SLAMANNAN
PARISH THROUGH THE CHANGING YEARS
BY
REV
JAMES WAUGH, M.A., H.C.F
(October 1977)
CHAPTER 7
THE CHURCH IN SLAMANNAN FROM THE
REFORMATION TO THE PRESENT DAY
The Scottish Parliament on the
24th August 1560 passed Acts ending the authority of the Pope over the Scottish Church and
doing away with the Mass. At that time there
was a move to prevent the bishops, abbots, priests, vicars and other clergy of the Roman
Catholic Church from taking office in the Reformed Church. Events proved that that could
not be achieved. Very many of the clergy of
the Roman Church still continued to minister as before as did Sir Richard Fleming at
Slamannan. Time proved that many of those
clergy of the old church were incorporated into the ranks of the new church. Prof, Gordon Donaldson maintains that over half of
the ministers of the Reformed Church of Scotland had held office in the old Roman Catholic
Church in Scotland. Very many of those ex-clergy of the Roman Church did not have the
qualifications to be fully ordained ministers of the Church, and so in the early days of
the Scottish Reformation some stopgap orders of the ministry had to be created. From the beginning there were Readers who were
simply assistants to the parish minister. They were allowed to read the prescribed
prayers, but not to administer the Sacraments. There were men called Exhorters who could
conduct the whole of the Sunday Service, including the sermon. Those men were better prepared for the work of the
church than the Readers. When the first few years of the Reformation were over there were
more trained men available for the church and so in 1570 the office of Exhorter was
abolished. By 1572 the Readers had become men
of education, trained for the work of the church, and so in that year Readers were allowed
to have the responsibility for parishes, which had no minister. They were allowed to administer the Sacrament of
Baptism and to officiate at marriages.
By 1574 there were 289 ministers
and 715 Readers in the Church of Scotland. It will be seen from what has been said about
Sir Richard Fleming that he was a vicar and chaplain from the Roman Catholic Church who
went over to the Reformation Church. He
passed through the stages of Exhorter and Reader before becoming the minister of Slamannan
in 1574. As we have seen in the last chapter,
this was made possible by putting his signature to the articles drawn up by the Synod on
6th October 1574. The names and
history of the ministers who came after Sir Richard Fleming can be found in "Fasti
Ecclesiae Scotanae" in reference libraries, including the Falkirk Library. Slamannan
at the Reformation was a charge in the Presbytery of Stirling, but on the 8th July 1589,
it was transferred to the Presbytery of Linlithgow.
In Sir Richard Fleming's first
years as minister of Slamannan something of the old Pre-Reformaation Church remained for
there was still talk of bishops. However, the
work of Andrew Melville and the Second Book of Discipline led to the confirming of a
complete Presbyterian system with synods, presbyteries and kirk sessions in 1590. About
this time James VI of Scotland began to have a soft side for the English Episcopal system. By 1612 he had achieved Episcopacy as the legal
church system in Scotland. This change only affected the position and rights of the clergy
for the form of worship was unchanged. The
records, that we have, seem to show that the changes during those years did not cause any
problems in Slamannan for no minister till the Restoration in 1660 seems to have made any
protests or have given up his church for reasons of conscience. I can find only one
minister who was put out of his Charge. That
was the Rev, Robert Sempill who was minister at Lesmahagow before coming to Slamannan. He
joined the Protesters in l65l but did not lose his charge.
He left Lesmahagow for Slamannan where he was inducted on 13th April 1658.
He was suspended by the Presbytery of Linlithgow on 19th September 1660, and was deposed
on 5th November of that same year.
