Queen's Park Church, Glasgow

The cost

How did it compare to other churches?

The site

On interiors

The rate of building

The first minister, William Sprott

Fergus Ferguson, 1876-1905

Changes under Ferguson

James Robertson Cameron, 1906-09

James Golder Burns, 1910-28

Edward Thomson Vernon, 1929-38

James Chalmers Grant, 1939-45

Bombing as a weapon of war

Fire-watching

Church rebuilding

Remnants?

Post-war

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From a talk given by Dominic d'Angelo on the fiftieth anniversary of the destruction of Queen's Park Church, 25th March 1993.

'In the year 1866 a number of gentlemen connected with the various United Presbyterian Churches in the city held a meeting to consider the advisability of erecting a preaching station in Crosshill.'
Queen's Park East United Free Church Jubilee Book 1867-1917

With many United Presbyterians already living in the area, and Sabbath services being held in a schoolhouse on the north side of Church Lane, support was rapidly forthcoming. A small wooden church was erected, opened on the 1st October 1866 under Dr Eadie of Cambridge Street. The church cost £335 12s 10d, with additional expenses of £130 6s 7d, leaving a balance of £80 16s 11d.

Two months later, sixty members and 27 adherents presented a petition to the Glasgow UP Presbytery to form the station into a congregation; the minister of Gorbals UP Church was appointed Moderator and the church was formed on 8th January 1867.

By 11th March, a meeting of the congregation had been held; it agreed to ask the Presbytery to appoint one of the congregation as moderator to call for a pastor for the congregation, at a stipend of £420 a year, with £20 extra for Communion expenses. It was a bold step to take, given there were only 80 members on the Church roll. But the Presbytery agreed, and two weeks later William Sprott from Pollokshaws was chosen. By the end of April, the Presbytery had considered and agreed the call. The minister was inducted on 13th May, and services of introduction held on the 19th. Sixty-seven gentlemen from the Presbytery were then 'dined', and 295 attended a congregational soiree, at which a pulpit gown and cassock were presented to the new minister, while the retiring Moderator received a timepiece.

Sabbath School and Missionary Societies were established; classes and meetings were held on Sundays and week-days in Strathbungo, and the Govan Colliery Sabbath School was taken under the charge of the congregation. The wooden church was established, with extra seats for 200, soon filled, and by 4th December 1867 a general meeting of the congregation had resolved to proceed with the building of a new church, located in Langside opposite Queen Mary Avenue.

Within fourteen months, therefore, the congregation had moved from mission station to parish status, and from a wooden church building to plans for a permanent building. The speed at which this had all taken place may seem surprising today, yet this was a time of great expansion for the Christian churches in Scotland.

For many visitors to Glasgow, the constant amazement at Thomson's churches is that they should not only have been built for Protestant congregations in Scotland, but specifically selected by them. And more: why wasn't it Gothic, the most popular ecclesiastical building style of the day, indeed, of the century?

'The fully developed mediocrity of the Gothic Revival, which by the time of the Disruption was holding undisputed sway over ecclesiastical and architectural minds alike, dragged its dreary course through the remainder of the century, enlivened only by such extravaganzas of the amazing kirks of Frederick Pilkington, whose kirks at Dundee, Kelso, Penicuick and Edinburgh are still to be wondered at.'
George Hay, The Architecture of Scottish Post-Reformation Churches.

Writing about the many churches built between 1975 and 1910, Hay observes:

'Such buildings were designed in the main to satisfy the predilections of well-meaning clerics to whom 'the beauty of holiness' meant a Gothic Anglican church planned according to Victorian precepts which had been current in England fifty years earlier. It was as though the Kirk had finally turned its back on Geneva and its Reformed and continental affiliations. Strangely enough, these effete and alien principles continued to be the basis for most new Church of Scotland buildings up to the Second World War.'

Before plans for the proposed church at Queen's Park were prepared, subscriptions were promised amounting to £1,427. Two architects were approached to draw up plans, although we have no information on the manner in which they were selected. Thomson was one entrant, coming up with a design (his last for a church) which McFadzean states 'was regarded as 'classical' ... in competition with an architect who was asked to produce a Gothic church'. It may be that the congregation was divided from the start over what architectural style to adopt, although it does today seem unusual for a congregation to ask one architect to design a church in one style, a second architect in another, and for them both to judged in opposition, which is what McFadzean infers. Notwithstanding that, once plans and specifications were obtained and laid before a meeting of the members, not only was there considerable diversity of opinion, but the meeting had to be adjourned before a decision could be arrived at. Worsdall: Queen's Park was the last of Thomson's four Glasgow churches to be designed (in 1868-9), and was possibly the most original.

At the adjourned meeting a vote was taken, and by 48 to 36 votes the plan marked 'Sanctuary No. 1' was adopted. According to the Queen's Park Jubilee Book, "It was the members of the choir of that time who carried the vote: having a choir gallery all to themselves influenced them in no small degree."

The cost

The cost of building Queen's Park Church was slightly under £7,000, as follows:

The cost of building the church was paid off in eight years.

The new building was begun in the autumn of 1868, and the memorial stone laid by the minister on 3rd April 1869. Seven months later, the 1200-seater Queen's Park United Presbyterian Church was opened formally on the Sabbath, 7th November 1869, with a membership of 450.

How did it compare to other churches?

According to Gomme and Walker:

'It was unlike either of the two churches that we still have [St Vincent Street and Caledonia Road Church] in largely abandoning the reproduction of classical motifs. It had a strange high dome, developed from St Vincent Street, rather 'Indian' in character; and the front elevation was unlike anything else that he ever built. Below the octagonal plinth on which the dome stood, the main body of the church ended in a pedimented wall, into which a grotesque, squat, free-standing colonnade was inserted near the top. Below and in front of this was what could be called a kind of 'Egyptian' portico; but it consisted rather of a colonnade set in a huge pylon, whose slightly battered uprights were decorated in the Egyptian manner. The colonnade did not reach the top of the pylon uninterrupted; a massive, elaborately incised lintel ran across about three-quarters of the way up, above which the columns sprouted baluster-like capitals which 'supported' the main lintel of the pylon. The lower lintel was in fact the entablature of a big square colonnade which ran across the whole front of the church and was threaded through the big pylon. More small pylons stood high up at the ends of the 'aisles'. The whole was a characteristically individual variation on Nubian temple designs.'

According to Worsdall, 'The congregation could not afford a tower, so Thomson provided a spectacular belfry in the form of an elongated dome.' However, the rapidity with which the costs of the church were paid off (see panel) do not seem to indicate any serious lack of funds, although there may have been a stipulation regarding a substitute for a tower in the specifications given to the competing architects.

Where did the dome come from? Worsdall describes the St Vincent Street tower thus: 'The drum is topped with a cylindrical peristyle which has columns in the shape of fat corn-shocks or shaving brushes. Finally the dome is like a long-drawn-out policeman's helmet with a kind of sugar castor at the top, for which the inspiration appears to be Hindu.'

