The thread about Junction Road Church in Leith and its long and complicated journey through different church and congregation schisms and mergers

This thread was originally written and published in March 2022.

Today’s auction house artefact is this silver church collection plate, inscribed “To the glory of God and in loving memory of Miss Jessie Gray, died 18th Nov. 1961, Dear sister of Rev. Joseph Gray. Easter 1964. Junction Road Church.“

Junction Road Church stood on Great Junction Street. The building is still there, a rather plain, Neoclassical block, but the congregation merged into Leith St. Andrew’s Church of Scotland at the foot of Easter Road in 2006. It is now used by the Mohiuddin Jamia Masjid (Mosque) and education centre.

As a church, it is yet another one of those born out of the various 18th and 19th century schisms in Scottish Presbyterianism and had quite a ride before it joined the established Kirk (Church of Scotland) in 1929. Junction Road Church started out in the Relief Church, an organisation that split off the Kirk in Fife in 1763 as the “Presbytery of Relief” for the “Relief of Christians oppressed in their Christian privileges” over the right of congregations to choose their own minister. The Leith congregation of the Relief Church sat in the old North Leith Kirk of St. Ninian as a temporary home when it formed in 1822. The parishioners were Leithers but had up to this point been worshipping in a Relief congregation at St. James Place in Edinburgh.

The congregation is reputed to have been “a great Kirk for Captains and Company Porters“, the seafaring and dock-working men of Leith (and their families). In March 1824, the foundation stone of a new Relief church in Leith was laid on what would become Great Junction Street – except then was known either as Junction Road (or even St. Anthony’s Road). The Junction Road name stuck for the church, even though when the whole road scheme was finally completed in 1827 it was called Great Junction Street. At this time the congregation numbered 269, so this was quite a financial undertaking.

The church opened on the Sabbath, 30th Jan. 1825 at a build cost of £4,000. The minister was Francis Muir of Strathaven who preached “Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house and the place where Thine honour dwelleth.” in thanks to its temporary home. Reverend Muir was joined by a 2nd minister – Deans – in 1865 to assist with the burden of duties of a congregation approaching 900. Muir died in 1871, aged 75, after 49 years with the congregation. Deans resigned in 1878 owing to ill health brought on by the burden of his work.

The new minister – Duncan – was called in 1879, but resigned 3 years later owing to being unable to manage the large congregation that had been held together largely by their loyalty to the long serving Muir. The next minister – McLeod – died suddenly in 1886 after only 3 years service. His replacement – Scott – suffered a schism in the congregation in 1890 over the issue of unfermented communion wine. The dissenters left to form the Ebenezer Free Church down the street.

At the close of 1899 the Junction Place Church had a healthy congregation of 1,187. By this time it was part of the United Presbyterian Church, (the U. P. Church you will see on old Ordnance Survey maps) the Relief Church having merged with the United Secession Church in 1847 (Any excuse to bring out this diagram!)

Over this time, the Church that had sat on the fringes of Leith in orchards and market gardens when it was opened was swallowed up by the burgeoning burgh, and enclosed within dense housing and industries.

In 1900, the United Presbyterian Church joined with most of the Free Church to form the United Free Church. To celebrate, a new pipe organ was installed in 1903. (A motion to use a harmonium instead of an organ was defeated by “overwhelming majority“)

The Church had also built itself a new hall to its rear, facing onto Bonninton Road, in 1894 and ran a very active social program from here. This included a literary society, a savings bank, clothing scheme, children’s work lessons, temperance band, mothers’ meetings etc.

A new minister – Rev. Joseph Gray – was inducted in 1921 in time for the church’s centenary. The congregation followed most of the United Free Church by joining the established Kirk in 1929. It is Gray’s sister to whom the collection plate is dedicated.

By 1975, long term population shifts (an ageing, depopulating Leith) and changes in worshipping habits saw Junction Road merge with the nearby St. Thomas’ on Mill Lane to form St. Thomas’ Junction Road. St. Thomas’ building would become home to the Sikh Gurdwara

Writing in 2003, “We- Ministers, Elders, Managers and Members of Junction Road Church-do not know what the future has in store for us as individuals and for us as a Congregation”. The future held a merger with Leith St. Andrew’s at the foot of Easter Road, the congregation moving into the latter building. The future of even this merger of mergers Church is now once again up for debate, with the real prospect that the Church of Scotland will consolidate into a single Leith congregation at the South Leith Kirk.

This thread is one of an occasional series with the vague working title of “just why are there so many old churches in Edinburgh and Leith.” You can read a bit more in the thread on Leith Communion Tokens.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

The thread about a Leith communion token and how it can help us understand just why the Victorians built so many churches

This thread was originally written and published in October 2021.

Today’s Auction House Artefact is very topical given it’s the 31st October. No, it’s nothing to do with Halowe’en, sorry. It’s a Communion Token and of course today is also Reformation Day.