It was just after Mr. Sempill had
been outed from Slamannan Church and Parish that the Rescissory Act was passed in 1661. That ended Presbyterianism until the Act of 1690
re-established it again, and introduced the form of church government in Scotland, which
has lasted to the present day. The Rescissory
Act led to the re-awakening of the
spirit of the National Covenant, which had been signed by thousands of people in
Greyfriars Church and Churchyard, Edinburgh on 28th February 1638 and which had been
accepted by the Scottish Parliament in 1639. Two
years after the Rescissory Act was passed there was another Act which said that all
ministers who were not prepared to accept
Those actions of the authorities
did not wipe out Presbyterian worship. They
only drove it under-ground. Meetings for
worship were held in secret places. Those
meetings-received the name of Conventicles, and were sometimes held in farmhouses, in
hidden glens or on the open moorland. They
were sometimes conducted by deposed ministers whose preaching came to attract vast crowds. The Conventicle Act was passed in 1670 to put an
end to open air services or Conventicles. The
government sent soldiers to search for those Conventicles and put an end to them. One well-known place where Conventicles were held
was at Craigmad, near Blackbraes in the Parish of Falkirk, close to its border with
Muiravonside Parish. The Conventicles at
Craigmad became famous.
It is amusing to think that the
Kirk Session of Falkirk did not want to be blamed for those Conventicles for they would
give the people of Falkirk a bad name. They maintained that it was not the people of their
own parish but people from Slamannan Parish who were responsible for the Conventicles at
Craigmad. Attention was drawn to the fact
that Slamannan had been noted for its adherence to the cause of the Protesters before the
Restoration of Charles II in 1660, and the Presbytery Records show that it continued to
uphold the Covenant even after the Restoration. A
manuscript written in 1728 by the Rev. William Hastie, Minister of Slamannan, tells of the
difficulties his father, Mr. John Hastie, had to face because of his Coventanting
sympathies. The actual manuscript is in the hands of Mrs. Menzies a direct descendant of
the Rev. William Hastie who built the Pirnielodge Farmhouse in 1735. An extract of that manuscript can be found in
"Records of Falkirk Kirk Session” by George I. Murray. There is a copy of the two volumes of that book in
the Reference Department of the Falkirk Public Library.
That spirit of protest continued well into the l8th century for in 1737 a
petition was received from some people in Slamannan Parish to be received into the
Presbytery of the Secession Church. If that
petition was favourably received by the Secession Church, then no group was set up in the
parish, but the Slamannan Petitioners may have been received into the Secession Church at
Cumbernauld.
The Kirk Session Minutes of
Slamannan Parish Church begin in l68l, though there are some loose papers, dated 1635,
which look like Communion Rolls. Those Minutes can be seen in the Scottish Record Office
in Edinburgh. I shall just note a few of the
entries from those Minutes. The first is that
of llth February 1722, when the question of a new church bell was raised. The minister,
the Rev. William Hastie, and Mr. Robert Ure were reported as having attended a meeting of
the Heritors on 5th January, at which Messrs. James Waddell of Balquhatston and Patrick
Salmon of the Whins had been chosen to take down the old bell which had hung there since
before the Reformation. They were to take it
to Edinburgh to have it re-cast, and to take 100 merks (approximately £5.55) with them. They were to get the best terms they could from
the bell-founders and report back to the Heritors. Terms were agreed between the Heritors1
representatives and the famous bell-founders Meikle & Maxwell, Edinburgh. That bell
made in 1722 was re-cast from the old bell, and so it went back to Pre-Reformation times.
That is the bell on the present church, and it links it with the church of the 13th
century. The bell bears the following
inscription "R.M. fecit, Edn, for Slamannan, 1722". One other bell of that century was a handbell. It was first mentioned in the Kirk Session Minutes
for 20th May 1731. The Session requested the
minister, the Rev. William Hastie, to go to Edinburgh to buy a handbell to be used at
funerals. On the l6th June 1731, Mr. Hastie
reported to the Kirk Session that he had paid 11/- (55p) for the bell. The inscription put on the bell was
“Slamannan, 1731". The Session
agreed that those who asked for the use of the handbell at funerals should pay 2d (about
Ip in modern currency) which would be given to the Beadle "for his pains in
ringing". Very many years later that bell disappeared, no one knows how, but it
turned up again in April 1955 when Mr. Andrew Scott found it in an antique shop and
brought it back to Slamannan. His sister,
Mrs, John Menzies, and her husband are now possessors of that bell.
