At the turn of the last century, I struck up an unlikely friendship with a man twice my age at an evening writing class. My writing partner was a recently retired man with a Midatlantic twang and one of the most impressive moustaches I’ve ever seen. We got along well; he reminded me a bit of my dad, both of whom were printers. One week, he hadn’t had time to complete our writing assignment, so instead thrust a copy of a book into my hands. I stared at the vaguely pagan cover with a puzzled look, until I noticed the author and he had the same name: Harry Bell. I was surprised; I’d had no idea there was a published author in my midst, humouring my dilettante literary efforts all these weeks.
I began to read Glasgow’s Secret Geometry out of politeness more than anything else, but found myself hooked. Here Bell was describing a lifelong search for Glasgow’s ‘Network of Aligned Sites’. I immediately decided I had to go and see these sacred places for myself. Then in October 2001, a short while after our brief friendship, Bell passed away aged 65.
When he’d first published the book in 1984, Bell had worried that the ideas contained within might not survive a generation. “Unless people discuss the idea, visit the sites, and tell their children about them, the Glasgow Network of Aligned Sites could be forgotten before it is properly understood. Don’t let this happen,” he forewarned.
A quarter of a century on, against the odds, Bell’s sacred geometry is enjoying a prolonged second wind. In 2013, a film was made inspired by his theory, and a reprint of the book was republished in 2024. YouTubers and bloggers revisit his haunts, piecing together the puzzle. Even a sacred geometry sceptic like myself is still following in Bell’s footsteps, trying to make sense of the most mystifying theory about Glasgow I’ve ever read.
This is more or less how I found myself scrambling up a medieval hill fort south of Glasgow earlier this year, my non-plussed wife in-tow. Had I drunk the secret geometry Kool-Aid, or had Harry Bell been onto something all along?
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