Was the 'strange high dome' at Queen's Park developed from St Vincent Street Church? Or from William Stark's 1809 Lunatic Asylum? Or even from Stark's St George's Tron Church of two years before? In addition, Thomson includes a similar structure in his monumental plans from 1862 for the Albert Memorial and in another design of same year.

Whether the Queen's Park dome was the development of an earlier idea, McFadzean suggests that the initial inspiration may well have been directly from India. He refers to Michael Angelo Nicholson, Thomson's son-in-law, who saw service as a soldier in the 1857 Indian Mutiny. A letter from Nicholson includes a graphic description of a mutineer being executed by being placed across the mouth of a cannon and blown apart. It also includes a drawing of an Indian temple.

The site

The Queen's Park site faced east on Langside Road, bounded by a lane on the north side, and on the south side by another lane with open ground sloping upwards to Paxton's new Queen's Park. The rectangular plan of the church with its adjoining wedge-shaped hall and ancillary accommodation recalls the Caledonia Road site, with the hall separated from the church proper by a long narrow courtyard.

McFadzean, comparing the Caledonia Road and Queen's Park churches, considers that Thomson had taken the two entrances and the portico from the former and inverted their relationship, bringing the portico down to ground level to form a true propylaea; the two entrances at Caledonia Road are now placed at a higher level to form windows. The four squat columns of the front gable, McFadzean believes, are derived either from the Albert Memorial design or from the top storey of Grecian Chambers.

According to McFadzean, the stark treatment of the window fenestration, continued as a screen to the passage and church hall, was, like Worsdall's substitution of a dome for a tower, undertaken on grounds of cost.

The Revd John E.H. Thomson DD, of Edinburgh, was not only 'Greek' Thomson's nephew, he had also been assistant to Fergus Ferguson, Queen's Park's second minister, when Ferguson was minister at Dalkeith, from which he moved to Queen's Park. Years later, he described his uncle's building:

"Queen's Park Church is the most original of all the churches produced by the pencil of Greek Thomson. It is unique as a classic design. Greek architecture suggests to most a portico with pillars of one or other of the recognised orders. A Greek classic church brings up a picture of the Madeleine in Paris, with variations, or St Pancras Church in London. Here, in Queen's Park, a portico is rather suggested than presented; and the pillars, if they may be called so, belong to no Vitruvian order. Though Mr Thomson repudiated the designation of his style as Egypto-Greek, yet the observer who studies Queen's Park church cannot fail to feel in it the combination of Egyptian mass with the delicate detail which characterises Greek architecture, united in one harmonious whole. Mr Thomson, while never wavering in his allegiance to Greek architecture, recognised the influence that Egypt had exercised on the artistic development of Greece, an influence that may be seen in Hellenic literature. Though Thomson never was in Egypt, and knew its architecture and sculpture only by illustrations in books and by photographs, he not only admired Egyptian art, but was much impressed by it."

For Thomson, De Quincey's vision of the head of Memnon in the British Museum could perhaps also be applied to the effect generated by the Queen's Park interior:

"The peace that passeth understanding-the eternity that baffles computation-the diffusive love, not such as sinks or swells with the undulations of time, but an ever-expanding procession, the emanation from some mystery of endless dawn. The atmosphere for the Memnon is the breathlessness which belongs to a saintly trance; the holy thing seems to live by silence."

Inside Queen's Park Church, a broad staircase led to the gallery, and side openings led into passages connecting the secondary entrances to the inner doors of the church. The main area of the church was ramped down to the pulpit area, illuminated by windows on both sides, while the gallery was supported on slender cast-iron columns soaring up to carry the weight of the masonry clerestory, similar to St Vincent Street.

The pulpit area was built up as a series of platforms serving different functions, such as the baptismal font at the lower level, the pulpit at a higher level and , finally, a choir gallery, adapted later as an organ loft.

For McFadzean,

"The really dramatic spatial interest of this interior was found in the part of the gallery which was formed in the are immediately under the tower. This increased the internal length of the church in a most remarkable and unexpected fashion. This gallery was formed within the lower part of the tower which was supported by slender cast-iron columns which were clearly revealed. It is only by examining the section through the tower that one realises how daringly Thomson used cast iron at this point. By examining the plan of the tower it will be found that the walls vanish on three sides at gallery level and reappear on the floor below, where they are penetrated by the main stairway, clerestories and other openings. With the treatment of this tower Thomson revealed an astonishing mastery of intricate spatial design which reached a magnificent climax in the auditorium where space appeared to flow from under the gallery, around the soaring columns and up to the splendour of the decorated timber roof."

For him, it was the interior, on which 'the greatness of this building unquestionably rested...

"Originally Thomson intended to finish the interior with plaster decorations, but there was a strike of plasterers, so he lined the interior with wood which was exotically decorated. Most of the decoration derived from natural forms expressed in a highly stylised fashion, with only a limited use of abstract decoration."

Several of the stained glass windows were subscribed for by members, and bore the initials of the donors. Special contributions were made for providing a bell, and the names of the collectors cast on it. Unfortunately, the name of the lady who had collected the largest amount was omitted.

In 1939, Thomas Howarth visited the church, having arrived to take up his first teaching appointment at Glasgow's School of Architecture:

"I visited the church only once, but retain a vivid recollection of its logical plan form and spatial concept. It was the ideal solution, it seemed to me, of the preaching and singing church with central pulpit, organ and choir carefully related to the disposition of the congregation. I stood in the pulpit and was impressed by the intimacy the architect had achieved between congregation and speaker-a rare quality that reminded me of St John's Methodist Church, Sauchiehall Street, now regrettably demolished, where I played the organ for mid-week services.

"I was greatly impressed by Thomson's unorthodox use of colour and detail, which were in great contrast of course to those of Charles Rennie Mackintosh at Queen's Cross Church and elsewhere, with which I was familiarising myself at that time."

Thomson's nephew John was as partisan about the interior as he was about the exterior:

"As we enter the Church, after passing through the vestibule, we are struck with the blaze of colour which meets the eye. Colour to the lover of art speaks the aesthetic thought a emphatically as pure form, and to some in a softer, more melodious voice. Mr Thomson knew that, though a couple of millenia and more have with wind and rain removed all but the merest traces of it, the Greeks used colour extensively. The blaze of colour is not excessive; it is too marvellously harmonised. But form is not neglected. As in Presbyterian worship the sermon is the most important element, the eye is directed to the platform with the simple rostrum, which replaces the closed-in pulpit. It is thrown forward by the dark background, which is pierced by two doorways. This is carried off by the galleries which run round three sides of the auditorium, supported by columns coloured in a way that suggests the pillared courts of Egypt. In the gallery opposite the rostrum there is an upper gallery, treated so as to give the feeling of a lengthened vista. The plainwood with which the Church is lined, adorned as it is with chaster stencilled ornament, gives to the whole the delicate Greek feeling in which Mr Thomson delighted."

