The Church for everyone

GENERATIONS of travellers by road between Edinburgh and Glasgow have looked out for Kirk o’ Shotts Parish Church.

Despite successive road improvements and realignments, this apparently simple and uncompromising rectangular building with its gable-end belfry is still a landmark, symbolising the nourishing role of the Church of Scotland in a desolate upland area. It also gives the good news that the traveller is ‘over the hump’, and that it is downhill all the way to Glasgow (or Edinburgh).

The parish of Shotts is in North Lanarkshire, Historically it was largely moorland. In the 18th century it was, however, discovered that below its unpromising surface were substantial seams of coal and ironstone. Coal was probably first mined to satisfy local markets, but in 1787 an iron-smelting works was established at Omoa in the south of the parish. The name came from a West Indian place in whose capture Colonel William Dalrymple was involved. Fifteen years later, during the French wars, the Shotts Iron Company founded a second works close to what is now the town of Shotts. Omoa closed in 1866, but the Shotts works survived until 1947 when the coal industry was nationalised. The National Coal Board continued to mine coal in the parish until the later 20th century, and the traditional miners’ cottages were replaced by local authority housing. The Shotts works had its own village, known as Shotts Ironworks, on the southern border of the parish with that of Cambusnethan.

The church history of Shotts Parish is a complex one. The first mention of it dates from 1476, when it appears to have been a part of Bothwell Parish, and was known as Bothwellmoor. After the Reformation it became known as Bertram Shotts, for reasons shrouded in mystery. A church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St Catherine of Siena was in existence before 1450, on a site close to that of the subject of this article, in what was described as a ‘desert place’, in about the centre of Bothwellmoor. The mediaeval parish was attached to the Collegiate Church of Bothwell. After the Reformation the parishes of Bothwell, Shotts and Monkland were all served by the minister of Bothwell. This grouping was later altered to Shotts, Bothwell, Cambusnethan and Dalziel. In 1588, however the Synod of Glasgow agreed that Shotts should have its own minister. The mediaeval church building was repaired and partly rebuilt in 1640-48, and again in 1691. After the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 the King reneged on his promise to the people of Scotland to continue the Presbyterian Church which had developed since 1638, and reintroduced Episcopal church government. Many, particularly in the Lowlands, bitterly resented this, and despite persecution remained loyal to the Covenants of the post-1638 period. The Covenanters could not meet indoors, and resorted to field meetings. This movement was particularly strong in Shotts, and Shotts men fought on the Covenanting side in the Pentland Rising, and in the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge.

After 1802 the development of the Shotts Ironworks and associated coal and ironstone mines, and agricultural improvement greatly increased the population of the parish, and a new church was built between 1819 and1821 near the site of the mediaeval one. It was on a large scale, accommodating 1200 worshippers, and was designed by James Gillespie Graham, Scotland’s leading church architect at the time. Unlike many other churches of the period it did not have a tower; its relatively small belfry was destroyed by lightning in 1876, but was speedily replaced, probably to a simpler design than the original.

There are few better advertisements than Kirk o’ Shotts for the National Church’s role in simply being the Church for everyone, not just for its members. ¤

This article appears in the March 2020 Issue of Life and Work

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