On your right is the Glasgow Tolbooth Steeple, the bit that refused to go quietly. What you’re seeing is the surviving tower of what was once the city’s all-in-one municipal machine: council meeting place, courthouse, jail, and-because Glasgow has always liked to multitask-a tavern too.
There’s been a tolbooth on this spot since at least the mid-1300s, but the big statement version went up in the 1600s. Starting in 1626 and finished in 1634, it was designed by John Boyd in that tough, castle-like Scottish baronial style. Picture clean-cut ashlar stone, a five-storey main block stretching along the street, and this seven-stage steeple anchoring the east end. Up higher, the tower’s small leaded windows give way to clock faces near the top, crowned with a spire and a gilded weather vane-done by decorative painter Valentine Jenkin, who basically got the job of making sure the wind looked classy.
But the Tolbooth had a dark side. In the 1600s and 1700s it functioned as a prison and courthouse, and 22 executions were carried out here. Covenanters like Donald Cargill and Robert Ker of Kersland were held in grim, cramped conditions-religious politics with real consequences.
By 1814, the authorities moved out. The building went commercial: renovated, turned into a drapery warehouse, then auctioneers’ offices. By the early 1900s it was falling apart, and in 1921 the main block was demolished-leaving this steeple standing like a stubborn exclamation point. In 2021, it even became a modern billboard for the Climate Clock, counting down our carbon deadlines in light.
When you’re set, Livingstone Tower is a 10-minute walk heading south.
