Glasgow College as Adam Smith knew it “by far the happiest and most honourable period of my life”
ANNAN,Thomas. Photographs of Glasgow College. Glasgow, T.Annan [1866]
Oblong folio album, original green cloth, hinges cracked but firm, triple gilt fillets, with the College coat-of-arms in gilt on upper board and lettered in gilt Photographs of Glasgow College, 13 albumen prints mounted on cards rectos [16.8x12cm - 20.3x14cm], six with arched tops, 9 with Annan’s credit Photographed by T.Annan, Glasgow printed below, card edges gilt, some occasional foxing to endpapers but not affecting images, images clean and crisp.
RARE ALBUM BY THE PIONEER PHOTOGRAPHER THOMAS ANNAN THE EARLIEST IMAGES OF GLASGOW COLLEGE BEFORE ITS ENTIRE DEMOLITION.
Probably commissioned by the College, these predate the later publication Memorials of the Old College of Glasgow 1871 which contained 41 photogravure images. Today, in the 21st century, the decision to demolish Glasgow College, would be considered as an act of vandalism.
This album of original albumen images is significant not only in the history of photography but also because every trace of the distinguished College [or University] of Glasgow, which stood on the east side of the High Street for 400 years has disappeared and the site it occupied has been altered beyond recognition. The site was sold to a railway company and became a railway goods yard. It is now derelict. The College left in 1870 and moved to the west end of Glasgow at Gilmore Hill.
The images illustrate where some of the greatest figures of the Scottish Enlightenment worked as lecturers and professors, and in particular Adam Smith, John Anderson, James Clow, Thomas Craigie, William Cullen, Francis Hutcheson, William Leechman, John Millar, James Moor, James Robertson, and John Simson.
In 1751 Adam Smith was appointed Professor of Logic at Glasgow College (University of Glasgow) and in 1752 became Professor of Moral Philosophy. He was to remain there until he resigned in February 1764 to become tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch. Although Glasgow College was relatively remote, it was becoming one of the great educational institutions in these islands. There were only 300 students in Adam Smith’s day. The great majority of the students were apparently young men preparing for the Presbyterian ministry. Adam Smith’s moral philosophy chair never had more than 90 students in the public or 20 in the private class. At Glasgow he taught logic, jurisprudence and politics. He was a member of the Glasgow Literary Society. In 1755 he lectured to the Cochrane Club on economics. In 1758 he became Quaestor for the University Library and in 1760 was appointed Dean of Arts. In 1761 he became Vice-Rector. He published two articles in the Edinburgh Review in 1755, in 1759 his first book The Theory of Moral Sentiments and in 1761 Considerations concerning the First Formation of Languages in The Phililogical Miscellany. Adam Smith lived rent free in a house in Professors’ Court at the College, with his mother and his cousin, Janet Douglas. It was the custom for professors to take students into their houses. The names of the students who boarded with and were supervised by Adam Smith have been lost, other than Henry Herbert (later Lord Porchester) and Thomas Petty-Fitzmaurice. It was this period at Glasgow College which Adam Smith was later to describe as “the period of thirteen years which I spent as a member of that society I remember as by far the most useful, and, therefore, as by far the happiest and most honourable period of my life”.
References: David Murray, Memories of the Old College of Glasgow 1927. W R Scott, Adam Smith as Student and Professor. 1937
1. High Street entrance to Glasgow College. The gateway was erected by the middle of the 17th century. The massive nail-studied oak doors were closed at night but there was a wicket through which to admit latecomers. The date 1658 was carved over the gateway and in 1660 a slab bearing the Royal coat-of-arms was mounted there with the letters C R II, to mark the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. A broad cornice or balcony carried on corbels projected from the wall on either side of the gateway.
2. High Street entrance to Glasgow College. The High Street frontage featured an imposing gateway and attractive decorated windows, with three tall and distinctive rectangular chimney stacks rising from the roof above the entrance. The upper part of the College Clock Tower rises above the building. In this image can be seen on the left a ‘pissoir’ or public lavatory and on the right the photographers tripod and camera.
