This thread was originally written and published in February 2022.

This is a brief(ish) thread about the below building in Leith, which I go past twice a day, and which I can remember going past 30 years ago every time I would visit my Nana. At the time of writing it had (and still has) plenty of topical relevance.

We are on the corner of Dalmeny and Buchanan Streets and at first glance it looks much like any other Gothic style church from the Victorian building boom to meet the demand for places of worship as a result of the interminable schisms in the Presbyterian Church. And of course it is, or rather, it was. But this is now Our Lady of Pochaev and St Andrew’s Ukrainian Catholic Church.

In the the 1860s, the independent (from Edinburgh) Burgh of Leith saw a rapid industrialisation and population increase. As a result, it finally outgrew the medieval confines of the old town and tenements started springing up in all directions. But even in the late 1870s, behind the street façade of Leith Walk and its array of small industrial works, villas and tenements, the land to the east (in the direction of Easter Road) was still all market gardens, nurseries and farmland.

By the early 1880s this had all changed and the now familiar street pattern between Easter Road and Leith Walk began to be laid out. At this time Dalmeny Street was Colston Street (after the city of Edinburgh treasurer) and Iona Street was Falshaw Street (after the Lord Provost).

The various denominations of the Scottish Presbyterian churches were usually quick to respond to urban growth and plant new congregations to serve their needs. The Free Church was already established at Pilrig. The Church of Scotland built St. Paul’s on Lorne Street, and the United Presbyterian, the smallest of the three principle sects, joined by building at Dalmeny Street. The 1893 town plan however shows that for about 15 years, the U.P. Church was at the end of a dead-end street, on the corner of an unbuilt block. Growth and development had stalled and the street had never moved past a single block.

It was not until about 20 years later that the planned blocks of tenements around Dalmeny and surrounding streets were finally built; between 1904-1907. By this time the U.P. Church had passed to the U.F. or United Free Church, after a merger in 1900 with a large part of the Free Church. The former Free Church at the top of Pilrig Street was also part of this merger and so there were now two U.F. Churches in the district.

The Dalmey Street church architects were unusual in that they were Americans, Sloan & Balderston, with the plans adapted to meet local approvals by Archibald Thomson of Leith. I can only find one picture of it in its original style with slate-clad spire, in the corner of a 1958 aerial photograph.

In 1912, the minister was the Rev. James B. G. Rouse. In 1929 most of the United Free Church merged back into the established Church of Scotland and both Dalmeny Street and Pilrig Street churches did so. The church officially closed in 1950, merging with the Pilrig Church to become Pilrig – Dalmeny Street with worship centred at Pilrig under the Rev. James W. Robinson from Tingwall in Shetland.

We pause now with the story of the church building, and pick up the trail of the Ukrainian community in Edinburgh and a little of how it came to be. (n.b. sources here are thin or non existent, if I make any error, please accept my apologies and do please get in tough with corrections or additional information correct if you have a better insight).It was World War 2 that brought Ukrainians to Scotland. The first wave were prisoners of war from the Ukrainian Liberation Army forces, nationalists who had taken up arms against the Soviets when the Germans invaded and ended up fighting alongside the latter for better or worse. Of ULA men captured by the allies fighting in Italy, some were dispersed in east Scotland at Tannadice Camp, where they painted the below nationally symbolic mural (demolished in 1991). These prisoners were a low-security category and put to work on the land.

After the war, many of these prisoners never returned home; it was too dangerous and many would have had nothing to return to anyway. At the same time, many Ukrainians (and others now in the Soviet zone) were now at risk in their homeland from the Soviet victors. The UK was desperately short of agricultural labour and so it was expedient to set up a resettlement scheme. The European Voluntary Workers scheme resettled predominantly eastern European workers to the UK from displaced persons camps in the Allied occupied zones, mainly Germany and Austria. Most Ukrainians who came to the UK did so in 1947-48. Some 20,900 or so adult workers (16,194 men and 4,718 women) came to the UK in this period. Additionally 411 adult dependants and 451 child dependants came with them, although the scheme largely discouraged this as it wanted fit, young, unattached workers for labour. In addition to the displaced persons, some ~8,100 Prisoners of Wars arrived in 1948. Most were from the Galicia Division, a Ukranian formation of the German Waffen-SS, who had been captured in Austria by the Allies, when they were retreating from the advancing Soviets. These men escaped deportation back to the Soviet Union as they came from Galicia, which was a part of pre-war Poland.

