Christmas in Glasgow, 1816

Two hundred years ago, the only Episcopal Chapel with its own building in Glasgow was St Andrews-by-the-Green, a fine classical stone edifice built sixty years previously.

St-Andrews-by-the-Green, Glasgow, built 1750

However, in those days before the Clyde was deepened, Glasgow often flooded, and on Christmas Day 1816, the floor of St-Andrews-by-the-Green was four or five feet underwater.

Christmas that year was on a Wednesday, and whereas the presbyterian Parish Churches did not celebrate Christmas and were therefore closed, the Episcopal Church was attended by a large congregation of 290 people.

As Robert Reid writes,

"The predicament caused by the river inundation of the church was made known to Dr. Gibb, then minister of St. Andrew’s Parish Church, who most readily permitted the congregation to assemble therein, and celebrate the Christmas of 1816." (Robert Reid (Senex), Glasgow Past & Present (Glasgow, 1884), vol. 3, p. 229.)

St Andrew's Parish Church, Glasgow

This minister was Gavin Gibb, D.D., who would become Moderator of the Church of Scotland the following year, and Professor of Oriental Languages at Glasgow University from 1820 to 1831.

The Christmas Communion was a great success, and £28 10s 10d was given in offerings.

This example of ecumenical friendship was not unusual amongst presbyterians and episcopalians in lowland Scotland at this period. In Edinburgh, Bishop Sandford (who was also Bishop of Glasgow) built strong working relationships with his presbyterian neighbours. After a generation of war and the fear of a secular revolution such as had taken place in France, these Christians felt that what united them was stronger than their differences.

However, the situation is rather more complicated than it at first appears. Three days earlier, on Sunday 22 December 1816, another St Andrews had opened.

St Andrews Roman Catholic Chapel (now Cathedral), Glasgow

"Divine service was performed yesterday for the first time in that elegant structure the Roman Catholic Chapel, Clyde Street. The Rev. Mr Scott officiated. The Chapel was crowded, and the whole was conducted with the greatest decorum and propriety." (Glasgow Herald, 23 December 1816)

An element of the hospitality by the parish church to the Episcopalian congregation may therefore be an expression of solidarity amongst Protestants, in the face of the resurgence of a new denomination which for centuries had been regarded as a serious threat and was still regarded with great suspicion and often open hostility.

Was the new Catholic chapel also flooded, and if so, where did they celebrate their first Christmas?We do not know. But it is the only one of the St Andrews still open as a church today.


Roger Edwards

Review: Glasgow's Early Episcopalians

Roger Edwards' new book, Love and Loyalty: Looking for Glasgow's Early Episcopalians does far more than fill a useful gap in Scottish Episcopal History (which it does). It sets new standards for the semi-scholarly historical writing typical of Scottish Episcopalian history.

The first new standard is in the imaginative unearthing and use of very scarce sources. These are used not only to piece together a narrative but to challenge assumptions about episcopalian social history, for example, that 'not all episcopalians were wealthy and male' (p.21). Where national events impinge on the narrative, such as the coronation of George I, the battle of Sherriffmuir, or the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie's army after the '45, these are never shoehorned in from standard narratives, but told as the Glaswegians at the time would have heard about them, through locally-current ballads or descriptions of local responses.

The second, related new standard is Edwards' talent for historical visualisation, which takes the reader into the story with novelistic skill, while carefully adhering to the evidence. We are genteel worshippers being shuffled, terrified, in small groups out of the church into an angry mob throwing snowballs and threatening serious violence. We are small boys giggling and chasing after William Cockburn shouting 'Amen! Amen!'. We are Bonnie Prince Charlie, having to pass under the imposing equestrian statue of William of Orange as we go about the unfriendly city. There is nothing dry about this account. Ken Shaw's original illustrations of the churches add to this quality.

