Janis P.
At Provand’s Lordship you can step back into Glasgow’s past in the only house to survive from the medieval city. Provand’s Lordship has been extensively restored to give a real flavour of life in medieval Glasgow.
The house was built in 1471 as part of St Nicholas’s Hospital by Andrew Muirhead, Bishop of Glasgow. You can still see the bishop’s coat of arms on the eastern side of the south gable. 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. 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.
Provand’s Lordship stands opposite Glasgow cathedral and St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art.
Admission free.
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