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Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, has a history stretching back to earliest times. Stone Age canoes unearthed along the banks of the River Clyde suggest early fishing communities.
Celtic druids were among the first identifiable religious tribes to inhabit the area. It's likely they would have traded with the Romans who, circa 80AD, had a trading post in Cathures, the earlier name for Glasgow. In 143AD the Romans erected the turf-built Antonine Wall stretching from the Clyde to the Forth to separate Caledonia to the north from Britannia to the south, but the wall was soon abandoned.
In 380AD St Ninian, the great Christian missionary, passed through Cathures, consecrating a burial ground, but beyond then little is known until the arrival of St Kentigern in the 6th century. St Kentigern settled in Glasgow (or Glas Cu, generally construed as “dear green place”) in 543AD following exile from Culross where his miracle powers had aroused jealousy among his monastic brothers.
In Glasgow, he established his Christian church on the banks of the Molendinar Burn, a tributary of the Clyde, where Glasgow Cathedral now stands. Such was his great popularity among his ecclesiastical community he was named Mungo meaning “dear one”.
Legend has it St Mungo performed four miracles in Glasgow, commemorated on the City of Glasgow’s coat of arms, depicting a tree with a bird perched on its branches and a salmon and a bell on either side.
When Mungo died on 13 January 603, he was buried in his own church, close to the spot where the only two known Glasgow martyrs of the Reformation were later burned at the stake. Between Mungo’s death and Glasgow’s establishment as an Episcopal see in 1145, little is known of the city’s history.
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