Escaping “a gulf of sin and misery”: the thread about the Edinburgh Emigration Home for Destitute Children

This thread was originally written and published in August 2020. It has been edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

Looking up something else in a Post Office Directory, my eye was caught by a rather sad sounding listing for the Canadian Home for Friendless Girls in Lauriston Lane, Edinburgh; a street long since built over. The Home was formed at a public meeting in December 1871 in Queen Street Hall which was organised by the Reverend and Mrs Blaikie. Its goal was establishing a mission to send “poor homeless and destitute girls” to the “rescue homes” in Canada of a Miss Macpherson. Annie Macpherson was an evangelical Scottish Quaker who, moved by the poverty she saw in the East End of London in the late 1860s, had set up the Home of Industry in Spitalfield. She organised a scheme of assisted emigration for destitute children from London to new and better lives in Canada. After education and training they would be placed with a suitably Christian host family as a domestic servant. To this end she set up “reception” and “distribution” homes in Canada and made arrangements with a network of children’s homes back in Britain and Ireland who would provide the “recruits“.

Annie Macpherson addressed the meeting in Edinburgh to testify to the success of the scheme; 800 children had already sent abroad to Canada. The Reverend William Garden Blaikie stated that premises had already been secured for the new venture in Edinburgh and a matron – Miss Tait – appointed. Margaret Blaikie, the minister’s wife, was to be secretary of the society and it was she who was the driving force behind the Home in Edinburgh. A Temperance advocate and long-time president of the Scottish Christian Union (a women’s Temperance society), it was during a visit to Canada in 1870 that she had met Annie. She was so impressed with the work that she resolved to get involved when she returned home. Finding that there was no existing organisation in Edinburgh to become involved through, she decided to set one up of her own and invited Annie back to Scotland to speak in public at its formation.

The Home in Edinburgh took in “young women who have fallen from virtue and desire to redeem their character” or “young girls who have lost one or both parents or have living parents… of loose character.” (Boys were sent to Mr. Muir’s homes in either Yardheads in Leith or Musselburgh). Those girls admitted to the Home would be “clothed and taught and cared for” and “brought up in the ways of godliness and industry“. Ultimately they would be sent, suitably reformed and trained, to be placed in domestic service in Canada.

We are therefore as thoroughly convinced as ever that our scheme presents a merciful opening for many destitute children who would not otherwise escape the gulf of sin and misery on whose borders they have been born and reared.

The name of the Home had quickly been changed to the Edinburgh Emigration Home for Destitute Children. In 1874 it reported that it had 16 girls resident, awaiting the journey to Canada. In 1875 it was 31. It was run by voluntary donation and fund-raising; Margaret Blaikie made it a point of founding principle to never make public appeal for funds. It obviously prospered as in 1880 the Home bought its premises at Lauriston Lane, and briefly closed them to refurbish and enlarge them, adding an additional wing with 4 extra bedrooms. It reopened in November 1881.

In its 20-or-so years of existence, some 700 children were removed from the homes of destitute and drunken families, and some 300 were “assisted” to emigrate, others were adopted or found relatives or positions in Scotland. Most of the girls sent from Edinburgh went to Annie Macpherson’s Marchmont Distribution Home in Belleville, Ontario,

An 1892 publication noted that of the girls sent to Canada from Edinburgh, “at least ninety five percent have done well, and less than five percent have been unsatisfactory“. Its success was put down to distributing the girls widely over the country in family homes, rather than keeping them massed together in a central institution. The expansion of the Royal Infirmary in 1889 saw a compulsory purchase impending for the Home; advancing in age and noting that there were now larger organisations in Scotland carrying out work such as her own (in particular Quarrier’s Orphan Homes of Scotland), she decided it best to wind up her institution and retire. The proceeds of the sale and the remaining funds of the Home were gifted to the Society for the Protection of Children.

It was while minister of the Pilrig congregation of the Free Kirk that the Rev. Blaikie had commissioned both the original church building (the second purpose-built church for that Kirk) and its replacement by a more lavish and permanent building on the opposite corner. It remains a landmark to this day on Leith Walk, even though it has long since been within the established Church of Scotland.

