John R Hume considers the merits of a post-war Edinburgh church which started in a temporary hut.

THE church of this congregation was started in a temporary hut hall in 1939, which was extended twice after the end of the Second World War, in 1946 and again in 1949.

After that war there was an immediate need to house returning servicemen and women, and to replace sub-standard housing in town and cities.

This imperative coincided with the start of formal Town and Country Planning, given statutory force by an Act of Parliament in 1947. As a consequence in the larger towns and cities new housing areas were planned on the outskirts of existing built-up areas.

Most of these developments were composed of local authority houses, much of which was laid out on the ‘garden suburb’ principle. Space was generally allocated to the provision of community facilities – schools, shops, community centres and churches.

The Oxgangs estate was laid out by Edinburgh Corporation in 1952, and house -building quickly reached the point where it was sensible to provide church buildings.

Accordingly the Church of Scotland built two churches under their Church Extension programme, Colinton Mains and St John’s. The Roman Catholic and Scottish Episcopal churches also constructed places of worship. Building materials were rationed, so that economical designs were needed. The walls were generally of brick covered with cement roughcast.

Some designers of post-War churches tried to find a new architectural vocabulary, to emphasise the ‘brave new world’ of post- War Britain, while others looked to the Scots vernacular buildings of the 17th century for inspiration, probably motivated by a desire to express continuity in faith and patterns of worship.

Notable among the former was Alan Reiach, designer of St John’s, Oxgangs, and among the latter the firm of Ian G Lindsay and Partners were leaders. Lindsay was very interested in, and knowledgeable about, the Scots vernacular.

He had been a pioneer of Listing of historic buildings before the war and had a particular concern for modest 17th and 18th-century country churches. It is probable that Lindsay was also influenced by Sir John Stirling Maxwell’s important Shrines and Homes of Scotland, a pioneering brief architectural history of the country, published in 1937, and Ian Finlay’s Art in Scotland of 1948. Both illustrate good vernacular churches (Finlay includes Reay as his exemplar of the vernacular church), and Finlay also makes a strong case for the importance of the Scots vernacular tradition. Lindsay obviously deliberately used Reay (originally built in 1729) as a model for his firm’s Colinton Mains building, designed to replace the pre-War hut hall.

The foundation stone of the new building was laid on December 24 1952, and the completed church was opened and dedicated on January 24 1954. Its tower, with a short slated steeple is larger than that at Reay, as is the body of the church, with its plain rectangular windows, but the evocation of Reay is very striking, even though the former Colinton Mains has a louvred belfry on top of the steeple

St John’s Oxgangs was, as stated above, designed by Alan Reiach. The approach he adopted was to build two simple, low ranges of building on an L-plan, with a belltower in the courtyard between the ranges. He created an effect of clarity and intimacy by the small scale of the elements of the composition, unified by their whiteness. The complex was very well regarded at the time, and had an enduring sense of calm and freshness.

In 2014 the two Oxgangs congregations were united as St John’s Colinton Mains, worshipping in the Colinton Mains building.

The united congregations now fulfil the original intention of the construction of the two churches: an effective and caring ministry to the Oxgangs community, and a place for local people to care and share.