According to the Jubilee Book:

"Thomson cut the stencils with his own hands, and Cottier gave most valuable advice as to the colouring. Cottier afterwards went to New York to conduct the decoration of millionaires' mansions."

Gildard, too, was appreciative of the interior:

"In the colours, or rather in the harmonising of the tones, he had the assistance, frankly acknowledged, of the contractor, Mr Cottier, now of London. The scheme of this decoration is as unique as original, as is what is purely the architecture. Throughout the Church there is not even one cubic inch of plaster, and the natural colour of the wood (yellow pine) contributes its tone towards the general harmony."

Ford Maddox Brown visited Glasgow in 1883. An interview with the Evening Times reveals his impressions:

"His first questions were "Why didn't Thomson come to London, and why did Cottier leave it for New York?" To the proposition: "To what religion is the Church dedicated?" his companion tried in vain to explain the elastic comprehensiveness of the Presbyterian religion. "Enough! enough!" he cried. '" want nothing better than the religion that produced art like that. Here line and colouring are suggestive of paradise itself. I now know what has all along been wrong with my ceilings. Well done, Glasgow! I put the crypt of your Cathedral against anything I have seen in ancient Europe, as I do this Thomson-Cottier Church above everything I have seen in modern Europe.

"The congregation may be likened to a man who purchases at an ordinary price what he thinks is an ordinary picture, and discovers he is the possessor of an old master."

On interiors

Worsdall writes that Alexander Thomson had set a precedent in sumptuously decorated and richly coloured interiors in the United Presbyterian Church, but the idea was treated with caution by other churches.

An exception was The Revd Marshall Lang. Lang was one of the pioneers of the liturgical movement in the Church of Scotland, and his Anderston Parish Church of 1864-5 was brightly coloured in the new style, with lots of stencilled decoration and golden texts around the gallery front. Stained glass was used to light the chancel and even the exterior shared in a small way in the colour-scheme, being treated polychromatically with bands of redstone among the white. The church was demolished when Anderston was re-developed in the 1960s.

Hay reports:

"Take down the whole images thereof, and bring forth to the kirkyard and burn them openly. And in the same way cast down the altars and purge the kirk of all kind of monuments of idolatry. Fail not, but you take good care that neither the desks, windows nor doors by anyways hurt or broken, either glasswork or ironwork.

"The injunctions to the 'purifiers' of Dunkeld Cathedral in 1560 show a clear balance between theological puritanism and practical common sense. Unfortunately, such injunctions were largely ineffective with mobs whose predatory instincts differed in no way from their aristocratic countrymen, roused to action less by protestant polemics than by ecclesiastical corruption and the hope of gain.

"Essentially, however, the 'cleansing' activities of the Reformers were concerned solely with those features inconsistent with the new faith.

"Like Dr Johnson, many later men, including less excusable Scots, have been content to attribute every ruined church to the evil genius of John Knox and the 'rascal multitude' who, with staves and hammers, have been credited with powers of demolition which even the IRA might stand in awe. In actual fact, it is nearer the truth to say that 'a small amount of mob destruction merely rounded off centuries of military destruction'."

The rate of building

By 1840, Glasgow was a rapidly expanding city, drawing its population from a wide area, many of them from rural parts of Scotland. For churches in Scotland, it was a time of growth, missionary activity at home and abroad, and of building. Gomme & Walker list 48 churches built between 1840 and 1880 alone:

1842: John Baird 1, Erskine UP Church, South Portland Street, Laurieston ; Carrick and Brown, Renfield St Church

1845: JT Rochead, St John's Free Church, George Street

1846: C Wilson, Argyle Free Church, Oswald Street

1848: James Brown, Renfield Street United Presbyterian Church, the 'United Presbyterian Cathedral' ; Jas Salmon, St Mark's Free Church, Main Street, Anderston

1849: Emmett, St Matthew's Free Church, Bath Street, Blythswood

1852: Jas Salmon after AW Pugin, Catholic Apostolic Church, McAslin Street 'Colour was everywhere, on the walls in stencilled decoration, and in the coloured glass of the windows' (Worsdall)

1856: Alexander Thomson, Caledonia Road Church ; John Burnet, Elgin Place Congregational Church, Bath Street

1857: JT Rochead, Park Church, Lyndoch Place ; Boucher and Cousland, Renfield Free Church, Bath Street

1858: Barclay brothers, Ewing Place Church, Waterloo St ; Alexander Thomson, St Vincent St Church

1859: JT Rochead, John St Church, Cochrane Street ; Douglas, Briggate Free Church ; Alexander Thomson, Chalmers Free Church, Ballater Street

1861: Douglas, McDonald Mission Church, Maitland Street

1862: John Honeyman, Lansdowne Church ; Stevenson, Kelvinside Parish Church, Great Western Road

1864-5: Anderston Parish Church

1864: John Honeyman, Trinity Congregational Church, Claremont Street

1865: Boucher & Cousland, St George's Free Church, Elderslie Street ; Douglas, Townhead Parish Church ; Leiper, Dowanhill Church of Scotland, Hyndland Street

1866: John Honeyman, Barony Free Church, Castle Street

1868-9: Alexander Thomson, Queen's Park UP Church, 368 Langside Road

1870: John Honeyman, Admiral Street Wesleyan Church

1871: Scott, St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral

1872: Douglas with Sellars, Queen's Park High Church, Queen's Drive ; Douglas and Sellars, Wesleyan Church, Claremont Street ; Douglas and Sellars, Cowcaddens Church, McPhater Street

1873: Sellars, St Enoch's Free Church, 38 Old Dumbarton Road (A quite different treatment to a gushet site to that of Thomson at Caledonia Road. 'the second of Glasgow's two important losses in World War II' Like Queen's Park, it was too badly damaged to restore, and was demolished. The site is now a garage); Clarke & Bell, Johnston Memorial Church, Springburn Road, Springburn

1874: John Burnet, Woodlands Parish Church, Woodlands Gate

1874-5: Robert Baldie, Newhall Parish Church, 254 Main Street

1875: John Honeyman, Candlish Memorial Church of Scotland, Cathcart Road, Govanhill ; Leiper with Sellars, Belmont & Hillhead Parish Church, Saltoun Street ; Watson, Adelaide Place Baptist Church, Bath Street

1877: W.G. Rowan, Pollokshields West Church, Shields Road ; Sellars, Belhaven Church, Dundonald Road, Dowanhill ; Sellars, Gilmorehill Church of Scotland, University Avenue

1878: John Honeyman, Barony North Church, Cathedral Square ; Douglas and Sellars, Blackfriars Church, Wester Craigs, Dennistoun ; Leiper, Camphill Church of Scotland, Balvicar Drive, Queen's Park ; Sellars, Finnieston Parish Church, Derby Street