3. Lion and Unicorn Staircase in the outer court. Designed by William Riddell, with the statues of the Scottish Unicorn and the English Lion guarding the stairway. The cloisters are on the right.
4. High Street and main entrance to Glasgow College.
5. Archway connecting the Outer to the Inner court. The door on the left gave access to the Blackstone Room, and the window to the Apparatus Room is above. The windows on the right are part of the Tower.
6. Outer Court. Part of the cloister supporting the High Street is visible to the left, with the windows of the Fore [or Faculty] Hall and the dormers of the Divinity House above. The large door on the facing building led to the Divinity House and Hebrew classroom, the Professor of Divinity lived above. Adam Smith probably occupied the ‘back Divinity House’ as a tenant of Professor William Cullen from 1752 until 1757. “...it was pleasantly situated with one part in the Outer Court facing south-east, whilst there was plenty of air and an open outlook from the other part. In that respect it was better situated than most other houses, since the Court was narrow and the view from the front restricted. In 1756 he succeeded by seniority to this house, or at all events to the back Divinity House. Thus it is certain that the Lecture of 1755 was written in the Professors’ Court and probable that the particular house Adam Smith occupied at the time was the one which has been described. It was here also that the greater part of The Theory of Moral Sentiments was written” W.R.Scott,p.421. see also Murray,p.48. The two windows to the right of the door belong to the Bellringers’ Room, or Coal Hole.
7. Archway in Inner Court looking towards the Outer Court. The monument above the arch is the white marble bust of Zachary Boyd [1585-1653] , erected in 1658. Boyd was the minister of Barony Church and served as a dean of faculty, rector and vice-chancellor. He bequeathed £20,000 to help meet the cost of new buildings and maintenance of three students of Divinity each year.
8. South side of the Inner Court. “During his first session in residence [1751-1752] it seems Adam Smith lived in chambers in the College, probably in the Inner Court, where a junior Professor, who was a bachelor, could have rooms”. W R Scott, p.68
9. North side of the Inner Court. The building was designed by the Principal John Strang and erected in 1632. The door in the wall between the turrets was the students entrance to the Moral Philosophy classroom. This is the class room in which Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy lectured. The two small windows to the left and the one to the right of that dooorway and the three to the right of the turret belong to the Moral Philosophy class-room. Murray, p.126.
10. The University Library [left] and south end of the Hamilton Building [right]. Behind the Library can be seen part of Blackfriars’ Church. The Library was erected in 1732-1744. Its upper floor was the location of the Foulis’ brothers Academy of the Fine Arts. The new Library was begun when Adam Smith was a student. “The first year Adam Smith was in Glasgow he was placed on committees connected with the Library, and he was intimately concerned with it during the greater part of the period he was at the University. The books which can be traced to his recommendations are of interest as showing the direction of his studies during this period.” See Scott, pp.168- 184 The University Library The Hamilton Building was erected in 1811, funded from the bequest of the merchant John Hamilton.
11. Professors’ Court . Built on the site of the former carriage entrance from the High Street. Begun in 1722, by 1780 it contained eleven terraced houses occupied by Professors.
12. Professors’ Court. Adam Smith lived in one of the three houses on the left 1757-1762 and the house to the left facing front 1762-1764. The houses were numbered from the left nos, 6, 5,4, 3 and facing nos 2, and 1. “In 1757 Adam Smith succeeded Dick in one of the block of four houses...subsequently numbered 3 to 6...It is certain that Smith never lived in no.3...Adam Smith must have taken in 1757 one of the houses numbered 4 to 6. There he not only finished The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but in addition, he was turning to the more detailed study of economic questions...” W.R.Scott pp.421-422. In 1762 Adam Smith moved into no.2 and remained there until his resignation in 1764.
13. Hunterian Museum Scotland’s first public museum, designed by William Stark and opened in 1807. It contained the collections belonging to the physician William Hunter [1718-1783], including 12,000 books, an archeological and geological collection, paintings, shells and miscellaneous objects from around the world. Demolished in 1870, when the University moved west in 1870, and relocated to the Gilbert Scott building where it remains to- day.