Glasgow Coat of Arms Exhibition at Maryhill Burgh Halls 2026

Key Points

• An exhibition exploring Glasgow’s coat of arms has opened at Maryhill Burgh Halls in Glasgow.
• The display, titled Let Glasgow Flourish – The Glasgow Coat of Arms, runs between 20 April 2026 and 27 May 2026 at Maryhill Burgh Halls, Glasgow West End.
• The exhibition has been inspired by the history and symbolism of the Glasgow coat of arms and draws on both official emblems and local heritage items.
• Maryhill Burgh Halls already features permanent works linked to the coat of arms, including the carved “Tree that never grew” and a stone‑carved Glasgow coat of arms on the building’s exterior.
• The project reflects ongoing public interest in the city’s civic imagery, continuing work started in 2018 by researcher and Glasgow coat‑of‑arms enthusiast Dr Caroline Scott, who has previously curated similar crowdsourced shows.
• Dr Scott has described the coat of arms as a flexible civic symbol, saying, “There are as many takes on the coat of arms as there are Glaswegians… it’s an identity thing.”

Glasgow (Glasgow Express) May 2, 2026

What is the new Glasgow Coat of Arms exhibition at Maryhill about?

Glasgow – Maryhill Burgh Halls has opened a new temporary exhibition titled Let Glasgow Flourish – The Glasgow Coat of Arms, which explores the history, symbolism and civic presence of Glasgow’s city emblem. As reported by the event‑listing platform What’s On Glasgow, the exhibition is scheduled to run from 20 April 2026 to 27 May 2026 at Maryhill Burgh Halls in the city’s West End. The show is framed as a civic‑history project that draws together official heraldry, local artefacts and public perceptions of the coat of arms.

The exhibition sits within a venue that already foregrounds the city’s coat of arms in its built fabric. As noted on the Maryhill Burgh Halls’ own artworks page, a carved stone version of the Glasgow coat of arms is visible on the side of the building facing Burnhouse Street, and a wooden sculpture titled The Tree that never grew is inspired by the same emblem. The halls’ interior also includes a heritage wall and a permanent “Maryhill coat of arms” shield, which was designed in 1885 by local historian Alexander Thomson and references the Charlotte Dundas steamship and historic local industries. These long‑standing pieces help situate the new exhibition as part of an ongoing civic‑identity conversation rather than an isolated one‑off display.

How does this exhibition connect to earlier Glasgow coat‑of‑arms projects?

The current show at Maryhill Burgh Halls builds on a longer‑running civic‑heritage project centred on the Glasgow coat of arms. As reported by Glasgow‑based outlet Glasgow West End Today, researcher Dr Caroline Scott began collating images of the coat of arms in 2018 through a crowdsourced initiative linked to the Twitter account @GlasgowCoA. The resulting archive seeks to document where the emblem appears across the city and beyond, from street‑level graffiti and shop signs to formal civic buildings and public art.

A previous iteration, the exhibition Glasgow’s Coat of Arms: Getting on the Map, was presented by the Glasgow City Heritage Trust at 54 Bell Street, 13 December 2019–6 February 2020, and was described as a collaborative display of images contributed by the public. As noted in that project’s promotional text, the phrase “Getting on the Map” refers to the act of allowing anyone to have their own interpretation of the “tree, bird, fish and bell” motifs that form the core of Glasgow’s coat of arms. Dr Scott later told Glasgow West End Today that the emblem has become a kind of identity marker for residents, explaining:

“There are as many takes on the coat of arms as there are Glaswegians… it’s an identity thing.”

The Maryhill Burgh Halls exhibition can therefore be seen as a continuation of that crowdsourced‑archive approach, adapted to the physical context of a historic burgh‑hall building that itself already bears the city’s emblem in stone and wood.

What artefacts and installations are featured in the Maryhill show?

The structure of the Let Glasgow Flourish – The Glasgow Coat of Arms display at Maryhill Burgh Halls combines formal heraldic items with everyday objects that carry the city’s emblem. As described in the halls’ own artworks section, the building’s stained‑glass heritage wall and the “Tree that never grew” carving are already permanent fixtures that echo the bird, tree, bell, fish and ring motifs linked to St Mungo, Glasgow’s patron saint. The exhibition is framed as drawing on these existing pieces while adding new material focused specifically on the coat of arms as a civic symbol.

