A real pleasure to visit

THE place-name Cathcart is derived from the p-Celtic or Brythonic (ancestor of the Welsh and Breton languages) ’Caer Cart’.Caer means a fort, and Cart is the name of the river which runs through the parish of Cathcart.

This parish was given to a Breton knight named Rainald (who took the name Cathcart) in the early 12th century. Rainald was probably an associate of Walter Fitzalan, also a Breton, who was allocated lands in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire. The new owner built a castle at the south end of what is now Old Castle Road, and a mill below the castle. The parish church was on a hillock to the north. Its site was probably used for worship before that time.

The church was dedicated to St Oswald, a 7th-century Northumbrian saint.

It is likely that a Northumbrian missionary brought Christianity to what is now Cathcart. The revenues of the parish, all composed of rich agricultural land, were allocated to Paisley Abbey, the successor to a priory founded in the 1160s by Walter Fitzalan. A small village grew up between castle and church. A bridge – the Old Bridge – was later built beside the mill. This led to a route south to Ayrshire. Another route to the east of the castle led to Carmunnock and East Kilbride. So Cathcart was in a pivotal position in mediaeval Scotland.

Cathcart village remained the only settlement in the vicinity until the 18th century, when a paper mill, Millholm, was constructed (in 1716) on the west bank of the White Cart, with its own small village at Braehead above the Old Bridge. A new turnpike road, with a bridge over the Cart, was built to the west of the existing Cathcart village, and a hand-loom weaving village, New Cathcart, was constructed on it. The growing population of the parish led in 1831 to the building of a large new church on the site of the old one. It was in the then fashionable ‘Heritors’ Gothic style.

The tower still survives.

During the early 19th century the old estate corn mill was converted into a snuff and cardboard mill, and a carpet factory and dyeworks were built west of the New Bridge.Between 1880 and 1900 the Cathcart villages were transformed, with the opening of the Cathcart District Railway, linking Cathcart with central Glasgow, in 1886, opening up the South Side for the development of commuter suburbs.

Also in 1886 the Holm Foundry was built next to the site of the carpet works.

The Cathcart District Railway was extended east and north in 1894 to form the renowned Cathcart Circle, and a new line was opened in 1903, linking Lanarkshire with Ardrossan, and providing a link between Cathcart and another suburban route to the south.

Even more transformative was the adaptation of another part of the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire line as a suburban route from Mount Florida to the east, encouraging the construction on a massive scale of low-density private housing on former agricultural land to the east of Cathcart village. On the eve of the First World War, the construction of a new Cathcart Parish Church east of the 1831 building had started.Designed by Clifford and Lunan, it was eventually completed in 1929, the year of the union of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church. The new building then was named Cathcart Old.

It is a powerful-looking building, with a handsome interior and a good suite of ancillary buildings. The hall is now used as a café, The Haven. A heritage centre has been formed in the south aisle of the church. The general impression is of a lively and outward-looking congregation in a landmark building, a real pleasure to visit.