Six generations tied to Ayrshire church

Thomas Baldwin reports on the 150-year connection between one family and a single church in Ayrshire.

A BAPTISM in St Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Saltcoats, in North Ayrshire late last year extended a family’s connection to the church to at least six generations over more than 150 years.

Teddy McCandless is the great, great, great grandson of John Robertson, who in 1870 founded a local ham curing business that would become Robertson’s Fine Foods. The company is still trading as a family business today, with John’s face on the packaging.

John was the senior elder when Saltcoats St Cuthbert’s, the fourth building to serve the parish, was built in 1908. John’s son Robert and grandson Humphrey were both also elders, and Humphrey’s daughter Lynn Fraser became an active member, particularly in the choir and on the Centenary Celebration committee in 2008.

Lynn’s daughter, Jennifer Fraser, married Kris McCandless in the church three years ago, and they brought Teddy to be baptised on November 28. The baptism was carried out by the Rev Sarah Nicol.

Session Clerk William Parker (who is also connected to the family, being the grandson of Robert Robertson’s twin sister, Annie), told the congregation that the family connection could well go back further, as there was every chance John Robertson would have been brought up in the church’s predecessor building, Ardrossan Parish Church.

He said: “With this baptism we are witnessing a unique occasion in the history of this church as Teddy becomes the sixth generation of one family with an unbroken link to this and the previous place of worship. I suspect that very few churches will be able to record anything similar. We recognise and appreciate being present at this unique occasion and extend a particularly warm welcome to this new member of our church family.”

Saltcoats: St Cuthbert’s may be a twentieth century building, but it has a history dating back to around 1230 AD, when a church was built on Castle Rock, Ardrossan, on the east shore of the Firth of Clyde. That church stood until 1695, when it was blown down by a storm. The materials were used in the building of a new church, subsequently moved to Saltcoats, and later rebuilt as a larger building on the same site. That building, Ardrossan Parish Church, still stands and is used as the North Ayrshire Museum.

A new parish church was first proposed in 1843, but it was over 60 years until the first sod was cut on land gifted by the Earl of Eglinton. One of John Robertson’s daughters, Ella, laid corn, wine and oil at the laying of the Memorial Stone by the Countess of Eglinton and Winton in February 1908, and the building was dedicated in December that year.