‘A wonderful advertisement’

LAST month I chose as my subject Langholm Parish Church, which serves an upland parish and burgh in eastern Dumfriesshire, an area with much in common with the Border counties of Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire.

I am staying in Dumfriesshire this month, with Annan Old as my subject, not least because the current Moderator of the General Assembly comes from that ‘airt’.

Dumfriesshire is, as I wrote last month, split into three sections by river valleys: the Esk and the Annan, and bounded on the west by the lower reaches of the Nith.

Annan was historically the most accessible port on the eastern Solway Firth, and the valley of the River Annan – Annandale – is still the most direct and easiest route between west central Scotland and both south-west Scotland and England. Today it is traversed on its upper section by both the M74 motorway and the West Coast Main Line.

The town itself was founded in the 12th century as a ‘Burgh of Barony’ by the Norman Bruce family, and became a Royal Burgh when Robert the Bruce became king of Scots in 1306. The present High Street would have been the medieval marketplace. Annan, however, suffered from its proximity to Dumfries and Carlisle.

The Bruce family had a castle with an associated parish church, overlooking a ford over the Annan. The castle was demolished during the 17th century, and the ford was replaced by a bridge in 1700-05. The present bridge was designed by Robert Stevenson (better known for his lighthouses) in 1824-26, as a part of a programme of road improvement in the area. The burgh was described in 1760 as a ‘small, poor town’, with its inhabitants living in ‘thatched ‘cabins’. In 1785, however, as in Langholm, a cotton-mill was constructed. Subsequently the harbour was improved, and new buildings began to brighten the appearance of the place.

One of the first of these was what is now the Old Parish Church (given that name on the union of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church in 1929). This replaced the earlier church by the river, which was demolished on the completion of the new church. This was constructed all at the same time, but it was in fact built in two stages. The first part is the body, which burgh churches of Paisley and Irvine, is essentially a large rectilinear block, described in The Buildings of Scotland:

Dumfries and Galloway as ‘a ‘big rubble rectangle, with rusticated quoins and a piended roof’. It was designed and built in 1789-90 by three local Beattie and John Oliver, joiners and John Hannah, mason. As built there was a tower in the centre of the street frontage. To this a classical steeple (as probably originally intended) was added in 1798-1801. More elaborate classical steeples were also added to the burgh churches of Paisley and Irvine.

Inside the church (probably built to accommodate cotton-mill workers) are three deep galleries, with original fronts of 1789.

The supporting columns were replaced in cast-iron in 1873. The most remarkable feature is the Magistrates’

Pew, in the front of the north gallery, described looks as though it like the earlier large tradesmen, James in the Buildings of Scotland as ‘exceptionally stylish’... This has four fluted wooden piers supporting a wooden canopy, sculpted with acanthus leaves. The underside is carved with swags and a central rose. This exceptionally fine building is probably the finest feature of this very attractive town, and a wonderful advertisement of the place of the Church in the community.

In the graveyard is a statue of Edward Irving, a brilliant preacher, who moved to London, where his theological views led to expulsion from the Church of Scotland. He thereupon founded the Catholic Apostolic Church. But that is another story. ¤