A Minute of the Slamannan Kirk
Session, dated 7th April 1713, notes that several of the Parish of Falkirk had brought
their children to Slamannan Church for baptism, but they were unwilling to pay the
ordinary dues on such occasions to the Session Clerk.
It was agreed at that meeting that in future none of the Falkirk Parish
would have children baptised in Slamannan unless they had spoken beforehand to the Session
Clerk and had paid him and the Beadle according to use and wont. This entry from the Session Minutes is referred to
for its relevance to what was to happen some years later.
Those people, who came seeking baptism at Slamannan Church, lived on the
north side of the River Avon, which was in the Parish of Falkirk, nearly four miles from
their Parish Church. "The Records of the Falkirk Kirk Session" by George I.
Murray points out that the way of those people to the Falkirk Parish Church lay through
"impassible flow mosses, and so bad wayes, as that they cannot be supposed to attend
the ordinances at all". On the other
hand, the 200 people involved lived within a mile of Slamannan. It was, therefore, proposed by the Presbytery that
the lands of Ellrig, Easter Jaw, Wester Jaw and Croftannie should be joined to Slamannan. That was in 1723. It was another two years before
further moves were made. The Minutes of the
of the Presbytery of Linlithgow, dated 8th December 1725 show that the Right Honourable
Lords of Council and Session, Commissioners of Plantation of Kirks and Valuation of Teinds
by a decree, dated l8th November, 1725, had disjoined the above lands from the Kirk and
Parish of Falkirk and had annexed them to the Kirk and Parish of Slamannan. The Slamannan Parishioners refused to accept that
decision. This was reported to a meeting of
the Presbytery on 22nd March 1726. Thinking that the opposition of the Parishioners to the
scheme was because no portion of the Falkirk stipend had been assigned for the lands to be
annexed, the Falkirk minister, the Rev. James Anderson, offered to give the teinds of the
part of Falkirk annexed to Slamannan to the parish minister, the Rev. William Hastie, and
his successors. Mr. Anderson, however, did
not commit his successors to follow his example. When
Mr. Anderson was no longer minister of Falkirk the teinds for Ellrig, Easter Jaw, Wester
Jaw and Croftannie were paid to the Falkirk minister.
In fact, this remained true till 1940 when the Presbytery of Linlithgow
recommended that £50 of the surplus stipend of Falkirk should go to Slamannan Churches
after a period of over 200 years.
The disagreement between the
parties involved meant that the people of the places mentioned were really without a
church for they were accepted neither by Falkirk nor Slamannan. The Slamannan minister, the Rev. William Hastie,
was placed in a very awkward position for if he obeyed the instructions of the
Presbytery by acting as minister
for those people on the north side of the River Avon he would have to face the opposition
of his own parishioners of Slamannan.
The struggle continued till the
middle of 1730 when matters were finally settled. To
find room for the people of the Annexation in the church two schemes were considered. One was to move the east gable 8 ft. further to
the east. The other was to build an aisle on
the north wall of the church. The church
walls and roof were not to be damaged and the lofts and seats were to be left in good
condition. The second scheme was agreed to,
and the aisle on the north wall remained till the church was taken down in 1810.
In March 1753, the minister and
heritors of Slamannan reported to the Presbytery
of Linlithgow that their church was in a very bad condition and that repairs were urgently
needed. They asked the Presbytery to visit
the church to see it for themselves. They did so on 2nd May 1753, and skilled tradesmen
were brought to give their views on the condition of the church. Their report was that the roof was badly in need
of repair, as were the walls, except the gables and a small part of the west end of the
northside wall. They estimated that the cost
of the repairs would be £107, exclusive of transport charges. The Presbytery authorised the work to be done, the
cost to be met by the Heritors. That was the
last major repair work to the church until it was demolished in l8l0.
