Genius Fan

We went for lunch in Glasgow recently and I made a secret plan (secret from my wife) to park up in the Merchant City and walk to the nearby St Andrew’s in the Square church. I knew it was from here that Italian Vincenzo Lunardi, one of the new breed of balloonists or ‘aeronauts’, made one of a handful of Scottish balloon flights. This one on 23 November 1785. Just two years before that, the French Montgolfier brothers made the first manned balloon flight, on 4 June 1783. Aye, and the first (proper) manned balloon flight in Scotland was on 27 August 1784, by a gentleman called James Tytler.

Lunardi’s balloon was hydrogen powered, not hot-aired, and he had to mix his sulphuric chemicals on site and funnel the resulting hydrogen gas into the fabric balloon which inflated while tethered to the ground by ropes which were eventually released so the balloon could lift off up into the air. On the day Lunardi took off from St Andrew’s in the Square, the breeze carried him aloft, to the amazement and satisfaction of the the many onlookers below, and his balloon was swept south east, over Hamilton and Lanark until finally ditching, later that same day, in a field near Hawick in the hills of the Scottish Borders.

Two hundred and forty years after that flight, you can walk right around the outside of the church. It’s a beautiful, neat building from the outside. Actually, I say ‘church’, but it isn’t any longer. Lately it’s been occupied by something called the Centre for Scottish Culture. It resembles one of my favourite churches, St Martin in the Fields, by Trafalgar Square in London. They both have that colonaded front and a tiered tower with clock. We couldn’t get inside on the day we visited, and the front columns were hidden by scaffolding. It’s worthwhile visiting, but disappointing we couldn’t get inside.