A Dundee landmark

John R Hume explores the roots and history of ‘one of the finest’ 18thcentury church buildings in Scotland.

ON the eastern edge of Dundee’s town centre, St Andrew’s is one of the finest eighteenth-century church buildings in Scotland.

It was built by the merchants of the city (completed in 1772) when it was becoming internationally important, largely as a centre of linen manufacture. At that time the centre of Dundee was served by three churches adapted from the medieval church attached to the massive ‘steeple’ which still dominates Dundee’s shopping centre. These churches were by 1770 proving inadequate for the city’s growing population, hence the construction of this splendid Georgian building, set on a hill above the eastern end of the town.

Its fine steeple would have been a landmark for vessels using the harbour on the Tay Estuary. This steeple may have been modelled on that of a church in Copenhagen, for at that time the countries of the Baltic were Dundee’s main trading partners.

St Andrew’s was designed by Samuel Bell, though Charles McKean and David Walker, in Dundee: an Illustrated Introduction say that it may have been based on a design by James Craig, associated with the planning of Edinburgh’s first New Town. McKean and Walker quote Thomas Pennant, a noted topographical writer of the period, as writing in 1772, the year of the church’s completion, that ‘it is built in a style that does credit to the place, and which shows an enlargement of mind in the Presbyterians, who now begin to think that the LORD may be praised in the beauty of holiness’. Since its construction it has gained a fine suite of stained-glass windows.

On the edge of the graveyard attached to St Andrew’s, and in marked contrast to its elegance is a modest octagonal white-harled building now housing the halls of that church. This was completed in 1777 as a Glasite Chapel, in memory of the founder of that denomination, the Reverend John Glas, formerly minister of Tealing, a rural parish in the hills to the north of Dundee. According to Donaldson and Morpeth’s A Dictionary of Scottish History Glas was critical of the principles of the established church, and was therefore deposed from his charge in 1728. Donaldson and Morpeth go on to say that he then ‘formed a congregation based on simple apostolic practice’ As part of that practice his congregations celebrated the Last Supper by serving vegetable soup – ‘kail’ – after the services. Hence Glasite chapels were popularly called ‘Kail Kirks’.

The Glasites were also known as the ‘Sandemanians’ and their most celebrated member was Michael Faraday, part of its London congregation. On account of his beliefs, Faraday forsook a lucrative career as a scientific consultant to undertake pure scientific research, during which he discovered that electricity could be generated by mechanical power, a discovery now at the heart of our lives. So, when you switch on your television, or charge your electric car remember that you owe the power that is used in these devices to a man who was a devout believer in the love of God, and of his fellow human beings, and who considered it his duty to seek knowledge of the creation and the benefit of humankind, rather than to make money. And remember, too, that Faraday owed his approach to life to John Glas.

So here, at St Andrew’s Parish Church we can be mindful of the merchants of Dundee who wanted to create a place of worship worthy of their town, and who have left us a very beautiful building. Think, too, of the later congregation who retained the Glasite Chapel as part of their witness. Both of these buildings are rooted in two very different aspects of 18th- century theology, and should remind us of the importance of difference, rather than uniformity in relating to the Divine.