A History of St. Andrew's by the Green
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Part 1 1750 -
1975
Introduction
Religious
Conflict
General
Wolfe: St. Andrew's Famous Son
A
Merger
The
Whistling Kirk
St. Andrew's
Stories
Part 2 1975 -
Present
St. Andrew's by the Green was built in 1750, and is the oldest Episcopalian Church building erected in Scotland since the Reformation. It took slightly more than a year to build. Compare this with the nearby St. Andrew's Parish Church, which took 17 years to complete.
The building work was carried out by Andrew Hunter and William Paul (masons), and Thomas Thomson (wright). Andrew Hunter, who was a member of the Shuttle Street Secession Church (Presbyterian), was called before his Kirk Session and challenged about his motives in planning and building St. Andrew's by the Green. However, he carried on with the work, and was ex-communicated by the Moderator and session, being "denied all Church benefit" as a result.
The finished building is beautifully proportioned, no doubt similar in style to the Georgian villas in the Merchant City of Glasgow. The cost of the stonework came to £420.6s.5d. but the interior cost even more at £740.1s.4½d. The cost of purchasing the site was £90.5s.0d., resulting in a grand total of £1,250.12.9½d.
It is worth recording that, four years after the Battle of Culloden, there was no love lost between the Glasgow Presbyterians with their Covenanter traditions and the Episcopalians (or "Piskies"), with Jacobite sympathies. Feeling ran high between the two groups.
We are indebted to Dr. Gavin White of Glasgow for the following historical references:
After the exclusion of Episcopalians from the religious settlement in 1690, there were various attempts to hold Episcopalian services in Glasgow, where they were thought, with some justice, to be praying for the restoration of the House of Stuart and the return of the Episcopacy to the Established Church. Services were routinely broken up, by mobs or magistrates, but continued in some private houses.
After the failure of the 1745 Jacobite rising, many Episcopalians gave up hope of a change of dynasty, and in Glasgow took advantage of the 1712 Act which granted them toleration if they agreed to use the English Prayer Book and to pray for the Hanoverian monarchs. The Presbyterian population, which had reacted violently even against those Episcopalians who had met these conditions in earlier years, ceased to fear them. This turn in public sentiment made the building of an Episcopalian church possible. Of course, it was, under the 1712 Act, not part of the Old Scottish Episcopal Church, and was therefore not under the control of a Scottish bishop, its clergy being ordained by English or Irish bishops instead. Such legally "qualified" chapels existed side-by-side with the Scottish Episcopal chapels, but were called English, to make them seem less likely to join a revolt. Yet the list of its first members is composed almost entirely of Scottish surnames, as is, with only one exception, the list of clergy.
The name of the church may have been copied from the nearby St. Andrew's Parish Church, which had been set up by a group who had abandoned the idea of taking over the parish churches in favour of establishing their own more modest chapels.
General Wolfe: St. Andrew's Famous Son
There is a legend that General Wolfe, who conquered Quebec in 1759 and died in the battle, had worshipped in St. Andrew's by the Green. This is probably true. Wolfe had been at Culloden, and in the early 1750s was with a regiment in Scotland. Furthermore, in linking themselves with this national hero, who had died in battle against the Jacobite-sympathising French, the congregation of St. Andrew's by the Green were protecting themselves against the lingering suspicion that they themselves were Jacobites. In a similar attempt to avoid trouble, an equivalent chapel in Edinburgh was names Baron Smith's Chapel, after an English civil servant then residing in Edinburgh.
With regard to the Wolfe legend, Dr. Gavin White writes:
All I can find on Wolfe and St. Andrew's is in the book "Wolfe in Scotland: in the '45 and from 1749 to 1753", by JT Findlay (Longham, 1928), which says just about all that anyone is ever likely to know on the subject.
Major Wolfe was acting commander of the 20th Foot in Glasgow for seven months in 1749, and "He marched the 20th to Church every Sunday - probably to the High Church of his day, the Cathedral of ours" (page 165). However, he apparently disliked the services, believing that "the generality of Scotch preachers are excessive blockheads" (Page 165), and he could not demand that his officers attend, as they were Church of England. Wolfe's mother was taken aback at his attending a Presbyterian Church, but he wrote later, "I got the reputation of a good Presbyterian by frequenting the Kirk of Scotland until our chaplain appeared. I've now gone back to the old faith, and stick close to our communion". There is on page 166 a reference to the building of St. Andrew's as occurring ".during the year Wolfe was quartered in town. It is believed that some of his soldiers assisted in its construction". Furthermore, "Wolfe worshipped in this new edifice when, for a short period, he returned to Glasgow in 1753".