Margaret publicly wrote that she and her husband had become “total abstainers” in the 1870s and “always worked in conjunction with [eachother].” As well as sharing a zeal for Temperance with his wife the Rev. Blaikie was also a prolific writer and pamphleteer and advocate of improving conditions for working people. He formed a society which commissioned the Pilrig Model Buildings to provide model workers housing, one of the first such instances in Edinburgh. They are now known as Shaw’s Buildings or Shaw’s Street / Terrace / Place and were a sort of progenitor of the later Colonies housing.

Around the same time that Mrs Blaikie stepped back from her work with the Home, the Reverend resigned as minister at Pilrig and took up a chair in theology with the Free Church’s New College, rising to become Professor of Divinity. He resigned in 1897, aged 77, and the couple retired to North Berwick where he would die in 1899 and Margaret in 1915, aged 92. Annie Macpherson died in 1904.

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Erse Houses: the thread about Edinburgh’s Gaelic churches and the spiritual wanderings of the City’s Gaels

It’s been a while since I made a “Now And Then” animated image transition, so have yourselves one showing the “new” (then) Gaelic chapel at the top of what was Horse Wynd, now slap bang in the middle of Chambers Street.

This is one of a pair of images in the National Galleries of Scotland collection made by the photographer Archibald Burns about 1868 or 9. The image used in the transition animation is the first below. The second, below it, is taken looking the other way along what is now Chambers Street, but which at that time was a narrow street giving access bettwen North College Street and Argyle Square. Horse Wynd is running downhill to the right of the horse and cart. It ran steeply downhill downhill to the Cowgate from the Potter Row and was one of the principal routes into old Edinburgh from the south, and about the only one really suitable for horse traffic, hence its name.

We can see from these pictures that the chapel was relatively plain and roughly finished, a 2-storey, 5-bay building with its better face onto the street. An Edinburgh Improvement Act 1867 bill, defaced by a Temperance movement fly poster, gives the clue about what is going on here. This act saw the creation of Chambers Street from the series of narrow lanes and squares that existed at this time.

At the centre of these improvements, Chambers Street was a broad new boulevard to link the South Bridge with George IV bridge. In doing so ploughed its way through Argyll’s Square, Brown’s Square (he who gave his name to George Square), the Society, Minto House, the Trades Maiden Hospital,

This was not the first Gaelic chapel or meeting house in the city however, the first was at the top of Castle Wynd, off the Grassmarket. It’s shown in 1784 (Galick, sic), 1804 (Earse, or Erse, a lowland Scots phrase for Gaelic), 1817 and up to 1849, when only its former site is recorded.

During the 17th century, the population of Gaelic speakers in the city had increased to such an extent that in 1704 the General Assembly of the Kirk agreed to provide a place of worship for them “to hear service in their own tongue“. Highlanders were drawn to the city by socio-economic factors. They long supplied the city with “certain classes of its population; the town Guard, the caddies, the linkmen, the hewers of wood and drawers of water generally were from the glens“. There was no progress on the Gaelic chapel (at this time it was a Chapel of Ease, somewhere handier to reach your place of worship in what could be enormous parishes and not a distinct parish Church) until 1766-67, when the building on Castle Wynd began to be erected.

The new chapel opened in 1769, oddly with financial assistance from the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, a lowland organisation to “civilise” the Highlands and keep out Catholicism through religious education. Civilising of course meant protestant, although the SSPCK leaned towards Anglicanism, rather than the Presbyterianism of lowland Scotland. (I say oddly because the SSPCK is better known for being virulently against “that barbarity and the Irish language” and made concerted efforts to stamp it out in the Highlands. So it was somewhat odd that it was actively spreading it in Edinburgh.) The minister of the new church on opening was by the name of Macgregor and he was something of a not-too-closeted Jacobite.

This was in direct contrast to the previous Gaelic-speaking minister in Edinburgh, Neil McVicar of the West Kirk (now St. Cuthberts). The appropriately named McVicar was trusted with the “charge of the Highlanders of the City” and preached strenuously against the 1715 and 1745 uprisings. Indeed, when Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) entered the city after his victory at the Battle of Prestonpans, McVicar preached openly “In regard to the young man who has recently come among us in search of an earthly crown, may he soon obtain what is far better, a heavenly one.” McVicar, they said, “never knew fear“. One day, out on a promenade in Comely Bank, he was challenged by the Laird of Inverleith (Sir Francis Kinloch of Gilmerton, 3rd Baronet) who was aggrieved at the public humiliation of being put under Kirk discipline by McVicar. The laird arrogantly threatened the Minister “But for the coat you wear, I should have taught you a lesson today!” In an instant, McVicar whipped off his long and solemn black Minister’s coat, threw it to the ground and with the thunderous delivery honed by preachering retorted “There lies the minister of St. Cuthbert’s, and here stands Neil McVicar, and by yea, and by nay, sir, come on!” Prudence got the better of the laird, who beat a hasty retreat with his tail between his legs less he found himself fighting the fearless man of the Kirk.