I found all kinds of interesting things in this book. Perhaps the most interesting was the clarification of what the much-used phrase 'high church' meant in Scotland. This included what now seems a bizarre enthusiasm for the feast of King Charles the Martyr, and the insistence on celebrating Christmas. It did not involve, for example, liturgical worship (the English Prayer Book was known as the 'English Mass') or a prominent communion table (dangerously superstitious). It was a long way removed from later Tractarian or Ritualist ideas, for all their insistence that they were reviving old Scots religion.

Roger Edwards promises a second edition (on-demand publication makes this easy), featuring the scholarly apparatus of references and index. This will certainly enhance the scholarly value of the work. I would also suggest its accessibility to the general reader would be enhanced by a dramatic personae with names, dates, occupations and relationships, to help us navigate the large cast of characters. A map would also be very useful especially for the non-Glaswegian reader.

But let the second edition not lose the best feature of this sort of history book: the infectious enthusiasm of the local tour-guide. 'I can recommend an excursion to the Auld Kirk at Kilbirnie'. Come on, let's pack the picnic!

Roger Edwards, Love and Loyalty: Looking for Glasgow's Early Episcopalians (2015) is available for £8 from lulu.com.

Eleanor Harris

All Hallows Episcopal Chapel at the 1938 Empire Exhibition

The Scotsman, 25 April 1938

EPISCOPAL CHURCH - Timber Building with Wooden Tiles

The architects, Messrs R. Mervyn Noad & Wallace, of Glasgow, have taken full advantage of the site, which is at the end of an avenue. The whole building is of timber roofed with cedar wood tiles. It is approached by two flights of ten steps, between which rises a 24-foot cross. The Glasgow Tree Lovers’ Society has planted the bed of flowers surrounding the base of the cross, as well as two hedges flanking the entrance to the building. Over the door in a niche is a figure of Christ, designed by the late Mr Archibald Dawson, Glasgow. The building is divided into an outer hall, 36 feet long by 24 feet broad, and an inner chapel, 24 feet by 16 feet. The hall has a sense of loftiness and space, as it is 40 feet from the floor to the ridge. The roof is left open, and on the lowest rafters are displayed the shields of the seven diocese, which are the work of Mr. H. Lewis Gordon, Edinburgh There will be an information stand, two show cases devoted to Church history, and cases displaying vestments and work of the Church Crafts League. Over the entrance door is a mosaic plaque of St Margaret of Scotland by Miss O. Carleton Smyth, and a 7-foot angel in plaster by Miss Evelyn Beale, Glasgow, is over the five-fold door leading into th chapel. Two tempera panels by Miss Mabel Dawson, Edinburgh, depict Bishop Kennedy and St Joan. A model of an 18th century meeting-house has been designed by the Rev. R. Henderson-Howat. The hall is intended to be used as a restroom, for which purpose armchairs and tables have been loaned. The chapel will seat 40. Stained-glass figures of St Ninian, St Patrick, St Columba, and St Kentigern by Miss Margaret Chilton, Edinburgh, are in the four windows; whilst the symbols of these saints in the upper parts of the windows were painted on glass by Mr Ralph Cowan, Glasgow. The seating is of oak, arranged with a central aisle.

The Exhibition had three chapels: Church of Scotland, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic.  The exhibition was not open on Sundays, but on other days there was a daily act of worship in All Hallows. On 13 June,the Revd Duncan Macinnes, rector of St Mary’s, Glencoe, and St Paul’s Church, Kinlochleven, travelled to Glasgow to conduct Gaelic Evensong there, with the choir of St Mary’s Cathedral Glasgow taking part in the service.  On 30 June, Bishop Darbyshire led a radio service from the chapel.

Flags carried in battle by Covenanters and some of their personal relics are included in a special display in the Hall of History, in the Scottish Pavilion south, 1938 being the tercentenary of the signing of the National Covenant.

It had originally been planned to relocate the chapel after the end of the Exhibition, but in the event it was sold on site for £45, because a further £400 was required to restore the site afterwards.

http://thecathedral.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/1938empireexhibition.pdf