As to his soldier's help with the construction, Findlay states on page 188 that Wolfe "did not view with favour the manual labour in which many of his men engaged during their leisure hours", but that since ".the practice was then generally recognised as part of a soldier's daily life", and also provided extra income for the men, Wolfe could do little about it. It is reasonable to suppose that any work of construction in Glasgow in that year would have involved some soldiers.
Wolfe rejoined the 20th at Glasgow after a long leave in April 1753, and was with them there until September, although he spent much of his time with the troops building the road along Loch Lomond. There is nothing in the book about his attending St. Andrew's although it would seem that he probably would have done so. In 1753, the regiment was posted out of Scotland and passed over the border. Wolfe noting that "The English are clean and laborious, and the Scottish excessively lazy and dirty." (page 299). He also noticed that the women in Cumberland were ".surprisingly handsome. They astonish us that have been accustomed to look at the hard-favoured Scotch lassies". He did not like Scotland, and he did not like Glasgow, although the Scots liked him; he was an excellent officer who maintained good discipline, was always active to protect the local people from any excesses, and deplored the cruelty which had occurred after Culloden.
After the 1788 death of the Stuart claimant to the throne, Bonnie Prince Charlie, almost all of the "qualified" chapels accepted the Scottish bishops, and merged with the formerly Jacobite-leaning Old Scottish Episcopal Church but in Glasgow, a wandering congregation led by the Reverend Alexander Jamieson, whose grave at St. Andrew's is marked with a Celtic cross, continued until Jamieson's death in 1825, when the built a chapel names St. Mary's on Renfield Street. Why they never united with St. Andrew's is something of a mystery, but they moved to Great Western Road and became St. Mary's Cathedral.
The clergyman at St. Andrew's from 1844 until 1890 was Keith-born Dr. JFS Gordon, who was known for his eccentricities. Until his time the church had had locked doors on the pews and triple-decker pulpit (lowest level for a clerk, middle for reading the service, and top deck for the sermon), but he raised money in England to refurbish the church in the Gothic "High Church" fashion then in vogue. The altar was to include a piece of marble from the Cathedral of Iona. However, these changes were not popular with everyone. A Mr. Wallace objected to intoning prayers, which he called "unnatural", and he moved to St. Jude's Episcopalian Chapel near Blythswood Square. Gordon trumpeted "Think ye of the fate of Judas" and, more practically, told Wallace that since he had not paid the rest of his pew rent his "sofa-cushion" would be deposited in the police office.
Dr. Gordon pioneered new churches south of the Clyde, and claimed that in his forty-six years he had baptised 40,000 children, few with any Episcopal or church connection. However, Dr. Gordon was best known as an editor, or re-editor, of old documents. He took McUre's History of Glasgow, published in 1736, added many new items, and republished it in two volumes as Glasghu Facies in 1873, with a bewildering variety of titles and title pages. His Scotochronicon brought together ancient documents from many sources, which, unknown to him, were later proved to be forgeries.
St. Andrew's by the Green has scored a number of firsts. As noted above, it was the first Episcopalian Church built in Scotland after the '45 rebellion. It was the first church to install gas lighting in Glasgow, and it was the first church to install an organ for public worship, resulting in it being names the "Whistlin' Kirk" or the "Kist o' Whistles".
The story of St. Andrew's organ goes back to 1747, when John Snetzler built a one-man organ for the Qualified (i.e. English Episcopal) Chapel in Edinburgh's Carruber's Close. In 1744 the congregation moved to another building, and their organ was sold to the Qualified Chapel in Glasgow. It was moved into St. Andrew's by the Green in 1775, although it was apparently not taken into use until 1777.
In 1788 John Donaldson of York, who had been trained by Snetzler carried out an enlargement of the organ. However, this did not satisfy the congregation for long, and in 1812 the organ was replaced entirely.
It was around this time that Glasgow Unitarians were establishing their first chapel. They bought the superseded organ from the Episcopalians and installed it in their chapel in Union Street in 1813. In 1856, the congregation moved to another church, this time in St. Vincent Street, where the Snetzler organ remained until the closure and demolition of this church in 1982 to make way for Britoil (now BP). The organ was gifted to Glasgow University for teaching purposes by the congregation, and is the oldest in the city.
Several interesting characters are buried in the graveyard adjoining St. Andrew's by the Green, including the second minister, John Falconer, who served the Church for 57 years and was married three times. He and all three of his wives are buried at the east end of the graveyard.