The halls’ own website also notes that the site contains a door from an old electricity box marked with the Glasgow Corporation Electricity Department (G.C.E.D.) crest, plus a curved lamp‑post door bearing the Glasgow coat of arms, which was salvaged by local collector George Ward and later repainted by his son. These items underscore how the city’s emblem has been embedded into the fabric of daily life, from street‑level infrastructure to pub signs and public‑toilets‑corner decorations. The exhibition at Maryhill Burgh Halls uses such objects to show how the coat of arms appears in both grand civic spaces and modest, vernacular settings.

How does the Glasgow coat of arms itself fit into the city’s history?

To understand the resonance of the current exhibition, it helps to place the Glasgow coat of arms in a wider historical context. As set out in the Wikipedia entry on the subject, the coat of arms is formally the property of Glasgow City Council, the local authority of Glasgow, and was first granted by the Lord Lyon King of Arms in 1866. A revised version was re‑granted in 1996 following local‑government reorganisation, and that is the iteration most commonly seen on council documents, buildings and signage today.

The design refers to legends associated with St Mungo, whose four symbols are paraphrased in the rhyme:

“This is the Tree that never grew, / This is the Bird that never flew, / This is the Bell that never rang, / This is the Fish that never swam.”

These motifs are not only central to the city’s official emblem but also recur in local art, including the Maryhill‑Burgh‑Halls carvings and the stained‑glass panels displayed inside the venue. The exhibition at Maryhill Burgh Halls uses this established symbolism as a starting point, inviting visitors to consider how a 19th‑century heraldic grant continues to shape contemporary civic self‑perception.

Background: How has civic heraldry in Glasgow evolved?

The Glasgow coat of arms sits within a broader tradition of Scottish civic heraldry, which dates back to medieval and early‑modern town councils adopting crests and arms to mark their authority and identity. As noted in the Scottish Heraldic Gazetteer project, architectural heraldry in Scotland often appears on stone panels, lintels, wardrobes and public buildings, and is increasingly treated as a conservation concern as many of these panels are exposed to weather and decay. Data collected since 2019 by Dr Caroline Scott on the location and condition of Glasgow’s arms has contributed to this wider record‑keeping effort, helping to track where the city’s emblem appears and how it has changed over time.

Within Glasgow itself, the coat of arms has been adapted to shifting civic structures. The 1866 version reflected the then‑existing city corporation, while the 1996 re‑grant was tied to the current unitary authority created under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. At the same time, local burghs such as Maryhill used their own distinct emblems, such as the 1885 Maryhill coat of arms that includes the Charlotte Dundas and industrial motifs, which survives today as a wooden shield on display in the Burgh Halls foyer. This layering of city‑wide and local heraldry provides the historical backdrop against which the Maryhill exhibition operates, showing how civic identity can be simultaneously centralised and localised.

Prediction: How might this exhibition affect Glasgow audiences?

The Let Glasgow Flourish – The Glasgow Coat of Arms exhibition is likely to influence local audiences in several measurable ways. For residents and regular visitors to Maryhill Burgh Halls, the show offers a structured way to engage with symbols that many already recognise from street‑level encounters—on bollards, street signs, public buildings and even pub doors—turning casual familiarity into a more deliberate, historically informed appreciation. By highlighting both the formal origins of the coat of arms and its informal, everyday uses, the exhibition may encourage visitors to “read” their own neighbourhoods as civic‑heritage landscapes, not just as functional urban spaces.

For heritage and community‑education groups in Glasgow, the project provides a model of how to combine archival research with crowdsourced contributions, following the earlier approach of Dr Caroline Scott’s map‑based archive. Local history societies, walking‑tour organisers and schools may be prompted to develop their own emblem‑spotting trails or classroom activities focused on civic heraldry, using the Maryhill show as a reference point.

More broadly, the exhibition could help stabilise public awareness of Glasgow’s coat of arms amid wider cultural change. As younger generations encounter the city’s symbols in digital form—from social‑media graphics and event branding to online maps—physical displays like the one at Maryhill Burgh Halls anchor those images in a concrete, place‑specific context. Over time, such exhibitions may contribute to a more consistent civic‑identity framework, in which the bird, tree, bell, fish and ring are recognised not only as objects in a museum case but as motifs that continue to shape how Glasgow imagines itself.