Mann, Myth and Mungo: Ludovic Mann, Harry Bell and Glasgow's secret geometry

Abstract

In his 1938 book Earliest Glasgow, Ludovic Mann proposed that ancient Glasgow was laid out on a clock-face radial grid and that St Kentigern was head of a lunar cult. We explore Kentigern's journey to Glasgow following ‘the straight road along where there was no path’ that inspired Harry Bell's research into the Glasgow ley system, as documented in his 1984 book Glasgow's Secret Geometry. This paper will consider whether Glasgow really was a ‘Temple of the Moon’ laid out on a geometric basis as Mann claimed and outline connections between Mann's ideas and Bell's Network of Aligned Sites.