On a flat slab there is an epitaph commemorating Captain Sutherland and his wife Sarah, who had only been married for a few weeks before they were drowned in the Clyde in October 1825, when the Comet was run down by the Ayr, and the passengers were left to perish.
In 1812 James Stewart and William McArthur were accused of breaking into the Church and stealing a number of articles, including gowns, cassocks and surplices. They were found guilty and condemned to be executed on the 18th of November. However, on the 20 th of October a petition for mercy was raised by a number of members of the Church and put before his Royal Highness the Prince Regent by the minister, William Routledge. History records that the punishment of death was converted to that of banishment.
The Church was originally situated at the junction of the Molendinar and Camlachie burns, both of which have been culverted and are no longer visible to the passer-by. Before the deepening of the Clyde, the church was often flooded, and on Christmas Day of 1816, a day when there was an unusually large attendance, the water from the Camlachie and Molendinar burns rose four or five feet above floor level inside the Church. Fortunately, the Reverend Dr. Gibb, the minister of St. Andrew's in the Square, cam to the rescue by permitting the use of his church by some 290 communicants. It is recorded that the collection amounted to £29.10s.10d.
In the 19th century St. Andrew's by the Green was a rich church, and the seat revenue in 1817 reached £500. However, as Glasgow began to expand to the west, members drifted away, and by 1837 the revenue had fallen to £310.
Despite further industrial changes, the Church maintained a faithful following for many years, but eventually the depopulation of the centre of Glasgow in the 1960s and 70s resulted in a dwindling congregation. The last service was held in April 1975. After 225 years of continuous use as a church, St. Andrew's by the Green was closed. In 1978, the pulpit and other valuable items were transferred to the People's Palace on Glasgow Green for safekeeping, as by the time the Church had become a target for vandals.
Before turning to the story of more recent events, it is worth noting that St. Andrew's by the Green is believed to be the fourth oldest church building in Glasgow, after Glasgow Cathedral, the Tron Steeple and St. Andrew's Parish Church in St. Andrew's Square, construction on which started in 1739 but was not completed until 1756. It certainly ranks in the top 12 of the oldest buildings in Glasgow.
Christian Action (Glasgow) Housing Association was founded in 1965, and was initially run from the Gorbals home of its founder, Richard Holloway, now the Episcopalian Bishop of Edinburgh.
Over the years the Association flourished and expanded its activities to include areas outside Glasgow, and so in 1981 it changed its name to West of Scotland Housing Association Ltd. At the same time Christian Action (Glasgow) Housing Trust Ltd. was set up to raise funds to cover those activities of the Association which were not funded by the Housing Corporation (now Scottish Homes).
By the mid-1980s the association was bursting at the seams of its office in St. Vincent Place in Glasgow city centre, and its lease was about to expire. So, in 1985, the Directors of the Trust took the bold step of buying the empty shell of St. Andrew's by the Green from the Episcopalian Church for the sum of £1 in order to convert it into an office of 5,000 square feet.
A survey of the building was undertaken, and an architect, the Miller Partnership, was appointed to draw up the plans to provide an estimated cost of the project. It soon became clear that it would be necessary to raise around £600,000 in order to complete the project, and the Directors set about raising the necessary funds.
On March 6 th 1987, the Marquess of Bute chaired a fund-raising lunch on the old sailing ship, the Carrick, and work actually started on the restoration of the exterior later that month. Applications were made for grants, and substantial help was received from the following sources:
- Glasgow District Council £110,000
- Scottish Development Agency £160,000
- Historic Building Council £145,000
The fundraising campaign by the Christian Action (Glasgow) Housing Trust Ltd. Brought in £170,000 in donations from 24 companies and partnerships, 20 trusts, 6 churches, the Trades House in Glasgow, the Merchant House, the Glasgow Marathon Charities Appeal, and 230 individual supporters.
To celebrate the successful raising of some £585,000, and the successful renovation and conversion of St. Andrew's by the Green into an office building, a lunch was held on March 6 th 1989, exactly two years to the day from the original lunch on the Carrick when the appeal campaign was started.
St. Andrew's by the Green was leased by Christian Action (Glasgow) Housing Trust Ltd. to West of Scotland Housing Association, and was the Association's headquarters in Glasgow until June 2003 when it became the new headquarters of the Glasgow Association for Mental Health. It is entirely fitting that an organisation dedicated to trying to help underprivileged and elderly people in the West of Scotland should have, in finding a new home for itself, saved one of Glasgow's most beautiful old buildings from dereliction.