Back to the Gaelic chapel, it issued its own communion tokens with a verse from Corinthians on the back. The New International Bible gives this verse as “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” The date of 1775 most likely refers to the appointment of the minister.

In 1807, a new minister, John MacDonald, was appointed. John Kay helpfully made a caricature and biography of him in his book of Edinburgh notables. McDonald was very highly thought of in the city and was quite the megapreacher. He kept getting himself into trouble by wandering uninvited into other minister’s parishes and preaching to anyone who would listen. He went uninvited into their kirks, or preached outside them or even in dissenting churches. He later devoted himself to bettering “the religious and moral conditions of St. Kilda.” He made numerous visits to that distant archipelago, ingratiated himself with the locals and helped arrange for a permanent Church and minister. His are some of the first detailed accounts of the place.

Before all that though, in Edinburgh, a combination of the rising Gaelic-speaking population and his popularity as a preacher saw his flock out-grow the meeting house on Castle Wynd and he sought to obtain adjoining ground to have it extended. There is no known image of the first meeting house, but there’s an outside chance this is it below, in this Joseph Farington sketch of 1788, before the north side of the Grassmarket was really built up at its eastern end.

The SSPCK was again approached for assistance, but at the same time there were other plans afoot to provide a second chapel. However this was to be a Gaelic and English Chapel of Ease, with services in Gaelic but other instruction given in English for the “benefit” of children. With the financial assistance of the Edinburgh Corporation and the Writers to the Signet, the site at the head of Horse Wynd was acquired and the new chapel with seats for 1,100 was built at a cost of £3,000. It is one of my favourite features of the 1849 Town Plan that the surveyors and draughtsmen troubled to record in the basic internal layouts of public buildings and recorded the capacity of churches. I think in this instance “Free” means seats not reserved to a particular member of the congregation, rather than the Free Church.

The new chapel opened in 1813 but that it was both Gaelic and English I think caused a bit of a schism in the congregation, thus the old chapel briefly remained in the Gaelic language alone until the departure of Reverend Macdonald. This schism seems to have been resolved largely by the practicalities of financial matters; the congregation could not support both the old chapel and the debts of constructing the new one. Both chapels were without minister and common sense prevailed to close and sell the old one, transfer its financial trust to the new chapel and recruit a single new minister. The congregations agreed to merge and this did so in 1815 under the Rev. John Munro. The Kirk issued regulations that “Service ought to be performed in the Gaelic language at the ordinary meetings for public worship… of every lord’s Day, but with leave to the Minister to have an additional service in English in the evening or at any other time during the week.” In 1832 the then Minister, Duncan McCaig, was found guilty of stealing books from the library of the Faculty of Advocates and was sentenced to transportation to the prison colony of Port Arthur in Tasmania.

In 1834 the Kirk passed the Chapels Act which converted the Chapel of Ease into a Parish Church Quoad Sacra, that is an ecclesiastical parish but not an administrative one. The Gaelic Chapel thus became a Church, but with no specific parish boundary. This meant that it now had its own Session (governing committee) and the office bearers were thus recorded – the Gaelic church elders included a writer (lawyer), excise officer, grocer, stonemason, cow-feeders, marble cutter, tavern keeper and coach hirer. Church life was impacted by The Disruption of 1843 when a significant part of the etablished Church of Scotland walked out and set up its own Church, the Free Church in protest. The Gaelic Church was no exception to this, however the building on Horse Wynd and its contents was legally the property of the established Kirk. The majority of the Gaelic congregation and the Minister had joined the Free Church but stayed on in the building and so the Kirk moved them on. The Gaelic Free Church settled in another temporary Free Church on Cambridge Street before building its own home; Free St. Columbas. Here it stayed as a Gaelic church until 1948. The Traverse Theatre later moved in, before clearing it for their modern building .