1880: John Honeyman, Westbourne Church of Scotland, Westbourne Gardens ; W.G. Rowan, St John's Methodist Church, 20 Sauchiehall Street: 'The front had an Ionic portico at upper-floor level with a sculptured frieze running behind it, and below, the entrance was by a massive Doric doorway. A square tower capped by a circular domed temple stood on one side. Internally the church was richly decorated with a great deal of colour. Walls, gallery-front, pulpit and organ case were covered with stencilled Greek patternwork in gold on a green ground. The windows were filled with attractive contemporary patterned stained glass. (Worsdall)

Following the 1843 Disruption, when 451 out of 1,203 Church of Scotland ministers walked out of the General Assembly under the leadership of Dr Thomas Chalmers, most parishes found themselves with at least two churches in which almost identical services were conducted, the parish kirk, which normally exhibited something of architectural quality and the Free kirk which could seldom boast of this but was well built and zealously maintained. This development coincided with a period of urban growth and of rural depopulation which, in the case of the Highlands, had been aggravated by the land clearances. The broken church life and declining population left many country parishes with churches much too big for their needs. In many cases, particularly in the north where the Free Church was overwhelmingly strong, the buildings were reduced internally to suit their shrunken populations by the erection of partitions closing off, say, the north wing of a T-plan kirk or the areas above and below east and west lofts. Moreover, few of these parish kirks received the care and maintenance bestowed by the Free Church upon its buildings.

In 1801 Glasgow's population was 83,769. By 1871 it was 565,150. The City Improvement Trust was busy rebuilding parts of the central area while new suburbs were springing up all around. The provision of facilities for these new areas was keeping everyone busy, not least the religious and educational authorities. The former was chiefly the responsibility of the three main protestant churches, the established Church of Scotland, the Free Church, and the UP Church. The rivalry among these three was intense, and no new suburb was allowed to appear without a building for each of them. (Worsdall)

By 1840 there were 47,318 sittings in the established kirk, 34,852 among other Protestants (mostly United Secession). There were 85 places of worship in Glasgow in 140, 40 belonging to the kirk, 39 to the dissenters, 4 to the Episcopalians and 2 to the Roman Catholics.

The rush to build churches often took place in the rapidly growing suburbs: it was not always dictated by religious need. In 1876, Glasgow Free Church Presbytery didn't think a church was needed in Pollokshields, but wealthy laymen wanted one and were prepared to sell a church in a poor area to help pay for it. Even so, in the early 1870s, in some parts of Glasgow 8 out of 10 people had no church connection; in the East End there was one church for every 5,800 people.

The Free Church employed Thomson for Ballater Street, the United Presbyterians for Caledonia Road, St Vincent Street and Queen's Park; the Frees also employed Thomas Pilkington, who produced Barclay Church in Edinburgh, as well as churches in Kelso, Penicuick and Irvine. It was the Free Church too which commissioned Mackintosh's only church, at Queen's Cross.

The first minister, William Sprott

When William Sprott arrived, having been translated from Pollokshaws, his stipend was £450 and his average attendance was 300. Under Mr Sprott there was a large and steady increase on both counts, until in five years Queen's Park was spoken of as our largest congregation on the south side of Glasgow, with not a seat to let in the 1200-seater church. In February 1875 there was some talk of removing Mr Sprott to Clapham Road in London, following the death of the minister there. Whether in connection with this movement or not, Mr Sprott visited the great Metropolis on the second week of March and returning homewards on Friday the 12th, he met his death at Bedford through a railway collision. At a crossing the driver having failed to read the danger signals two carriages were smashed into fragments and the impact bore Mr Sprott, who was the greatest sufferer, over a wide distance, inflicting injuries which made recovery hopeless. Nothing remained for him but to make some slight adjustment of his worldly affairs and calmly await the event. He died next morning at eight o'clock, in the 49th year of his age and the 25th of his ministry. He was expected to conduct Anniversary Services at Kilmarnock on the following day, but a more momentous engagement intervened.

He was buried in Craigton cemetery; the cortege consisted of thirty-seven carriages, with one hundred following on foot.

Fergus Ferguson, 1876-1905

Fergus Ferguson, inducted on 16th March 1876 after eleven and a half years in Dalkeith, had a reputation as a brilliant student, winning prizes in Logic and Moral Philosophy. He was also an altogether more controversial figure. In a reformed church, Mr Ferguson was a reformer.

In a preface to a volume of sermons by another minister the year before, Ferguson entered into the need to revise the Standards of the Church. In the words of the official 1900 survey of Free Church congregations:

"In discussing this question he touched on twenty-two points as enforcing the claim, but the general argument would not have suffered though the pen had been drawn through the greater part of them."

Perhaps Ferguson's arguments were too finely drawn to follow easily. As The Ministers of Glasgow, a survey of leading Glasgow divines at the turn of the century records:

"It is nevertheless a fact, however, that Dr Ferguson has not always been understood. Some years ago many of his brethren found him too deep in a metaphysical direction to be able to comprehend his meaning on some important points of doctrine. Highly-learned men, even, who had Kant's Metaphysics of Ethics at their finger ends, failed to understand Dr Ferguson's view on the five Arminian points.

"When at Dalkeith, he had made rather an unhappy selection of a subject for a diatribe. The great National Bard of Scotland, whose fame had now come to be unquestioned, and rings throughout the civilised world was just about the last 'hero' that common sense and judiciousness would suggest. Ferguson felt so annoyed at the yearly festivals in honour of Robert Burns, and their frequent concomitants of bacchanalism revelry, that he went straight for the whole system of this sort of idolatry or hero-worship in a speech or sermon-it little matters which."

In March 1877 he complained to the Glasgow Presbytery about the Westminster Confession of Faith; some felt it was like Isaiah's bed: 'The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than he can wrap himself in it'. This 'theological epidemic' on the Westminster Confession's shortcomings hit Aberdeen, Dundee and Gourock. As The Ministers of Glasgow records:

"Men began to ask-Can we harmonise the Eden of eternal punishment with the teleology of Divine love?"

In the Glasgow Presbytery, Ferguson complained: the Confession was wanting in 'logical form' and 'literary style', and presented an inadequate exhibition of the truth concerning God, the Universe, and Man, Christ, the Church and the Bible. This was too much for the Presbytery: he was arraigned before the Church Courts as a teacher of heretical dogmas, libelled, suspended and condemned-but not sentenced. A committee of enquiry met to find out whether he was really as heterodox as Synod had proclaimed him to be, and at the last moment he was set free and pronounced 'not guilty'. Did he recant? 'In connection with the prosecutions I have undergone for revision of the Creed, I never retracted a single word I had uttered. The case was so managed as to suggest that, and some of the leaders of the Church said afterwards that I had withdrawn, as they at least supposed; but in the Scotsman newspaper I challenged the whole statement, and no one ever proved that I had withdrawn a syllable'

Such difficulties seem to have drawn his sting, somewhat; receiving a D.D. from Glasgow University, Ferguson settled down into theological conservatism, attacking the running of tramway cars on Sunday. When the Glasgow Herald made some mild criticism of his stance, 'Dr Ferguson did not tamely submit, but retaliated most powerfully to the point and, in the opinion of most people, had by far the best of it over his newspaper critic'. But the cars still ran.