It’s just a small, roughly cast pewter token. But what is it, what do the abbreviations mean and what does it have to do with my usual subjects of interest? Well, obviously it’s marked LEITH, so that’s a start and the method by which it came to my attention. Beginning with what communion tokens are (and I’m no expert here, so do wade in if I’m wrong), they are peculiar to Reformed churches and the concept dates all the way back to John Calvin in the 16th Century. They were first issued in the Netherlands, but really became a thing of the Scottish reformed Kirk and all its various offshoots. There are at least 5,000 known different Communion tokens specific to Scottish churches alone. A communion token was a method to identify members of a congregation who practised “closed communion“; i.e. only known members of the congregation can participate. No token? No communion. Tokens were issued to those who had taken the necessary catechism (religious instruction).

Back to our token. What do the abbreviations mean? On the front it says, MR J. S. stands for “Minister, John Sharp”. The date of 1825 was not the date of issue of the token but most likely the date that the Rev. Sharp took over the congregation. On the rear, it stands for Associate Congregation, Leith, the name and denomination of the church. Below is an earlier issue, for Sharp’s predecessor, Robert Culbertson, who served from 1791 until his untimely death in 1823.

So what is an Associate Congregation and why is it interesting I hear you say? Well to answer that you heave to delve into the amusingly elaborate timeline of the various reformed churches in Scotland since the (Scottish) reformation .

If you go way back to 1733, some congregations began to secede from the established Church of Scotland (“the Kirk“). The Seceders left for various long-standing and unresolved reasons, particularly the threat of the patronage of Lairds in preventing a congregation choosing its own minister, which has been a key issue in Scottish Presbyterian churches since the Reformation. The Seceders were led by Ebenezer Erskine, minister in Stirling, formed their own church court, known as the Associate Presbytery.

They were summoned to answer by the Kirk in 1739 but refused as they did not recognise its authority over them, so were deposed. This had two effects. Firstly, the seceder congregations were ejected from their churches so had to find new homes. It also rallied parishioners to their cause and the new churches ranks were swelled. At this time I’m not sure what presence, if any, they had in Leith. This split was around a religious clause in the oath that burgesses had to take. The burgesses were the “freemen” of the burgh, an important position in Scottish society at the time. The “Burgher Oath” had to be taken in the royal burghs of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth. The hardliners refused to take the oath as they felt it would mean that they recognised the authority of The Kirk. The result was that the General Associate Synod split off of the Associate Synod, these two sects are better known as the Antiburghers and Burghers. So this is why you get those odd-sounding things on old maps of Edinburgh called Burger Meeting and Antiburger Meeting houses.

Maps of this time refer to “meeting houses” or “chapels”, likely they were not officially recognised by the mapmakers as churches in their own right, this title being reserved for the parish kirks alone. From the maps we can see a Seceders’ church on Bristo Street in 1765 and by 1784 it is the Burgher Meeting house and the Antiburghers have their own separate house.

If you’re still following, give yourself a pat on the back, because it’s about to get even more confusing…

But before then, let’s go back to Leith. The first Antiburgher Church was formed in the Kirkgate in Leith in 1766 following a stushie within the South Leith Kirk congregation over the appointment of the new minister William Aitken. They met in a meeting house on Cables Wynd, ordaining a minister John Proudfoot in 1772. Funds were raised to erect a purpose built church on the Kirkgate just over the wall from South Leith Kirk, which was completed in 1775.

In 1785, the Rev. Proudfoot was suspended by the Antiburgher synod and deposed. This caused a split within his congregation. Some members returned to South Leith Kirk, but most stayed with Proudfoot as a “free” Antiburgher church. Proudfoot died in 1787 and his Antiburgher congregation petitioned the Burghers to join. This was granted and so once again there was a split, and the Antiburghers left to do their own thing, leaving the Burghers in the Kirkgate. The Antiburghers who left the Kirkgate petitioned the Antiburgher church, were welcomed back in and a new congregation was established in the old Glasite Meeting House (let’s not go there!) off of St. Andrew’s Street, becoming the St. Andrew’s Street Antiburghers.

Anyway, in 1791, they appointed Robert Culbertson as their minister who was quite the scholar and patron of many things. He was notable enough to be subject to a caricature by John Kay. His church was an Associated Congregation, i.e. a member of the General Associated Synod, hence the stamp on the communion tokens. In 1798 however yet another split happened resulting in the Antiburghers splitting into Auld Lichts and the New Lichts (old and new lights). The same happened to the Burghers eight years later.

Culbertson was a New Licht Antiburgher, more theologically liberal than the Auld Lichts who held more strictly to Calvin and the Covenanting tradition. He was a popular and influential minister and donated heavily to the Edinburgh Bible Society and the Leith Public Library. Soon, the New Lichts of the Burgher and Antiburgher churches realised what united them was greater than what divided them, and a union took place. Culbertson was on the negotiation committee and “greatly rejoiced” on its success. The result was the United Secession Church of 1820 . Culbertson died an untimely death in 1823, falling ill during a meeting of the presbytery of the new church. He did not live to see his congregations grand new premises, which was not completed until 1826.