The small remnant of the Gaelic Church that stayed behind in the Church of Scotland took a long time to rebuild itself, having lost its minister and all its elders. This rebuilding was rudely disrupted in 1867 by the compulsory purchase order for its home by the Improvement Scheme. The Church got £6,000 and leave to remain until the bulldozers moved in. They spent some time after this moving around until the Catholic Apostolic Church on Broughton Street came on the market when the latter moved down the road to what is now the Mansfield Tracquair Centre.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davids_leicas/14752650390

The new Church was much smaller, but the Gaelic-speaking population of the city was declining overall and much of it was in the Free Church, so this probably wasn’t an issue. The congregation moved in during 1815 with the first service on October 15th 1876 under the minister Donald Masson. The 5-bay classical building was officially given the name St. Oran’s in 1900. The congregation stayed here until 1948 when declining membership and the death of the minister, MacDonald, saw both it and St. Columbas (by now back in the Church of Scotland via the United Free Church of Scotland) closed, despite merger plans. A continuing St. Columbas congregation remained in the Free Church, where some Gaelic services are still held – in a building originally built as St. John’s Free Church at the top of Johnston Terrace. Remember what I have said before about Victorian Scotland building a mindboggling number of churches?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davids_leicas/15775853064/in/photolist-2nqrmRj-WrwHu6-2g4awGi-28bmJgy-2jXVYRd-FQwbJo-q34nuC-2kDEfkX-UfVjsG-XQ5cZL-8tVLE4-s3Uu2i-2aobXfU-29VLGtU-WPtAUs-DYnswy-rLoVWE-s3Qk5u-YXtPzc-244UGRb-DVrFAC-SSbBQN-WHswGm-GLRK1P-xoDvVi-uK4m12-u5uMCo-GvAw4B-UWKwrq-J83Dqc-EHtMZ3-GuQnDu-2mcL9eE-9Qs21p-qaw8td-29h54Cz

This thread was only made possibly by some (lots) help from Neil Macleod who patiently answered my questions and kindly sent some scans of the relevant books! Thanks Neil! Thanks also to Fraser MacDonald for assistance in accessing relevant academic papers.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

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The Disruption: the thread about the religious schism which proved a pivotal moment in the development of photography

Happy Disruption Day to all who celebrate! (that’s the 18th of May if you happen to be reading this at any other time). In case you aren’t too familiar with it, The Disruption of 1843 was a rather very seismic event in the civic and religious life of 19th century Scotland, whereby 121 ministers and 73 elders of the established Church of Scotland (“the Kirk”) walked out of the General Assembly and set up their very own church; the Free Church of Scotland (“the Free Kirk“). The walk-out was not just literary symbolism, those involved quite literally walked out of one Church (that of Saint Andrew on George Street, now the New Town Church) and down the hill to Tanfield Hall in Canonmills where they held a meeting creating their own. This became known as The Disruption Assembly.

Five days after the walkout, the breakaway assembly re-convened at Tanfield and signed an Act of Separation from the Kirk. Around 474 ministers, almost one third of the establishment of the Kirk, left to join the breakway institution. Their appointed Moderator, Thomas Chalmers declared:

Though we quit the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment principle; we quit a vitiated Establishment but would rejoice in returning to a pure one. We are advocates for a national recognition of religion – and we are not voluntaries

The artist David Octavius Hill’s huge painting at the top of this page – it is 12 feet wide and 4.75 feet tall – records that momentous second meeting of the Disruption in Tanfield. My learned acquaintance Neil MacLeod has put the reason behind the Disruption into words better than I ever could;

Key to the Disruption was the interference of the State into matters within the jurisdiction of the Church. This is seen most clearly in the court cases of the “10 Years Conflict” leading up to 1843. In essence the point at dispute was who could choose the minister of a congregation? The landowner of where the church building was, or the congregation? Those who formed the Free Church said it was the congregation.

There is a plaque at Tanfield marking the occassion, which reads:

TANFIELD HALL

The First Assembly of the
Free Church of Scotland
Was Held Here on 18th May 1843
And in the Same Hall the
Union of the Secession and
Relief Churches was
Consummated 13th May 1847

Note the old building in the background is not the Tanfield Hall; it’s a former wool storage warehouse that wasn’t built until 10-20 years after the Disruption.

Many notable worthies of 1840s Scottish life joined the Free Kirk and there are all sorts of very interesting stories to tell about the likes of Thomas Guthrie, James Begg, Thomas Chalmers and the phrenologist David Welsh; but those are stories for another day.