By the beginning of March 1809,
the Heritors of Slamannan considered that the time had come to do something about the
church for it was in a very bad state of repair. They
appointed a committee, which was authorised to employ two skilled tradesmen to inspect the
church. The tradsmen chosen were Messrs.
Thomas Bain, Drumbowie, and William Black, Falkirk. They
reported that the rhones or roof gutters and the drop pipes were beymd repair, and that
the roof was in a very bad condition. Their
considered opinion was that there was no use of trying to re-arrange the seating of the
church to hold six or seven hundred people. They
recommended the taking down of the church and the building of a new one. They felt that to reconstruct the existing church
would be a waste of money. An outlay of £10
on roof repairs would keep it watertight for another year.
Their advice was accepted by the Heritors. The repairs to the roof were
carried out, and the committee were given the go ahead to prepare a plan or plans for a
suitable church building. The committee had a
look at the South united Presbyterian Church in the Cow Wynd, Falkirk. The minister there was the Rev. James Brownlee. That church was nicknamed "The Tattie
Kirk", probably because all the farmers for miles around supplied bags of potatoes to
be sold for the Church Fund. It had been
built in l806 at a cost of £800 for a congregation of 580.
Its shape was octagonal. In
fact, that church still stands in the Cow Wynd though it has not been used as a church
since 1880 when the congregation moved to Grahams Road.
Another of the churches looked at was the Associate Burgher Church at
Avonbridge, which was built in 1804 for under £200, and remained in use until the present
one, now Church of Scotland, was built in 1889. The
Avonbridge Church was of the square type. On
30th December 1809, three plans were considered by the Heritors for a new church. Two of the plans were very much alike for one was
octagonal and the other was an oblong octagonal. The
third plan was nearly square. At a meeting on
12th January, l8l0, the Heritors finally agreed to accept the square plan. The offer of
Since much of the stone of the old
church went into the new building, there is a wonderful continuity with the past. Stones that re-echoed to the prayers of
Pro-Reformation days still re-echoe to the prayers of today. Some of the stones of the old church were taken
from Mr, Arthur's yard to help in the building of local cottages and farmhouses for in
those days no prepared stones were left lying unused.
An earlier example of this was seen at Arthur's 0'0n near Carronshore. It was a beehive shaped building that was supposed
to go back to Roman times. A local farmer
used many of the stones from that building in the l8th century to repair a dam. (Editors
Note: actually it was Lord Bruce of Stenhouse who demolished it) Some of the stones of the old Pre-reformation
Church of Slamannan are probably built into Loanhead Cottage, Southfield, Slamannan, which
is now owned by Mr. George A, Stephen. There is a recess in the north wall of the Cottage
in which there is a stone hollowed out to form a circular basin 2 inches deep. On one side of the basin there is a slot, 3/4 inch
wide, which is cut to the bottom of it, and that slot ends in a small hole like a drain. That stone basin was probably fixed in that
position to preserve it. In an article in the
"Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser" on 6th September, 1958, Mr, James W, Dobbie,
a native of Slamannan, suggested that that stone basin had been a lavabo into which the
server poured water over the hands of the priest. The
word comes from the first word of the Psalm recited by the priest when he performs the
ritual washing of hands in the course of the Mass. Mr. Stephen kindly allowed me to see
the basin, and I am inclined to agree with Mr. Dobbie. Mr. Dobbie also suggested that
after the basin had been taken from Mr, Arthur's yard it was used to keep salt in.
In August, l892, there was a plan
to enlarge the choir seating and alter the platform without losing any of the
congregational seats. Seven years later on
1st August, l899. The minister, the Rev, Allan Reid, sent a letter to the Heritors about
the condition of the church fabric, and they appointed a committee to look into the
matter. At a meeting on 6th June 1900, they
agreed to carry out extensive repairs and improvements, which included heating for the
church. The cost was to be shared by the
congregation and the Heritors.