Of those who came to Scotland, many found themselves at the EVW “hostel” at Gilmerton Farm near Athelstaneford, a former wartime military camp for East Fortune air base that had been adapted as basic accommodation for agricultural workers. The camp was run by the YMCA.

The image above features the Scottish lion rampant, the YMCA triangle and the Ukrainian tryzub or trident, the national symbol (seen also on the mural at Tannadice Camp). Behind is a former air raid shelter and the military huts used as accommodation. EVW scheme workers were initially restricted to limited rights and were placed where the Ministry of Labour saw fit and could not choose their own employment. However by 1950 the scheme began winding down and from 1951 those with 3 years work could apply from 1951 to be released from it. The camp at Gilmerton Farm would close, but the buildings are still there in the trees. Its former occupants resettled in the Scottish cities and most went, unsurprisingly, to Edinburgh as it was the closest.

An organisation in Edinburgh, the Scottish League for European Freedom, acted to support those on the EVW scheme. The below 1949 newspaper advert records a Ukrainian Men’s Choir performing national songs and dances at the Central Hall.

There are numerous SLEF classifieds from this time, mainly advertising exhibitions of arts and crafts or concerts of folk music and dancing, e.g. from January 1950.

In November 1950, the Scotsman records that 1,500 Ukrainians were living in Scotland, “chiefly in the Lothians, Dumfriesshire and Ross-shire“. About 800 of the community came together in Edinburgh on 6th of that month for a memorial service for General Taras Tchuprynka, the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army who had been killed fighting the Soviets.

The attendees packed out the Church of the Sacred Heart in Lauriston, where a Catholic mass was celebrated according to Eastern Catholic rites. The worshippers held candles.

“A coffin rested in front of the altar to represent, symbolically, the grave of the dead general.” “From the Church the whole body marched in threes to the Music Hall… a long solemn procession, which included women in colourful national costume… All the men were bear headed and wore mourning bands on their left arms, either of black or of the Ukrainian national colours with a black ribbon attached. A cross and Ukrainian flags were carried in the procession and over the Music Hall the Ukrainian flag flew at half-mast“. “Representatives of the Belarussians, the Lithuanians and the Latvians, in succession, conveyed the sympathy of their peoples to the people of Ukraine… The meeting ended with the singing of the Ukrainian national anthem followed by God Save the King.”

In April 1956, the Ukrainian community in Scotland, at a meeting in Edinburgh, agreed to fast in protest at the welcome being given to Soviet Premier Khrushchev and Marshal Bulganin on a state visit.

Clearly an organised community was established in Edinburgh. And as it put down roots in the city it inevitably built its own institutions, which is how the recently vacant Dalmeny Street Church came to be the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Pochayiv (Pochaev) and St. Andrew. The Church was sold to them in 1964, having been used as halls, and dedicated on Sunday 15th August 1965 to St. Andrew as Patron Saint of both Scotland and Ukraine; as Apostle of the Rus St. Andrew brought Christianity to the east.

Our Lady of Pochayiv is a Catholic Icon of the Holy Mary. This commemorates the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a monk praying at Mount Pochayiv (in modern day Ternopil Oblast in western Ukraine), which left behind a footprint and eternal, healing spring.

The main exterior alteration to the church since its Presbyterian days is in its steeple, with a distinctively Eastern European style wooden belfry topped by a cross, with additional crosses as finials on the flanking towers and wings. The interior was refurbished into a style more appropriate for the Eastern Catholic rites of the Ukrainian Church in 1983, in advance of the 1988 celebration of 1,000 years of Catholicism in the home country. At this time it served a congregation of around 700 across all Scotland.

And in 1988, as part of the millennial celebration, the Scottish Ukrainian community unveiled a plaque on Calton Hill to the national Christian founder and patron, Saint Wolodymyr the Great. It was the seal of Wolodomyr which gave Ukraine its symbol of the trident, seen top right.

It is that national symbol of a golden tryzub on a blue shield that you can see above the door of the Dalmeny Street Church:

In 1989, at a ceremony at the top of The Mound, Edinburgh was formally twinned with Kyiv, I believe at the initiative of then councillors Mark Lazarowicz (@mark_lazarowicz) and Lesley Hinds (@LesleyHinds)

In 2017, the Ukrainian Community dedicated a further plaque on Calton Hill, at the Greenside Church entrance, in memory of the 7 million + victims of the Holodomor, Stalin’s enforced famine of the 1930s.

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