David Octavius Hill was himself present at The Disruption. A son of Perth, he was well established as an artist in Edinburgh’s New Town at this time and was encouraged to paint a fittingly epic picture of the momentous occasion.

Someone who was also there was the physicist Sir David Brewster; the inventor of the binocular camera and the Kaleidoscope, he had an interest in optics and photography and also suggested to Hill that he might try out this new-fangled technique to help in the mammoth task of taking likenesses of all the ministers involved.

Brewster introduced Hill to a protégé, Robert Adamson, a chemist who was showing promise as a photographer and had just set up a studio at Rock House on Calton Hill. Adamson’s brother had produced the first Calotype photograph in Scotland in 1841.

Hill and Adamson hit it off and got straight to work. There was something special about the combination of Hill’s artistic eye for his subjects and composition and Adamson’s scientific approach and skill with the processes of photography and developing. As a result, the end product was far greater than the sum of its parts. In all, they captured the likenesses of over 450 ministers of the Free Kirk on calotypes, most posed at the Rock House studio in small groups. Hill then took these and painstakingly painted them onto the enormous canvas; it would take him over 23 years! By the time he was nearing completion, many of his subjects had passed away and others had aged; he went back over their hair and whiskers with the white paint to age them accordingly. Robert Adamson would die tragically young in 1848, aged just 26, many years before the work was completed.

However brief it was, the partnership of Hill and Adamson – the artist and the scientist – produced a remarkable and groundbreaking body of work in terms of both their chosen subject matter; their artistic nature; and the volume and quality of output. Their depictions of the Fisher Folk of Newhaven and street scenes are quite incredible. You can lose yourself for weeks in early Victorian Edinburgh and east Scotland in Hill & Adamson’s work on the National Galleries site.

There are some nice little “easter eggs” hidden in The Disruption painting; Robert Adamson (red arrow) is peering into his camera viewfinder. Behind him (blue arrow), David Octavius Hill is scribbling on his sketchbook.

Lurking in a doorway at the back is Thomas Annan, a printer and photographer, who would would pioneer the recording of social conditions using photography. Annan purchased the Rock House studio and its contents off of Hill and would go on to print some of the work by the process of photogravury. In a nice squaring of the circle, it was Hill’s intention that the painting, once completed, would be photographed and printed by Thomas Annan for sale to the public.

Hill and Adamson may also have unwittingly invented an early version of Where’s Wally as you can look at their original photos of posed ministers and try and match them up on the big painting.

The also managed to take the first known photograph of beer being drunk, in a lighthearted moment that shows these serious men, at serious work, could also have a bit of a giggle. Robert Adamson took the photo, and it shows (left to right) writer and stained glass artist James Ballantine; social reformer Dr. George Bell; and David Octavius Hill himself on the right, there is a glass of beer for all three, Younger’s Edinburgh Ale was notoriously strong. It is a very impressive photograph considering just how long they would have to have sat perfectly still in their mirthsome poses to make the necessary long exposure time.

The Free Kirk didn’t mess about; they had to set up parallel structures to the established Kirk – this meant churches in which to worship, manses and stipends for ministers and their families, schools (the parish had responsibility for education at this time), a college for training ministers, an overarching administration, missions… It took some quite impressive fund-raising activity to finance all of this (which was not without further controversy in itself at the time, and to this day, as a not insignificant amount of money was raised by sympathetic American Presbyterians who were also slave owners).

The Free Church held on to the blood-stained money, and continued to justify itself in its position — and of course to apologize for slavery — and does so till this day. She lost a glorious opportunity for giving her voice, her vote, and her example to the cause of humanity ; and to-day she is staggering under the curse of the enslaved, whose blood is in her skirts.

In all, some 1,400 churches, manses and schools would be built across Scotland. One of the more unusual of these new churches was the Strontian Iron Church (Gaelic: Eaglais Iaruinn). The landowner, Sir James Riddell, refused to allow a Free Church on his land – if you recall, landowner influence over the Church and their patronage was one of the conflicts which had led to the Disruption in the first place. This led the inventive Free Kirk to commission a floating church with seats for 700 people, built on an iron pontoon, and they had it towed to Loch Sunart.