That church was built on land acquired from the city next to the High School of Leith, built by John and James Rutherford in the classical style. The St. Andrew’s Street congregation named the new street St. Andrew’s Place after their church. The building is now the B-listed Edinburgh Hindu Mandir & Cultural Centre.

In 1825, Culbertson’s vacant pulpit was filled by the Rev. John Smart (1801-1871), who initially lived opposite on Morton Street. Smart was minister until 1845. In 1847 the United Secession Church merged with another split off of the Kirk – the Relief Church*1 of 1761 – to form the United Presbyterian Church, which is what all those “U. P. Churches” are on Victorian maps of Scottish towns.

So in 1849, the Antiburgher church is now the St. Andrew’s United Presbyterian Church, (“seats for 1400” – the established South Leith Kirk only had 1200). The original hall was half that size and kept on as a meeting hall.

Remarkably, a photo exists of the original meeting house off St. Andrew’s Street. It was actually on Storrie’s Alley. It is seen here in the early 1960s when it was used by the YMCA, before being swept away. The French-style roofline of Yardheads School is the giveaway of the location, peeping out to the left of the church gable. The hall stood infront of the remaining old buildings, a former bonded warehouse..

In the late 1880s/early 1890s, the St. Andrew’s Place congregation opened a mission hall on Jane Street in Leith, a charming little building which is still there and is some sort of hotel/hostel thing.

Back to our diagram. In 1900, the U.P. Church joined with the Free Church (of the ominous sounding “Disruption of 1843“) to form the United Free Church (or U.F. Church on maps). By this time, the Kirkgate Congregation was also in this fold.

The Kirkgate congregation had by this time moved to a new and altogether grander premises on Henderson Street (see pictures below). While this fine and unusual looking church has unfortunately been demolished, that carving above the door and the cross survive as ornamentation on the otherwise modern and austere South Leith church halls.

In another picture from Edinburgh City Libraries, here we see the entrance to Storrie’s Alley off of St. Andrew’s Street. In amongst all the Victoriana we see a lantern pointing the way to the St. Andrew’s Hall.

The St. Andrews associate congregation completed its 360 degree journey in 1929 when it was one of the United Free Church congregations that merged back into The Kirk, becoming Leith St. Andrews. In 1973 it joined with the Claremont Church of Scotland at the foot of Easter/ Lochend Roads and relocated to the latter premises, which took up the name of St. Andrew. Around 2003, this combined congregation was joined by another from the district; that of Junction Road and St. Thomas’, as two more old churches in Leith became surplus to modern requirements.

When the Kirkgate Associate Congregation moved to its new home on Henderson Street in 1886, the old church became the Princess Theatre and music hall, which burned down 2 years later (as such places often did). The New Princess, later the Gaiety, rose from the ashes. The Kirkgate Congregation followed the route of St. Andrew’s Place, and returned to the Church of Scotland in 1929. It merged with the South Leith congregation in 1973 and vacated the Kirkgate Church, which was demolished and replaced by the South Leith Church Halls.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that even if you are not religiously inclined it pays to get your head around at least a bit of it as it really helps understand maps and buildings and local history. Especially the question “why did the Victorians build so many dang churches?”.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

First Presbyterian Church of Monterey, a Presbyterian Church USA congregation (e.g., https://pcusa.org/about-pcusa/who-we-are/social-witness), had a presence at #NoKings event in Monterey. Photos courtesy of Elaine Cole.

Solar-powered, bike-friendly FPC-MRY (fpcmonterey.org) is our home church of 36 years. Its Jay Bartow Memorial Garden is a peaceful rest stop near downtown: https://bikemonterey.org/rest-stop-tip-jay-bartow-memorial-garden-monterey.html

#PalmSunday #NoKingsMonterey #Presbyterian #Christian #Christians #WWJD #WhatWouldJesusDo

Nicholas Byfield was a Calvinistic, Puritan minister. Here he speaks of compassion as being a proof of our spiritual state, citing bible passages about generosity, watering other peoples, aiding those needing warmth, visiting orphans and widows. These qualities in us prove that we are true neighbors and good Samaritans

Are you following religious leaders who point to other spiritual metrics at the expense of the biblical ones?
#chistian #puritans #calvinist #biblical #colossians #presbyterian

John McDowell, Presbyterian preacher, noted that oppression often looks quite respectable: lawsuits designed not to win justice but to exhaust the other party into surrender. One might say this still happens. Yet mention “oppression” in church and people gasp—as if the Bible itself hadn’t brought it up first. The question, then, is awkwardly simple: are we defending justice, or merely protecting our profits?

#presbyterian #reformeddoctrine #law #holiness

Matthew Anderson, a Presbyterian pastor, arrived in a new town hungry and weary, asking where he might find food. He was told the town had no place for anyone without work—the very reason he had come. He later reflected on 1 John 3:17: if we have plenty yet shut our hearts to a brother in need, how does God’s love dwell in us? The danger is explaining compassion while need stands before us.

#christian #presbyterian