Changes under Ferguson

The church grew rapidly: by 1871 all the sittings were let. By the seventh year of its existence, Queen's Park ranked sixth for its contributions to the Missions and other Church programmes.

Soon after the opening of the Church, however, the members of the choir found the choir gallery unsuitable: they couldn't see the preacher. As a result, a small platform was raised in front of the baptismal font, and the choir thereafter occupied this position until the introduction of the organ.

In 1871, the managers and the building committee found out that another congregation had been granted a site fronting the park for building their own church, and at a reduced rate to boot, despite having been assured that the terms that Queen's Park had been charged when dealing with the Corporation would be the same as for any other congregation. As a result, new negotiations were entered into. As a result, the Corporation agreed to give the congregation 716 square yards of ground immediately behind the church, and to charge the whole at 5s per square yard instead of 10s, the original price for the church land. As a result, the feu duty payable for the larger area of ground was £8 5s less per annum than was formerly payable for the smaller area. On this ground a large hall and rooms were subsequently erected.

Under Ferguson, the congregation increased still further: folding seats were fitted along the passage in the side galleries, and soon all taken up. During Ferguson's suspension, the feelings of the congregation lay with the minister. In January 1878, the annual business meeting not only unanimously passed a resolution expressing confidence in his teachings, they also added a further £100 to his stipend.

In 1879, with Ferguson's restoration, congregational activity expanded once again: by November 1880 a new suite of halls on the vacant ground at the rear of the church had been built, at a cost of £2,321. An organ was built and installed at a cost of £1,244 at the same time, and the church redecorated at a cost of £470. First used on 9th January 1881, the organ was placed in the choir gallery; twelve years later, it was lowered.

More changes followed: in June 1884, the hours of public worship were changed from morning and afternoon to morning and evening; new congregations in Cathcart and Pollokshields drew members and office-bearers from Queen's Park, but still left an average roll of 950. Some new congregations sprang up out of the desire of local communities to worship together, but Queen's Park mission work in neighbouring areas itself led to new congregations in Strathbungo and Polmadie. Between the Monthly Record, a congregation publication listing collections as well as a précis of Dr Ferguson's sermons, the Literary Institute, the Sabbath School Society, and the Zenana Mission Committee for women, this was a busy time. It took its toll: a long holiday to Palestine in late 1889, in recognition of his semi-Jubilee, was followed by an extended vacation in late 1891, when he was showing signs of exhaustion. In 1892 he was nominated for the Chair of Church History at Glasgow University but, when it seemed certain he would be elected, he asked to withdraw: that autumn, while conducting evening service, he collapsed and had to be assisted from the platform. From then until his retirement, he always had the aid of an assistant.

In 1900, with the union of the Free and UP churches, Queen's Park changed its name to Queen's Park East United Free Church. More changes followed: in October 1901 unfermented wine was used for the first time-it caused some anxiety but was soon accepted; in 1903 electric lighting was introduced, 'a great improvement'.

Ferguson retired in 1905 after 29 years in the congregation, 40 in all; when he went, so did a number of members who resided at a distance from the Church but had stayed for as long as Ferguson was minister. A year later, James Robertson Cameron from Kilcreggan was appointed.

James Robertson Cameron, 1906-09

Cameron was a firebrand: 'The intense earnestness and eloquence of Mr Cameron's preaching, fired with a burning zeal for the Missionary enterprise of the Church, were much appreciated, and at once had their effect on the congregational life. His ministry was marked by much enthusiasm in all branches of the Church's work and led to a large increase in membership'. Highly artistic and a good musician he took great interest in the choir: 'it was quite understood that the entire Sunday musical service occupied a good deal of his thoughts during the preceding week'. However, it proved too much for Cameron's 'highly strung temperament': within three years he had left for Helensburgh, where his ministry continued to flourish. Not before making his own mark, though, introducing individual cups for the Lord's Supper in 1907.

James Golder Burns, 1910-28

The Revd James Golder Burns BD, of Dumbarton, was inducted in January 1910: under him, the church reached bursting point. A military chaplain to the Royal Garrison Artillery since 1901, the Great War drew him to military service in February 1915, promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and acting as Assistant Deputy Principal Chaplain.

Ferguson, meanwhile, had died in 1911, and a memorial tablet was erected in the vestibule to his memory.

From Queen's Park alone, two hundred young men joined up; by 1917, thirty had been killed and others wounded. Burns remained abroad: even his message to his congregation in the book publicising the 50th anniversary of its establishment in 1917, was signed 'In the Field, France'.

In the 1917 Jubilee celebrations, one speaker asked whether the Queen's Park congregation was one of the daughters of the old Parish of Govan; he decided that Queen's Park was a step-daughter than a daughter, but still applied a verse from Proverbs to the congregation 'Many daughters have done virtuously, but this one excelleth them all'.

In the mid-twenties, the interior was redecorated and organ reconstructed, the work supervised by Alexander's architect son John.

Though some may have left with Mr Ferguson's retirement, in 1917 there were individual members of the congregation listed as coming from as far afield as the city centre, Hillhead and Bishopbriggs.

Edward Thomson Vernon, 1929-38

In 1929, the established and United Free churches merge to form the Church of Scotland. That year, Queen's Park became Queen's Park St George's.

James Chalmers Grant, 1939-45

The Rev. Grant was the last minister before the church was destroyed in the Second World War.

Bombing as a weapon of war

Long before the outbreak of hostilities, the Luftwaffe had been preparing to wage war from the air on Britain. A major aerial reconnaissance of the country had been carried out with especial views to disabling industrial and economic targets. Individual targets in the Clydeside area were photographed and marked. In Glasgow, those targets all lay west of Lancefield Street, slightly west of where the Kingston Bridge crosses the river today.

For pilots of the Luftwaffe, rivers, railway lines, major arterial roads and church towers provided recognition points by which courses could be checked and targets found.

Before the war, it had always been assumed that the impact of bombing would be immediate and universally devastating, but the impact of the bomber was not as great as feared: the London Blitz, which started in the late summer of 1940, became in essence a feature of a war of attrition following the postponement of Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain. In November 1940, the Luftwaffe turned to other British cities, and Coventry, Liverpool, Southampton and Birmingham were all attacked that month.

