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25/09/2007
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14/05/2017
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The Church


In the first decade of the twenty-first century Scotland is, in large measure, a secular nation where the observance of religion is a choice.  In earlier times however this was by no means always so, particularly in small rural communities such as Abernyte.  The seriousness with which church membership and attendance was taken, and the pressure that could be brought to bear on those who were not church-goers are demonstrated quite bluntly in the advice of a Perth solicitor dating from the 1880s.  It is in response to an enquiry by Mr William Ritchie, tenant of Littleton farm and an elder of the Abernyte Free Church:


 … my advice to you is to read this letter to your servant before two witnesses and warn him solemnly that if he does absent himself in future from Church or family worship without having a good and sufficient reason for doing so, he shall be discharged.  You will not make this a vain threat but carry out the warning into execution or the disobedience [will be] renewed, and if this question shall be brought before a court of law, it will afford me much pleasure to take charge of your case.

 

Presbyterianism was a cornerstone of rural society and its presence pervaded almost all aspects of life.  It demanded discipline, devotion and attendance.  The financial maintenance of the established church and its minister was the legal obligation of the local landowners, whether or not they themselves were members or supporters of it; the costs were substantial and placed demands on the local economy that were felt by all.  Historically, the Church played an important role in the provision of education and schooling.  Its kirk session not only had responsibilities for the welfare of the poor among its members, it also searched out, examined and sat in judgement over any activity that might threaten the sanctity of the Sabbath - and adultery and fornication on any day of the week. 


The observance of a shared religion can be one of the most important cords in the binding together of a community.  On the other hand, few things can divide as sharply and as destructively as religious differences.  The history of the established church in Scotland is a turbulent one, and Abernyte was no stranger to the schisms and secessions that across the centuries have beset it.  At the beginning of the twentieth century this small parish supported two thriving but distinct congregations, one belonging to the established Presbyterian Church and one to the Free Church.  The story of the church in Abernyte is a complex one and the unravelling of its strands exposes some of the key influences at work within the community and which, ultimately, enabled the two congregations to work together in a positive manner.  When they joined following the national agreement of 1929, it was done in a spirit that put the well-being of the community as a whole first and avoided the creation of deep and damaging divisions. 

 

The parish kirk of Abernyte stands on rising ground half a mile to the east of the village.  A church has stood on the same site since mediaeval times.  Research notes made by the Reverend George Gordon Campbell, minister of Abernyte from 1974 to 1978, record that the parish was erected by King David in the twelfth century and formed part of the pre-Reformation Diocese of Dunkeld. Campbell describes this early church as ‘a long low building like a barn’.  Transepts were added in 1672 at the time of the Episcopalian ministry of Andrew Shippert.  By 1736, however, the walls were ‘hoary with age’ and the heritors had them taken down and rebuilt.  At the same time as this was done, lofts were constructed in the transepts where the heritors, their families and principal attendants could sit - as was customary in that period - above, away from and unseen by the common people.  In 1775 the church was re-roofed with new beams and slated.  Further major work was undertaken in 1870 when the galleries, together with the stone staircases leading to them, were removed; the roof ‘on the old part of the church’ (i.e. the chancel) was renewed, the porch added and the whole re-seated. The result is a cruciform church that has been described as ‘one of the most beautiful of the rural churches of Scotland’ with rafters that ‘are an architect’s delight’.  It is also remarkable in that, unlike most places of Christian worship, it does not face east but looks south, across the Carse to the estuary of the Tay. 

 

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries issues such as Patronage (who had control of appointments to office), the oaths to which members subscribed, Covenants and the Confession of Faith divided the Presbyterian church in Scotland, and there were various break-away groups.  Among these was The Society for Propagating the Gospel at Home founded by the brothers Robert and James Haldane.  The Haldanes, originally from Stirling, were nephews of one of Dundee’s most celebrated sons, Admiral Adam Duncan of Camperdown.  They were committed evangelicals, and to fund their mission Robert sold the family’s ancestral estate of Airthrey Castle.  They toured the country preaching, and are regarded as the founders of the Congregationalist and Baptist denominations in Scotland.  Towards the end of the eighteenth century Robert purchased the estates of Lochton, Pitkindie and Ballairdie in Abernyte. At the north-west end of the village of Balfour he built a chapel for Seceders that came to be known as Haldane’s Tabernacle and which, in 1820, was purchased by a congregation drawn from Abernyte, Inchture and Longforgan affiliated to the Burgher Presbytery of Perth.


The teachings of the Haldanes were an inspiration for many.  One local man who was likely to have heard them preach was William Ross (1802-1863), the son of the grieve at Pitkindie, owned at that time by Robert Haldane.  Ross began his working life as a ploughboy on the farm before leaving to find better paid employment that he might eventually gain entrance to university, study for ordination and train as a missionary.  He achieved his ambition and, in 1841, was appointed an agent of the London Missionary Society in Central South Africa.  His appointment coincided with that of David Livingstone and they travelled out to Africa on the same ship.  Before his departure Ross was invited to preach in Abernyte church, and it is said a great assembly gathered to hear the former Pitkindie ploughboy.

