GLENCORSE is a parish and village in Midlothian, about 14 miles from Edinburgh, and close to the town of Penicuik. Its church is still in a rural part of the parish, nestling among trees, which give it a very settled feel.

The parish was not always thus; in 1666, at the Battle of Rullion Green a Covenanting army was defeated by Government forces led by Sir Thomas Dalyell of the Binns.

There was a parish of Glencorse before the Reformation, but until 1616, when it was separated from the parishes of Pentland and Penicuik it was ‘linked’ with neighbouring parishes.

In 1636 the first minister of Glencorse was appointed.

There was a mediaeval chapel, dedicated to St Catherine, on a site now covered by the waters of Glencorse Reservoir. It was probably this chapel which was replaced in 1665 by a church on the site of the old church whose ruins still survive.

The 1665 church was badly damaged by fire in 1699, and was rebuilt with the addition of two burial aisles, for the owners of the Glencorse and Woodhouselee estates, and a western tower making the building cruciform in plan. Both aisles have external stairs which led to ‘lairds’ lofts’ with the burial chambers on the ground floor. The doorways to the lofts are flanked by sculptured armorial panels.

In 1811 a major refurbishment of the building led to a timber steeple being added to the tower, and to the discovery of a stone font, which is now in the present church.

Robert Louis Stevenson was fond of this church and its graveyard, which contains a number of fine 17th and 18th century monuments.

When the 17th century church was built the parish was largely rural. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, however, paper-making developed in the village of Auchendinny, and in 1804 a depot to house French prisoners of war was formed from an existing country house. This later developed (1875-77), after a period as the military prison for Scotland, into what is now Glencorse Barracks, a training barracks for the Army in Scotland.

This led to the creation of the present Glencorse village.

A new minister, the Rev William Baillie Strang, a Shetlander, was called to the parish. He persuaded the heritors (local landowners) that a new church was needed, and the fashionable Edinburgh architect Robert Rowand Anderson was appointed to design it, Strang had been influenced by the Ecclesiological Movement in the Church of Scotland, which wanted to restore a form of worship related to pre-Reformation practice, with the Communion table in a chancel projecting from the body of the church (nave). Anderson had designed in 1882 a new Govan Parish Church on this principle, which was probably why Strang was anxious to appoint him.

In the event Govan and Glencorse were built at the same time, between 1884 and 1888.

Strang had Anderson’s original design for Glencorse turned through 180 degrees so that its axis was east-west, in true mediaeval style. The saddle-backed tower, containing a vestry, was added in 1898, also by Anderson.

Internally the structure (arches, piers and window tracery) are of cream sandstone, with the walls finished in hard red brick, also found in Govan, and in other Anderson churches. There are stainedglass windows by Moore of London (1895) and Douglas Strachan (post-1918). The general effect is warm and welcoming.

A unique feature is the presence, in the angle between the 1888 building and the tower, of a boulder carved with many cup and cup-and-ring marks. This suggests that the site of the Victorian church may have been considered worthy of worship since prehistoric times.

Both the old and the present churches, in a curiously neglected part of Scotland, are well worth visiting.