Raids in Glasgow were sporadic and relatively minor: the first daylight raid took place on 19th July 1940, causing damage in Scotstoun. The first night raid was on 18th September: a bomb landed in George Square right next to an air raid shelter (which survived the blast). The cruiser HMS Sussex in Yorkhill Basin was less lucky, hit by a 500lb bomb. The bomb went through the upper deck, the main deck, the lower deck and then exploded on the platform deck deep within the ship. Jean Brown, then 17 years old and living in the last close of Kelvinhaugh Street, opposite Queen's Dock:

'The crew were thrown into the Clyde by the bomb and they were brought from the basin up to our street for clothes, as most of them were naked. We were told to turn off the water and gas and go to Kelvingrove Park'.

The reason for the evacuation was simple: the Sussex was ready to sail as an escort on the Murmansk run, and her magazines were full. Broken-backed, she lay in the river for days, visible to thousands of travellers on trains running in and out of Central Station. It was a sign of the censorship in operation at the time that no news of the destruction reached German ears.

Such destruction grew more frequent, more damaging, culminating in the great Spring raids of 1941. On the nights of 13/14 and 14/15 March, 1,083 people were killed and 1,602 seriously injured in Glasgow and Clydebank. In Clydebank, 8 out of 12,000 houses were left undamaged. On 7/8 April 64 people died and 71 injured, and in the last great raids, at the end of the first week of May, 341 died with 312 injured. The Germans then turned their attention to Greenock and Gourock.

The losses of life in the city raids, especially of children, were exacerbated by the return of many evacuees from the countryside, to where they had been sent at the beginning of the 'phoney war'.

One evacuee was Patrick Donnelly:

"At the beginning o' the war, the whole family were evacuated to Tighnabruach, and we stayed there for a few month. We couldn't stick the country life kinda thing, we stayed in the Marquis o' Bute's house; it was like a big haunted house and we couldn't really stand it. I think most people actually came home. You've got your home and it doesn't really matter how bad things are, you'll just go back to it and just accept it."

During the first year of the phoney war, the returnee's decision was vindicated, and people got used to sirens sounding for false alarms, or nothing more than the odd German reconnaissance plane. Shortly before the March raids, however, many noticed increased activity above Clydebank.

Mr Bain:

"There was an apprentices' strike on in the Clyde shipyards and the weather couldn't have been better. It was like a summer's day in March and we played a lot of football in the afternoon. Well, I was in the Royal Artillery at the time, on ack-ack, so we were trained for spottin' planes. On the Tuesday afternoon I think it was, there was a plane flying pretty high and I said, well, it looked like a JU 88-it definitely to me was a reconnaissance plane going over- but never thought any more about it. But I've thought plenty of it since, because of what happened on the Thursday night."

That night, Thomas Howarth and his wife were dining with the William Davidsons, who lived in the former home of Charles and Margaret Mackintosh at 78 Southpark Avenue:

"We left early and, as we paused at the gate to enjoy the pitch-black starlit night, we heard the sinister, unmistakeable throb of a German pathfinder aircraft overhead.

"We made our way in the blackout to the Garnethill tram terminal and rode home to Shawlands. By the time we arrived the sky over Clydebank was glowing red, punctuated by streams of tracer shells and accompanied by the thud, thud, thud of explosions.

"We moved our mattresses from the bedroom to the central hallway of our four-storey tenement apartment-there were no air raid shelters available and we lived on the top floor. This arrangement provided but flimsy protection from flying glass and all we had above us was the traditional wooden, slated roof. But for the lack of better protection we slept there during air raids.

Mrs Bain:

"When the raid started my sister and I were over in Blanefield. We were with two boyfriends and one o' them drove a car. It was the sky, the sky was all lit wi' red, just a red glow in the sky, and comin' over Windy Hill you could see the whole o' the Clyde Valley. Clydebank seemed to be all on fire."

If Clydebank has become synonymous with air raid damage, it's not, however, an accurate reflection. A 'secret' report by the Office of the Regional Commissioner, now held in the Scottish Office archives, reports 'The grievous nature of the damage at Clydebank... has tended to veil the magnitude of the attack on Glasgow.'

The city's archives contain a bomb damage map drawn up in October 1941 drawn up by the Glasgow Master of Works and City Engineer: it reveals damage to have been well scattered throughout the city from Tradeston, Garscadden and Yoker (severe damage) to Dalmarnock, Hutchesontown, Partick, Hyndland and Kelvinside. The gap sites remaining today, the lesser quality infill buildings which, for many of us, tend to be thought of as a result of 1970s demolition of tenements before renovation became the order of the day, were often created not by the Glasgow Corporation but the German Luftwaffe.

During two nights in March Glasgow lost 647 dead and 1,680 injured, with 6,835 houses damaged severely, and 20,000 others with minor damage. Yarrow's and Blythswood's shipyards at Scotstoun were badly damaged, but, in contrast to Clydebank, damage was widespread throughout the city. In Maryhill three tenements were destroyed and 100 people injured. At Yarrow's 80 people died after their shelter sustained a direct hit.

Gourock and Greenock were hit hard, with fireman bussed in from as far as Edinburgh to help, as Jack Grant, one of the firemen remembers:

"There were no firemen about-they were all dead beat-and the mains water was off. A pump relay had been arranged from the docks and they were filling huge tanks with water in the streets. There were hundreds of hosepipes in the streets-you could hardly walk between them-and they were unattended with the nozzles jammed between stones and the water directed on the fires. In went with a warden, who said 'This is Cathcart Street and Cathcart Square. Do the best you can.' Then he went off. In the whole area there was only Frankie Sweeney and me. It was like a world of our own."

Many stories arise from the air raids. Father Sheary, a Clydebank parish priest, reports one:

'Mrs Semple had a large family and they were all young. On that night, she had one in either arm and one on either side of her and she was standing in a close. I think it was an aerial torpedo that struck against Jericho Street, but the blast that came from that took a child out of her right arm and took the child at her left side, leaving her with the child in her left arm and a child at her right side. They to escaped, she escaped, but she never saw as much as a rip of hair belonging to the other two children.

Tenement homes became death traps, with whole families wiped out in one explosion. Shelters saved many, but only providence could save those near the place of impact of a landmine or bomb.

"A couple came to me, they had got out but their wee boy hadn't. So I said, 'Well, you go back and I'll get the lads to have a look. He had been playing with marbles, and that's all that identified him..."

In the shelters, it was possible to remain unaware of the horror outside:

"That first night in the shelter at Rolls-Royce, it was quite remarkable, because we found out there was quite a number of talented people, girls, who were singing opera stuff, of that quality-it was unbelievable. And of course whenever a bomb went of there was hysterics, you know, the girls screaming and the men saying 'Everything's alright', and then probably encourage the girls to sing again. We had no sort of inclination what was happening upstairs."

In 1939, Rolls-Royce had taken a greenfield site in Hillington and turned it into a 150-acre factory employing 27,000 people. It was never hit.

The Greenock and Glasgow raids were the last serious raids on the Clyde area. The raids were expensive in terms of fuel, and there were easier, more accessible targets. A month later, Hitler launched the Russian offensive.