The Old Parish Church Manse was
taken down in l857. It was reckoned to be over 150 years old at that time. It had been frequently repaired and extended in
past years. By 1857 it was considered that a
new manse was needed for the minister, the Rev. Robert S. Home, who had been inducted to
Slamannan Church on 10th July 1856. The manse
was completed in April, 13579 and was ready for occupation by 1st August that year. By November Mr, Home had moved into his new home.
When the population grew in the
Limerigg district the Slamannan Parish Church started a mission there. The first
missionary was the Rev. George Waugh, BD, who served there during his student days and
remained until he was called to be a missionary in the Punjab, India in 1890. He was later to become Principal of
The restoration work on the church
was carried out almost entirely by the minister, the Rev. Alexander Cameron, MA., on the
19th April, 1953. In the busy mining days the
Slamannan Church was alive to its responsibilities for it held Sunday Schools in several
of the mining villages including Southfield, Drumclair, Limerigg and others.
In other ways the Slamannan Parish
Church was showing itself abreast of a changing world.
In October, l894» a Woman1s Guild was started. In November of that same year it raised money to
put an organ in the church. In October 1898,
a bazaar was held to raise funds for a church hall. On
that occasion the aim was £700, but nearly £1,000 was realised. It was May 1900 before building began because it
was found necessary to lay a concrete foundation, and that had caused some delay. One year later there was a Sale of Work to clear
off the money needed for the new hall. The
sum needed was €250 but £412 was received. The
total cost of the building was £1,400. It
was ready for use by the end of 1901. In
August 1908 a wall was built in front of the hall. Iron railings surmounted it. This was provided by the generosity of a member of
the Parish Church.
A note in the "Falkirk
Herald" of October 9th, 1920, made mention of a Communion Cup used the previous
Sunday that had been presented to the congregation in 1720.
There were actually two Cups presented at that time by Messrs. Mitchell of
Balmitchell Fana. In 1838 the congregation was presented with another two Communion Cups;
one was from Mr. Waddell of Balquhatston and the other was from Mr, Ralston of Ellrig. In 1929 the Free Church and the Established Church
of Scotland united under the title "The Church of Scotland". In November of that
year the Presbytery fixed the names of the two churches in Slamannan, The former Free
Church became Balquhatston Church and the former Parish Church became St. Laurence Church.
On 25th October 1945 the two churches were united under the name St. Laurence who had been
the old patron saint of the parish.
In September 1935, the gifts of a
pulpit, Communion Table, Elders Seat and Moderator's Chair were presented to the Church by
Viscount Home of Slamannan whose father had been minister of the parish from 10th July,
l856 till his death on 19th January 1894. The
Rev. Nenion Elliot, BD., minister of the parish dedicated the gifts. Viscount Horne and other members of the family
attended the service. On the Communion Table
is the following inscription, "The Communion Table, chairs and benches form part of
Sir Robert Horned gift to this Church in memory of his father and mother, September 1st,
1935". The inscription on the pulpit
reads, "To the Glory of God and in memory of the Rev, Robert Stevenson Horne, who for
30 years preached from this place, and of Mary Lochhead, his wife, who during his ministry
in this parish supported him with her love and help, this pulpit is presented by their
son, Robert, to this Church and Congregation, September 1st, 1935".
Since the Second World War many
changes have been made in the church, manse and halls.
One final word concerns what is called the Session House at the gate to the
graveyard. It is similar to two others in
Scotland of which Muiravonside is one. It was used as a collecting house. In January 1961, when that building was being
reconstructed inside, the foundations of an older building were discovered when the floor
was lifted.
Published by :
Falkirk District Council,
Department of Libraries and Museums
ISBN 0 906586 02 X
September 1979