The Eaglais Iaruinn was built in Glasgow with £1,400 raised in the Strontian community and launched in 1846. Two steam tugs, the Gulliver and the Conqueror towed it down the Clyde and up the west coast to Loch Sunart in Ardnastang Bay. It was 24 metres long and 7m wide and had an upper gallery and a pulpit. In the bow was the vestry, which doubled as a bunk for the Minister. The below sketches of the interior of the Iron Church and people on their way to worship there are from Am Baile, the Highlands History & Culture Archive.

The church was anchored 150 yards from the shore, outside the landowner’s reach and yet prominently in sight of him. A line was fixed along which the congregation pulled themselves in row boats to and from the service (see the top left image in the above panel). Attendance varied depending on the popularity of the visiting minster. It was said that when Dr Beith from Stirling visited to preach, he did three sittings on a Sunday, two in Gaelic and “the church was never so deep in the water;” people would travel very far in those days to make sure they could hear a service in their own language. This situation was ended by a storm in September 1847 that drove the church from its moorings and onto the shore. The reluctant landowner relented somewhat and agreed to help fund its repair and it was used where it had come to rest on the shore (see the top right image in the panel above) until a permanent church was built in 1873.

The Free Church of Scotland was the result of the largest religious schism in Scotland since the Reformation itself back in 1560, but was one of many seemingly the interminable splits and unions within the Scottish Presbyterian churches. It’s one of the things you always need to bear in mind when asking yourself the question “why did Victorian Scotland build so many churches?” It has also given us one of the most elegantly pleasing diagrams on Wikipedia:

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

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An experiment in local self-improvement: the thread about Thomas Chalmers and the West Port Territorial Free Church

This site likes to indulge in occasional posts to answer the question of “why did the Victorians build so many churches and why should we care?” Well, this is another such post! The Chalmers Territorial Free Church and its associated school was established in 1844 in the early days of the Free Kirk as a Territorial church; that is, a church with its own defined territory to serve, but not one that had a legally defined parish. “Rapid urbanisation left many city communities entirely un-churched. Limitations on how churches and parishes were authorised hampered “planting” churches… So Territorial churches were established to meet the need.” (my thanks to Neil Macleod for keeping me right on this subject).

Chalmers was Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847); minister, theologian, moral philosopher, political economist and reformer. Born in the Fife village of Anstruther, he found himself at different times as moderator of both the Kirk (the Church of Scotland) and Free Kirk. Ministering in Glasgow after 1815, he was acutely aware of the lack of churches in urban, industrial communities and therefore the social security services they provided to people, particularly the urban poor. He made a survey of his parish (the Tron) and found of 10,000 people, there were fewer than 100 boys in Sabbath school. To remedy this he sought to establish such schools but was not content to just wait for people to come to his schools, he saw the task as akin mission work and “they must go forth to the population inhabiting [the] territory“. And so he recruited 4 Sabbath school teachers but instead of spreading them amongst the entire parish, he assigned each a neighbourhood containing 30 families and instructed them to concentrate on trying to encourage as much of their “territory” into Sunday education as possible. The scheme was a success and drew recruits to it; he soon had 44 teachers.

Chalmers believed that communities should be assisted to help themselves at a local scale; financially, socially and morally; rather than just exist on charitable or state support (or with neither!). And he of course believed that the church could – no, should – be at the centre of such a self-improving community; this was his concept of Territorial ministry. Back in Edinburgh and as head of the Free Kirk (which went its own way in The Disruption of 1843), the West Port district was selected by him as an ideal community to test his ideas, and the Territorial Church was established in 1844.

He called this scheme an Experimentum Crucis; an experiment of the Cross. This would go on to serve a territory that encompassed the districts of the West Port, Grassmarket, part of the Lawnmarket and upper Cowgate; however he was clear that to be a success the scheme would have to start small, and local, and grow from there.

Chalmers’ first school in the Territory (which doubled as a preaching hall on Sundays) was established in November 1844 in a disused tannery in the West Port, until more permanent premises were constructed. It was “rather repulsive in character” entered “by a close, which is so low that people are obliged to stoop to make their way through it“. This school, in Chalmers’ words, should show a preference to “one and all of the families of [the] district, where the great object is that the school should be filled from among the families of the district“. This may seem a sensible concept to those of us brought up in a system of school catchments, but these did not exist at the time. His idea was that a community school, serving the community, would increase the education of the community as a whole; not just distribute it thinly across the city to where its scholars were drawn from. The school charged a token 2d per week per child, to “[teach] people that education was worthy of its price“. It began with fewer than 60 scholars but soon had 280. Entrance was strictly for families of the Territory.

