‘A characterful Church’

AFTER the Jacobite Rising of 1715 a system of military roads was built to link the Highlands with Lowland Scotland to allow Government troops to be deployed to counter any other attempt by Jacobite forces to attack from the north.

These roads were constructed by soldiers under the command of General George Wade. One of these roads ran from Dunkeld to Blair Atholl, along the rivers Tay and Tummel, and through the parish of Moulin. This was a rural parish, with a small village clustered round the parish church on a slope overlooking Strathtummel. Another settlement formed on the Wade road where a local road from Moulin met it. This grew into what is now Pitlochry.

The Wade road was improved, and made suitable for wheeled vehicles in the early 1800s, and Pitlochry became a staging post for coach services.

The village, however, remained small until the 1840s, when Queen Victoria visited Blair Castle. She was accompanied by her physician, Sir James Clarke, who was ‘struck by the character of the air and climate of [Pitlochry] and began to prescribe to his [London] patients a residence at Pitlochry’. Presumably primarily to accommodate English visitors the Scottish Episcopal church of the Holy Trinity was built in 1857.

A railway was opened in 1863 linking Perth and Lowland Scotland with Inverness, with a station in Pitlochry. Because of the fine local scenery and relatively dry climate the place quickly became a tourist as well as a health resort, and by the end of the Victorian period it was a small town. Two large ‘hydropathic spa’ hotels were built, one of which survives as the Atholl Palace Hotel, opened in 1875, ‘commanding a lovely and extensive view’ The other notable Pitlochry hotel, Fishers, was probably originally a coaching inn and was enlarged in the 1890s. Also in the 1890s the railway station was rebuilt on a more generous scale. Villas for retired people and those of independent means were also built for those who wanted a quiet life in pleasant surroundings and a healthy climate. Houses were also constructed for renting to summer visitors

Until the 1880s the nearest Established church to the settlement was at Moulin, but services were held in the village school. In 1884, however, a ‘neat chapel of ease in Norman-Gothic style was erected on an elevated site near the centre of Pitlochry. It cost £2,000 and could accommodate 468 worshippers. It was designed by C and J Ower, a firm of architects from Dundee which was formed by two brothers in 1872 on the basis of their father’s practice. In 1881 the brothers had designed the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tayport. A Free Church, founded in 1843 and later rebuilt, became Pitlochry East Parish Church in 1929. This congregation united with those of Moulin and Pitlochry West in 1992 to form the present Pitlochry congregation. There are also Baptist and Roman Catholic churches in the village.

The 1884 building was built primarily to accommodate well-to-do residents and summer visitors. There are comparable churches in some of the Clyde Coast resorts in towns like Dunoon, Largs and Troon. What is distinctive about the Pitlochry church however is its very elaborate design. It is described in the Perth and Kinross volume of the Buildings of Scotland as ‘Energetically but mechanically-detailed Romanesque’ with inside a ‘terrific display of bracing at the roof over the crossing’ in the centre of the church.

By modern design standards its description as ‘neat’ is difficult to understand, but it would be thoroughly acceptable to many of the summer congregation who lived in richly ornamented villas in fashionable suburbs.. This characterful church, in the heart of its community, is today a thriving one. Long may it continue to be so.