It’s been a while since I made a #NowAndThen image transition, so have yourselves one showing the “new” (old) 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 Archibald Burns about 1868 or 9. The other is here and is taken looking along what is now Chamber’s Street (but then was a narrow street between North College Street and Argyle Square) with Horse Wynd running downhill to the right.
We can see that the church was a relatively plain and roughly finished 2-storey, 5 bay building, with its better face to the front.
An “Edinburgh Improvement Act 1867” bill, defaced by a Temperance movement flyposter, gives the clue about what is going on here. This act saw the creation of Chambers Street from the series of narrow lanes connecting the early Georgian squares of the “Society” district
Chambers Street ploughed its way through the district, which included Argyll’s Square, Brown’s Square (he of George Square), the Society, Minto House, the Trades Maiden Hospital, linking South and George IV bridges by a broad, modern boulevard.
Quick refresher on what “the Society” referred to.
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 the site is shown.
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”
Caddies were a registered trade of general purpose carriers, porters, messengers and errand runners. The linkmen were boys hired to carry a lamp (your “link”) in front of your sedan chair; which is how the wealthy got around the old town. Water drawers brought you water from the pumps. From the French word cadet, they were registered on a bond of £10 Scots. Our cadet here in this David Allan illustration wears his badge of office and the ubiquitous Blue Bonnet. His basket is on the wall. The term later came to mean the person who carried your golf clubs and offered advice on the course.
In his fascinating sketchbook of Edinburgh’s lower classes of profession, Allan inadvertently focused his work on recording some of the city’s Gaelic-speaking population.
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 1766/7 when the building on Castle Wynd was 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 – which would naturally be civilising and 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 them out in the Highlands.)
Anyways, that’s outwith what I know much about. 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) who 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 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!” McVicar instantly whipped off his long and solemn black Minister’s coat, threw it to the ground and with the thunderous delivery honed by a preacher 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 date of 1775 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, uninvited in their kirks, outside or even in dissenting churches. He later devoted himself to bettering “the religious and moral conditions” of St. Kilda.” He made numerous visits, ingratiated himself with the locals and helped arrange for a permanent Church and minister. His are some of the first detail accounts of the place.
Before 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, 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 2nd 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 City Corporation and the Writers to the Signet, the site at the head of Horse Wynd was acquired and the new chapel with seats for 1100 was built at a cost of £3,000.
It is one of my favourite features of the 1849 Town Plan of that they troubled to put 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
The new chapel opened in 1813 but that it was “Gaelic and English” I think caused a bit of a schism in the congregation, and the old chapel briefly remained purely in Gaelic until the departure of Reverend Macdonald. However this schism was resolved largely by the practicals of financial matters. Somebody had got the sums wrong and 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 the Church 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 Church of Scotland walked out and set up its own Church, the Free Church, and the Gaelic Church was no exception. However the building on Horse Wynd – and its contents – was legally the property of the established Kirk, so the latter had the majority of the congregation and the Minister – who had joined the Free Church but stayed on in the building – moved on. The Gaelic Free Church eventually settled in another temporary Free Church on Cambridge Street, before buildings its own; St. Columbas, where 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 being to rebuild itself, having lost its minister and all its elders. This was rudely disrupted in 1867 by the compulsory purchase order of the Improvement Scheme.
The Church got £6,000 and leave to remain until the bulldozers moved in. They spent some time moving around over the next few years until the Catholic Apostolic Church on Broughton Street came on the market when the latter moved down the road to what is now Mansfield Tracquair .
The new Church was much smaller, but the Gaelic population was shrinking overall (and much of it was in the Free Church anyway), so this probably wasn’t an issue. The congregation moved in during 1815 with the first service on October 15 1876, 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 (now back in the Kirk) close, despite merger plans. A continuing St. Columbas congregation remains in the Free Church, where some Gaelic services are still held – in the building originally built as St. John’s Free Church. Remember what I said yesterday about Victorian Scotland building a mindboggling number of churches?
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.
Footnote – the first version of this thread incorrectly thought that “earlier when I thought it was “Earse” was a typo on “Ease” on the 1804 Ainslie town plan. This post has been corrected.
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