Raids continued, however, but more sporadically: the last raid on Glasgow came on the night of 24/25th March 1943. It would claim six lives, and a church.

That night, Thomas Howarth and his wife, still sleeping in the hallway of their top-floor tenement flat, were awakened by the familiar call of the sirens. They seemed extraordinarily close:

"The frantic roar of engines at full throttle was unforgettable, and as they passed there was an extraordinary clatter as thought all our slates had lifted in the suction created by their extremely low passage, and then fell back with a xylophonic cacophony. In retrospect, it may have been the noise of falling shrapnel-but I don't think so."

A half-mile further on, the Germans jettisoned their incendiaries.

The Glasgow Herald reported in its City Edition on Thursday 25th March:

"Church Burned Out

"A church recognised as one of the finest architecturally in a town in Central Scotland was completely destroyed by incendiary bombs dropped by one of the few enemy planes which flew over the town in the early hours of yesterday morning.

"It was the only building seriously damaged and there were no casualties. Many incendiaries fell in the vicinity of the church, most of them in the streets, and they were extinguished by fire parties, leaving the National Fire Service free to concentrate on extinguishing the outbreak in the church.

"One fell through the roof of a near-by school. The damage done was negligible, but the children were not allowed to enter the classrooms...

"The only other damage to property was to three houses whose windows are on a gable separated from the church by a lane about 12 feet wide. Damage, however, was slight, and rooms in all three houses are still habitable. The water escaping from a water pipe, which melted as a result of the intense heat from the blazing church probably saved the outbreak from spreading to the other houses in the tenement.

"Six died during the raid... P.C. Charles Collie, on his beat ; Ms Marion Norris Black, 44 Airlie Gardens ; Mrs Elizabeth Shield ; Margaret Gilchrist Steel ; James Stewart Galloway ; and Elizabeth McGeachie.

"25 planes took part in the raid. Initially though 6 were lost. Known losses up to eight next day."

Worsdall reports that the resulting inferno lit up the whole south side of the city.

As the belfry had collapsed and the walls were too badly damaged to restore, demolition was inevitable.

Gomme & Walker considered that the loss of the church was "the only serious wartime casualty that Glasgow suffered, and one of the unhappiest architectural losses in Britain".

Roy Reid worked in a bakery at 66 Albert Road. He came along Langside Road to the bakery every day. Ten incendiaries fell on it. The foreman, Mr Caruth, was around 65 years old; he used to lock the doors when the 10-12 night shift men started work to stop draughts spoiling the yeast, but he had to open up that night.

Reid came out and saw the church in full blaze. At his local church, Caruth used a long pole to dislodge incendiaries from the roof.

When it was over, Reid couldn't get by Queen's Park Church as the road was sealed off by police.

Glasgow Evening Times, 26th March:

"The Air Ministry and Ministry of Home Security issued the following statement last night. There was some enemy activity over the Lowlands of Scotland and the north of England. Bombs which were dropped at a number of places caused some damage and injured a small number of people."

"Six Night Raiders destroyed

"Damage in the North

"Of about 25 enemy raiders which made raids over the Lowlands and the North of England on Wednesday night, six are known to have been destroyed. One of the raiders, a Dornier 217 twin-engined bomber, was shot down into the sea off a north-east coast town by a Beaufighter pilot.

"The raiders were met by a heavy barrage from the ground defences, some of which were manned by Home Guards.

"It was the first air raid on central and west Scotland for a long time. Little material damage was done and not a single person was injured, although the deaths of six elderly persons during or after the raid were attributed to shock. In one town a shower of incendiaries fell on a beautiful old church, which was completely gutted, but tenements near by escaped serious damage. Firefighting parties, often composed mainly of women, did excellent service in dealing promptly with incendiaries and preventing outbreaks of fire.

The Daily Record of 26th March had a photograph captioned 'Spent and unexploded bombs picked up by farm-workers'.

An editorial in the Daily Record the following day congratulated the Anti-Aircraft teams:

"Scotland's AA Defenders deserve a pat on the back. It is now confirmed that eight of the 25 German planes which raided parts of Scotland and North-East England on Thursday morning were destroyed."

This was the first time that Home Guard A-A units had been in action in Central and South West Scotland.

"While this evidence of alert and skilful defence is very gratifying, there are some aspects of public reaction to air raids which are not so satisfactory. According to Mr W Quin, Deputy Regional Controller, this week's raid found domestic garden shelters, so long unused for their legitimate purpose, cluttered up with furniture, garden implements, etc. Another official reveals that Anderson shelters have even been turned into hen-houses.

"Casualties were caused by people disobeying the order to take cover and being injured by the shrapnel from their own guns."

In the same issue, the Daily Record reported that Alex Young of Moorfoot Street, Glasgow, fined £15 for repeated failure to firewatch. Young said he was a conscientious objector to any form of compulsion.

The Glasgow Herald, Saturday, 27th March:

The Glasgow Herald, Monday, 29th March:

"Bombed Church

"Alternative Accommodation for Congregation

"While hundreds of sightseers yesterday afternoon thronged round the church in the Central Scottish town which was destroyed by an air raid early last Thursday morning, the congregation gathered in a near-by church to plan their immediate future. Roy Reid couldn't get near for the crowds.

"It was decided unanimously to worship in present in the disused Titwood church, which has been rendered vacant as the result of a union.

"Appealing for the congregation to continue its support though it has lost its church, the session clerk said, 'I am quite certain that the spirit which has kept our church going for 75 years was not burned out on Thursday morning'."

Fire-Watching

The Glasgow Herald, Tuesday, 30th March:

"Fire-Watching of Churches

"Sir: I have recently been informed that the fire-watching of churches is not compulsory according to the Defence Regulations. If this is not so, it is surely a grave oversight on the part of the Government. There have been recently quite a number of churches destroyed which would have been saved by prompt action, but, owing to lack of fire-watchers, were allowed to blaze away, making a splendid target for the heavy bombers which follow up the first wave of planes. Thus private houses and other buildings in the vicinity of a church are having an extra risk imposed on them by the neglect and carelessness of our spiritual brethren. I am, etc,"

In the same issue:

"Adjacent to a Church

"An Editorial Diary

"In reply to an enquiry, a Civil Defence Department official said that as churches do not come under the Business Premises Order, there was no compulsion upon congregations to provide fire-watchers. The local authority, however, has power to place State fireguards in empty buildings, churches and similar places.

"This preoccupation with the question of fire-watching was no doubt prompted by the recent destruction of a church in a Central Scottish town during an air raid, but that fire was not due to the absence of watchers. A local team had made its headquarters in the church, but when the incendiaries fell, the height of the roof prevented the watchers from dealing with them effectively."

From the Letters page:

"The Tone of Sirens

"Norman Bruce, 1 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh

"Sir-I read with dismay but not with surprise that during Wednesday night's raid by the Luftwaffe on a town in Central Scotland 'a number of people collapsed and died in the raid'. There may have been contributing circumstances, but having endured the sirens of this particular town on former occasions, I would hazard a guess that in a proportion of cases at least the cause was the diabolical sound emitted by these instruments.

