Rich and pleasing

THE pre-Reformation parish of Kilpatrick on the north bank of the river Clyde was a large one, with its revenues attached to the Abbey of Paisley. There was a parish church in what is now Old Kilpatrick, on the site of what is now Old Kilpatrick Bowling Parish Church. The present church there was built in 1812. The mediaeval church was dedicated to St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, and his shrine there was a noted place of pilgrimage. It is often claimed that Patrick was born in or around Old Kilpatrick.

The growing population of the parish led to its division in 1649 to form Wester, or Old Kilpatrick and Easter, or New Kilpatrick, with a new church for the latter in the heart of what is now Bearsden. The churches were, incidentally, linked by part of the route of the Roman Antonine Wall; at both places there had been camps attached to the wall.

An article on Old Kilpatrick Bowling Parish Church was published in the May 2016 issue of Life and Work; here we are concerned with New Kilpatrick church, round which grew up Bearsden. This settlement was essentially a village until the opening in 1863 of a branch line from what later became Westerton, on the former Glasgow, Dumbarton and Helensburgh Railway. With direct communication with Glasgow Bearsden grew as essentially a ‘dormitory suburb’ of the city. In the 1890s Bearsden was described as ‘a fine residential suburb of Glasgow’ and in 2002 as ‘a large and leafy suburb’.

Milngavie also grew as a result of the opening of the branch railway in 1863, and in 1873 a quoad sacra parish (a parish for religious purposes only) of Milngavie was carved out of New Kilpatrick civil parish.

By that time the nucleus of the present New Kilpatrick church had been completed. This was designed by James Gillespie Graham as a broad rectangular building with crow-stepped gables and rubble walls and tall Gothic (pointed) windows. A low extension was added in 1873 by Hugh H Maclure, who went on to add an organ chamber four years later, a north wing in 1880 and a western extension in 1885-86, which incorporated a corbelled and crenellated tower. Maclure’s organ chamber was replaced in 1908-10 by a chancel designed by Henry Higgins, who remodelled the interior on ‘Scoto-catholic’ lines, with nave and chancel, choir stalls in the chancel, and pulpit to the west of the chancel arch. The general eff ect is rich and pleasing.

The great glory of the church building is its remarkable suite of stained-glass windows, with work by some of the finest Scottish stained-glass artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Stephen Adam and his studio, Alfred Webster and his son Gordon, and Douglas Strachan. Highlights are the chancel end windows, by Stephen Adam, depicting in the side lights the Nativity, and Christ with his Crown of Thorns. These fiank the central two windows which depict the Maries at the empty tomb. In a passage between the church and the tower porch is a memorial window to Stephen Adam, who died in 1910, by Alfred Webster, who had been Adam’s pupil. The graveyard contains some interesting monuments, including the Victorian mausoleum of the Campbells of Garscube and the early-18th century burial enclosure of the Colquhouns of Luss.

As the number and quality of the stainedglass windows may suggest, New Kilpatrick has long been a much-loved church. As its congregational statistics in the Church of Scotland Yearbook confirm, this is a thriving church, a very important focal point for a strong local community. It is, not unexpectedly, also a warm and welcoming place. 