John R Hume reflects on the history of the New Laigh Kirk.

EARLY in 2020 I was asked to write an article on the New Laigh Kirk in Kilmarnock. Here at last is the promised article. With the initial request was a booklet about the congregation, subtitled ‘A History of New Beginnings’.

This has proved very helpful.

Kilmarnock was probably a settlement long before 1592, when it became a burgh of barony. The site of the present New Laigh Kirk is probably much older with a church (or at least a churchyard) here since the 4th century.

St Marnock is traditionally associated with the town. When I started to write this article I thought that it was likely that he was one of St Columba’s missionary team from Iona. Recently, however found in The Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland, (published in the 1850s) in the entry for Kilmarnock this passage:

‘The saint from whom the parish has its name was St Marnock, said to have been a bishop or confessor in Scotland and to have died in 322 and probably interred in this parish. Yet though he was the patron saint of several other Scottish parishes, he is known only by vague tradition, and cannot be referred to either in evidence of the very early evangelisation of the country, or as a way-mark in the path of its ecclesiastical history.’

In the light of recent research I am now of the view that the ‘vague tradition’ referred to is very likely to be true.

Marnock would have been part of the ‘Church of the Incarnation’ – the Church founded in Jerusalem immediately after the day of Pentecost. He was probably a missionary from somewhere in the Roman Empire (which had steadily been converted, even before the Emperor Constantine began the toleration of the Church early in the 4th century). In the light of this interpretation the tradition of Marnock’s association with Scotland and with Kilmarnock in particular should be seen both as evidence of the ‘early evangelisation’ of Scotland and of Marnock being indeed a ‘way-mark in the path’ of the country’s ecclesiastical history. This supposition fits particularly well with the tradition of Ninian’s mission from Whithorn in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, which is best recorded (in place-name evidence) in southern Pictland (north of the Forth) implying that Strathclyde, including Ayrshire, was already by that time part of the ‘Church of the Incarnation’.

The oldest part of the present church is its tower, probably of 17th century date. A new body was added in 1750, as the burgh’s population grew.

Even before that, however, a second Church of Scotland building had been constructed to the north, the High Kirk. The Laigh Kirk’s 1750 building lasted until 1802, when there was a tragic episode, when thirty people were crushed to death while trying to leave the building because of a rumour that the roof was about to collapse. The new church – the present one – was built with much safer exits.

At the Disruption the minister and many of the congregation of the Laigh Kirk left to form the Free High Kirk.

That congregation then in turn split, in 1876, the breakaway part forming the Grange Free Church. In 1900 these two congregations became part of the United Free Church, and in 1929 part of the Church of Scotland. In 2000 the Laigh and the West High (originally the Free High) united (becoming the Laigh West High), and in 2009 that congregation united with the Grange Church, as the New Laigh Church. The result of these unions has been to create a vibrant and forwardlooking congregation, which uses its position in the heart of the town to reach out to people who would not normally attend church –a model for all.