The first minister for the Territory was the Rev. William Tasker. Tasker’s task would not be easy, and he initially reported:

We remember of having the seventh successive door slapped in our face ere we had time to tell our message, and of then going to another tenement and entering house by house only to find men and women rolling on the floor of a desolate dwelling in indiscriminate drunkenness; whilst mingling with their curses and their blasphemies, the heart-piercing looks and cries of their infant children assailed us with irresistible appeals for bread to allay the cutting pangs of hunger.

The permanent church (that in the illustration at the top of this post) was established in 1845 thanks to a bequest of £300 from Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne. It had seats for 600 worshippers, included a purpose-built school room and also had a washing house, drying green and playground for the children, “so that they have a great step in advance towards the completion of their parochial economy“. The Experiment would go on to include the schools and church, a savings bank and a library. While the local population paid for these services, the church provided an enthusiastic corps of visitors, teachers and improvers to attend to the needs of the Territory. It should be noted that the latter “do-gooders” were not always welcomed with open arms.

Thomas Chalmers died in 1847, 176 years ago tomorrow (at the time of writing). He went to bed after working on a report for the General Assembly of the Free Kirk, and never woke up. His photograph was taken by Hill and Adamson in 1845 as part of their grand photography project for Painting the Disruption.

By the 1880s the Territorial congregation had outgrown its initial, humble premises. In 1884 a new, grander church, 50% larger than its predecessor, was built up the road on the corner of a widened Lady Lawson Street. The old church was retained as a mission hall. Its minister was the Rev. James Jolly, who had served the community here since 1872.

This 1914 photo by the Edinburgh Photographic Society shows the new church of 1884, by which time it was in the United Free Church following the merger of (most of) the Free Kirk and the United Presbyterian (U.P.) Church.

In 1929 the majority of the United Free Church merged into the Church of Scotland and so too did the Territorial. The old church buildings was by now surplus to requirements and was sold in 1930. It became a store and commercial premises. The below photo is also an Edinburgh Photographic Society one from 1914, the close-up of the painted sign in the window of the neighbouring restaurant is fascinating. FISH & TRIPE. SUPPERS. HOT PIES.

A new church hall was built, adjoining the 1884 church, with the proceeds of the sale of the first church, The Chalmers Hall, seen in this 1972 photo by S. G. Jackman.

The effects of post-war decline in church attendance and the depopulation of the Grassmarket and West Port (which had been taking place since 1920s) meant that there were just too many churches in this part of town – particularly now that nearly all of them were together in the Church of Scotland. And so in 1958 the Territorial merged with Lauriston Church just 150m away. From 1959, both church premises were used on alternate Sundays. In 1965 the Territorial building was sold to the Art School and Lauriston became the sole home. This combined Lauriston-Chalmers congregation would merge with, and moved to, Barclay Church at Bruntsfield in 1980, leaving not one, not two, but three vacant churches in the district.

Neither of these churches fared well. The Lauriston was sold to the YWCA in 1980 and on to the Arab Social League in 1981, who were never able to fund any work to convert it into a cultural centre and it slowly fell into disrepair. After almost 30 years of neglect, fire damage, vandalism and the toll of the elements and owner absenteeism, it was sold to new owners and slowly has come back to life as the Darul Arqam Masjid and Muslim Community Centre. The original Territorial church, later the mission hall, lay abandoned for decades. It was finally demolished in 1987 and a six-storey block of flats was built in its place in a mock-vernacular style. The Art School had the second Territorial pulled down and used it as little more than a car park. The site of the Territorial and adjacent derelict former Post Office tower block, eventually got the glass and synthetic stone office box redevelopment treatment so prevalent of noughties Edinburgh. The bombastically named Evolution House lay embarrassingly empty for a number of years however as occupants fell through, until the College of Art took it over and moved in. Which was an ironic end to things considering they had singularly failed to do anything meaningful with the plot or the predecessor building for the previous 40-odd years!

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#OTD in 1846
A Free Church congregation in Strontian, Ardnamurchan, launched their floating church.

The local laird refused them permission to build a church on his land, so they "crowdfunded" £1,400 to get a Clyde shipbuilder to make a floating church. The church was moored in Loch Sunart & was 80ft long & 24ft wide. It could hold a congregation of 400.

#Strontian #Ardnamurchan #Highlands #Scotland #FreeChurch