"Surely it is possible to give a warning without adding to the unpleasant experience a sound which is in itself a very definite nervous strain. It gives quite the wrong start-off to the time spent in a shelter..."

From the Letters page of the Glasgow Herald, 31st March:

"Two years ago a friend who had been through many of the London raids without being unduly upset came to stay in a Central Scottish district. The first night she heard the sirens she emerged from her room white and shaken, saying 'Oh, I've never heard anything like that: the invaders must be here'. It took some time to calm her."

From the Glasgow Herald Diary, 1st April:

"A correspondent, writing about the tone of certain air raid sirens, asked if nothing could be done to make that sound less like the eerie wailing of a banshee.

"The comparison is one that everybody understands, but it raises one point-has anyone ever really heard a banshee's wail?"

From 'J.C.' to the Glasgow Herald Letters page, 2nd April:

"May I express my dissent... most people agree with the description 'banshee wail', but in my opinion it is not strong enough. However, its duration could be cut from two minutes to one minute. It is surely better to be roused by the 'banshee wail' than by falling bombs or the noise of gunfire."

Church re-building

The period following the Second World War was a difficult one for churches and their congregations, with severe imposition upon buildings and astronomical rises in building costs, which led to greater retrenchment in church extension. Even in the inter-war period, the standard Church of Scotland calculation was that a church seating around 500, a hall for around 300, and all the ancillaries thereof should be provided for a sum of £10,000.

After 1945, the Ministry of Works allowed certain sums to be divided out between the churches of all denominations; the Church of Scotland could recommend, with the Ministry's permission, licences to build up to the sums agreed upon. The average given for this purpose per person per year in certain districts amounted to the price of a packet of cigarettes, yet, with the movement of populations yet again, churches were faced with the same problem they had faced a century before: populations springing up in areas where no previous church buildings existed. As a result, churches with attached halls could no longer be considered, and the maximum allowed was a hall-church, a dual purpose building, in some ways a return to earlier days when the church was the only public building in the community and liable to be used for purposes other than the strictly religious. And if that sounds unlikely, it's important to remember that, as late as 1863, the General Assembly had to protest against churches being used for political meetings and social entertainments.

Small wonder, therefore, that when it came time to consider replacing Queen's Park, the government offered to replace a unique work of art with a plain brick hall-church. The congregation not surprisingly declined.

The church terminated on 3rd March 1946 on uniting with Camphill as Camphill Queen's Park, worshipping in William Leiper's 1878 building in Balvicar Drive.

Remnants?

The exotic cast-iron lamps are the same design as those used on Thomson's grand stairway at Kelvinside Terrace West and Queen Margaret Road. The cast iron railings appear in Macfarlane's Catalogue. A small, slightly classical sub-station at the rear of the site may also be connected to the building, though dating later than the original architecture.

Post-war

The obvious consequences of the union of 1929 between the Established Church and the United Free Church (the latter an amalgam of most of the Disruption and Secession elements) were the redeployment of manpower and of Church energies, and there was initiated a nationwide process of local unions, mainly between former Established and United Free congregations. The main effect of the 1929 reunion with regard to church building was than when one of the two ministers in a parish retired or died, the congregations united under the remaining minister, and normally chose one of the two churches to be the sole parish kirk.

This was an admirable enough solution to the unpleasant division which formerly existed in every community in all respects, except that of the retention of our old churches. In many cases, old parish kirks were abandoned in favour of 19th century Free Church buildings. The reasons are several and plausible: the old kirk might be too far from the village, might require renovation and, since there were no longer heritors to pester to do this the cost would fall on the congregation. Further, the ex-Free Kirk was often the more comfortable of the two buildings, with a more recent installation of electric light, central heating, or even more comfortable pews.

Sometimes, choosing the church became the subject of local politics and prejudices, and frequently some mundane amenity, like an organ, or an efficient heating system, would take precedence over tradition or aesthetics, in which case the parish kirk would almost certainly be abandoned.

In the 1930s, not long after the reunion of the United Free Church with the Church of Scotland, the new body found itself suddenly owning three times the number of buildings it had before.

Would the church have survived? The modern Renfield St Stephens' parish in Bath Street now comprises 13 former parishes: Blythswood, Buccleuch, Cowcaddens Grant Street, Lyon Street, Milton, Port Dundas, Renfield Street, St George's Road, St Matthew's, St Stephen's, St Stephen's West, and Shamrock Street.

Pollokshields Free Church is part of one Pollokshields congregation comprising the former East, Glencairn, Kenmure, St Kentigern's, Titwood and West churches.

Between 1840 and 1880 in Glasgow Presbytery alone, 222 new parishes were constructed and church buildings. By 1984, less 7 congregations which now comprised East Kilbride, there were 41 parishes in Glasgow city, and 35 parishes in the surrounding presbytery. There were 79 parishes already established before 1840, and more were to follow after 1880.

Could Queen's Park Church have survived? Would it not today be yet another focus for renovation and repair as with St Vincent Street? Or would it have by now become just another empty shell, as with Caledonia Road? Or home to yet another amalgamated congregation?

Today, Glasgow contains some 1,729 listed buildings in 60 square miles.

That question, of what to do with redundant churches in Glasgow, has been asked before:

"The heart of the city, during the last quarter of a century, has been greatly changed. The population has in some considerable measure been removed, houses having given place to shops and warehouses. If this is true, then the church accommodation formerly provided must be greatly in excess of what is required.

"Looked at from a business point of view, this is a defect which ought to be remedied. I believe the time is now, or is nearly, ripe for some of our city churches being dispensed with, and the question may be asked, How best can the citizens discharge their duty in the matter? The sale of the fabrics and sites and the appropriation of the money so acquired to the erection of other churches on the outskirts of the city hardly commends itself. A more perfect solution would be found in the merging of the several churches into one new church, on a site, it may be one of the present sites, or a new one, but still in the heart of the city, or near some busy thoroughfare.'

MacGregor Chalmers, Presidential Address to the Architectural Section of the Philosophical Society in Glasgow, 1896.

At the 1917 Jubilee, James Culbert, representing the congregation, said:

"We have heard so much regarding the beauty of the Church that it is difficult for one to say more in relation to it. Yet, I may be permitted to say, that, apart from its stately beauty as an edifice, it ought above all things to be a centre of usefulness and spiritual power..."

Is this the key to the attraction of Thomson's buildings, that they are centres of 'usefulness and spiritual power'? The power to move, enthuse and inspire? Is that not Thomson's secret, where architecture becomes art, and why, fifty years on, we are celebrating a church which few of us have known, but which we celebrate for what it has been?

A requiem is for laying to rest. Queen's Park Church has been. It is no more. Its spiritual power lives on.

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