasgow Veterinary College
• William Dick, first secretary of the Scottish Football Association, is also buried at the site.
• John Knox, the leader of the Protest Reformation in Scotland in the 1500s - while not buried there, has a huge monument at the tip of the hill.

Modern day celebrities like Hugh Jackman, Miley Cyrus, and Patti Smith have also been spotted at the site perusing the epitaphs - of course these celebs remained above ground, unlike their Victorian counterparts.

While tombs, monuments, and memorials were reserved for the most haughty of the Victorian Glasgow elite - other spaces were reserved for community heroes like a teenage boy who died trying to save a six-year-old who had fallen into a river during the Cheapside Street whisky bond fire on March 28, 1960.

Corlinda Lee, known in her time as ‘the Gypsy Queen’, was said to have read Queen Victoria’s palm - is also buried in Necropolis and has coins engraved into the stonework of her monument.