Art, song and storytelling converge in a fascinating new project that reveals how a hidden well that shaped Glasgow’s origins is being reinvented
It was while walking around Glasgow Cathedral that Angus Farquhar saw the hole in the city’s story. “When I saw how dark it was, with no signage, just this forgotten little circle at the back, my reaction was instinctive,” said Farquhar. “I wanted to find out more, and if we could do something with it.”
The dark little circle at the back right hand corner of the lower church is now the focus of a celebration of history through music, spoken word and art, with a two-day concert throwing light on its significance in the city’s history.
Actor Gary Lewis and folk singers Karine Polwart and Siobhan Miller are among the acts who will contribute to The Well Concert, a new production from Farquhar’s Aproxima Arts organisation.
For Farquhar, peering into the dark well in an area of the Cathedral now frequently home to clucking hordes of Outlander fans (an adjacent area was used to double as a French hospital in the hit TV series) represented an opportunity to throw light down through the centuries, and onto Glasgow’s origin story.
Cut through the long-told hagiography of how St Mungo came to be and the apocryphal “miracles” tethered to his legend; forget the tree, fish, bird and bell, the miracles ubiquitously rendered across four corners of this town and four lines of Michael Marra’s Mother Glasgow.
One fact remains: Scotland’s biggest city sprung from this lost watercourse, long since culverted and almost entirely gone from view. Farquhar said: “There’s no doubt that there was a lot of embellishment around St Mungo’s story but some tiny threads of history have survived since the 6th century.
“What is true is that there was a monk called Kentigern (Mungo’s given name) who baptised people around the Molendinar burn and this well. When Kentigern came there was only that well, the Molendinar and a small burial site, established by an earlier monk.
“So the well is the topographical, geographical, historical and symbolic connection to why we are here in this city. I think that’s incredibly powerful, but when I saw it, it was a sad, sludge-filled dark place with a heavy metal grille. I started to think about exploring it back as a well-spring.”
Last week saw the first stages of a new gold leaf mosaic installation in the well. Designed by Edinburgh artist Joanna Kessel, it will bring a new focal point to arguably the most important part of the cathedral – perhaps even the city itself.
Designed using Venetian glass smalti and gold leaf, the mosaic will be attached to a fibreglass and aluminium panel, sunk into the well like an inverted top hat, ensuring none of the historic stonework is touched. The light source is from a tiny channel of LED lights, their glimmer enough to awaken the story of centuries.
Artist Kessel said: “Angus and I were peering into the well, illuminating it with the torchlights on our phones and I had a sense looking down into that space, of what it would have been like in nature – the idea of the sky, the leaves on the trees, the dappled light on the surface of water, through the surface of the water to the depths below.”
The event, for which Polwart, pictured right, has written a new song entitled The Wellspring to be performed by Miller at the concerts which will also feature Glasgow’s Madrigirls and Joyous choirs, is being held as part of the city’s 850th anniversary celebrations.
Kessel said: “I felt this would be something fantastic to honour and draw people’s attention to the well, especially given the anniversary of Glasgow receiving burgh status, which was in no small part due to the huge pilgrimages made to the cathedral and St Mungo’s well.
“The well spring mosaic can give Glasgow back one of its most ancient parts. It creates a vivid bridge between past and present, and that connection between past and present, which goes on to become the future, is deeply important.”
That apart, Kessel’s desire on a simple level is one which perhaps Kentigern himself felt when he reached Glasgow (led by an ox from Stirling, if you’re after the myth detail). She said: “My hope is the well spring mosaic will be something that people have a visceral response to. The way the light hits the gold leaf mosaic and emanates from that is really quite extraordinary.”
Farquhar has spent the last two years illuminating lost stories in this part of town. As creative director of Aproxima Arts, he conceived Glasgow Requiem, an ongoing memorialisation of the forgotten dead in the Necropolis, which overlooks the city.
A self-guided walking tour was launched several months ago and there are plans to mark the one remaining spot of where the Molendinar sees daylight next year. He said: “History is often written by the wrong people and we are being dominated by intolerant political philosophies which are manipulated by new technology. So you have to leave some serious records of your time for the future.”
The Well Concert is at Glasgow Cathedral on December 5 & 6.