 

On a national level discontent within the established church reached its peak in 1843.  In that year the Reverend Thomas Chalmers, followed by two-fifths of the ministers of the Church of Scotland, walked out of the General Assembly to set up the Free Church of Scotland ‘where the law of Christ would be unimpeded by the claim of the State’. This was the Disruption, and the new church drew members not only from the established church, but also from many of the existing dissenting congregations.  The Burgher congregation centred on Abernyte was among those minority groups that suffered.  Their numbers fell below the level able to sustain the station, and in 1847 Haldane’s Tabernacle was sold to the local congregation of the Free Church who, in the intervening period, had used the granary at Southfield Farm as their place of worship.  It was some time before a suitable location for their own building could be found.  Independence was implicit in the tenets of the Free Church and the land on which their church was built had to be off estate ground and their own.  A site was eventually found at the Milton, provided by the Trotter family of Ballindean. This was built in 1854 at a cost recorded in the minutes of the Deacon’s court as £324 10s 1½d using, it is said, stone from the demolished Tabernacle.  A manse with stable was added the following year at an additional cost of £344 10s 3d. The church stands less than half a mile from the parish kirk on the western side of the Milton Den, south of the village on the road to Baledgarno.  Through time the parish church came to be known as the North Church and the Free Church as the South Church.  Although sold and de-consecrated in 1951, the Free Church building still stands.  It remains a physical representation not only of the long history of dissent that prospered in the parish but also symbolises the fundamental importance of the observance of their faith to the people of Abernyte and the hold that the Church – established or free – retained. 


Central to the Free Church and its breakaway were issues of patronage, but in rural areas it has also been seen as the church of the aggrieved and disinherited, founded on an hostility to the landed classes. Those who supported the dissenting churches were drawn traditionally from the ranks of artisans and tenants.  The Rev. Allan Menzies, minister of Abernyte from 1873 until taking up the Chair of Biblical Criticism at St Andrew’s University in 1890, wrote that the feelings aroused by the Disruption were still present when he took up his post in the parish.  His stay at Abernyte would seem to have been far from easy and quite possibly not a happy one.  Some years later he wrote of the difficulties and challenges faced at that time by ministers of the established church.  His comments also hint at how the tests they faced forced them to change the nature of, and improve, their ministry:


 … the division of society remained, and the multiplication of small churches, with all the difficulties and jealousies it necessarily brings in its train.  …  It was a time of political unrest, the Disestablishment agitation was being vigorously pressed forward, and the ministers of the Church of Scotland found themselves compelled to defend the Kirk in other ways than that of faithful attendance to their pastoral duty.  They were attacked in the Press and on the local platform; attempts were made to rouse the class feelings of the ploughmen against them; Church defence became their duty, and this exposed them to new insinuations, so that it was not always easy for them to live in charity with all men.  … yet the trial may have been good for them, and to do their duty to their flocks and to the public in such a manner that no charge of negligence should be made against them.

 

The construction in the eighteenth century of the heritors’ lofts in the parish church symbolised the way in which the upper echelons of society effected to distance themselves from the lower orders.  Even though in the nineteenth century class divisions hardened in many respects rather than relaxed, the taking down of the galleries in 1870 also indicates that by that time a quite different and more modern way of thinking existed among the heritors, both in regard to the nature of their relationship with the established church and within the community.  In Abernyte a significant element in this (and one which might have coloured the association between themselves and the Reverend Menzies) may well have been that at least four of the most influential of the parish’s landowners were not adherents of the established Church. The Trotters and the Bannermans, were staunch supporters of the Free Church.  As already noted, the Trotters, owners of the estate of Ballindean, provided the land on which their new church was built, while the Bannermans of Abernyte House, father and son, were both ordained ministers of the Free Church.  The Reverend James Bannerman (1807-1868), was one of the leading figures in the Disruption and had accompanied Chalmers in his historic walk-out from the General Assembly.  His son, Dr David Bannerman (1842-1903), was for many years the Free Church minister of the parish of St Leonards in Perth.  The Kinnairds of Rossie Priory, the most prominent family in the district, were not Presbyterian at all, but Episcopalian.  The Episcopalian Church of All Souls in Invergowrie was built in the 1890s, largely with a legacy of £10,000 left for that purpose by the ninth Baron Kinnaird.  His widow, Frances, Dowager Lady Kinnaird, also opened a chapel in The Knapp.  James Brown, meanwhile, the purchaser of Lochton estate from the evangelical Robert Haldane, was a Roman Catholic.  With a fortune made in Dundee’s fast expanding textile industry, Brown built Lochton Castle in 1850, and in its tower had a chapel constructed for private worship.  His friend, Penrose Forbes, the Episcopalian Bishop of Brechin, one of the leading churchmen of his day, is understood to have preached there. The ecumenical disposition of the Abernyte heritors is epitomised by their unanimous agreement in 1854 to the request of Mr Brown for the enclosing of a portion of the churchyard of the parish kirk as a burial place for his family.


 Regardless of their personal beliefs and adherence, it remained the legal obligation of the heritors to maintain the established church within the parish.  The extent of their commitment to their own churches, however, may in part explain a sometimes apparent lack of enthusiasm for the task, as well as relationships with appointed ministers that were not without their difficulties.  In 1883, for instance, the manse was in a very poor state and there was a serious dispute with the Reverend Menzies over the extent of the repairs required.  The heritors, ‘while agreeable to any necessary and reasonable repairs’, were opposed to the ‘unreasonable’ demands of Mr Menzies and the Presbytery Committee who claimed that the manse was ‘ruinous and insanitary and should be taken down and rebuilt’, this at an estimated cost of £950.  No agreement could be reached and the minister, supported by the Presbytery, took the heritors of Abernyte to court.  The case was heard in Perth where the Sheriff Court found in favour of the heritors.  In spite or possibly because of his less than happy experiences at Abernyte, the Rev. Professor Menzies marked his appointment in 1889 to a Chair at St Andrews - and release from the parish - by collecting “a sum of money in order that Abernyte might be taken off the ‘smaller livings’, i.e. to ensure that the Minister should have an income of £200 per annum which had never been the case in all his 17 years there”.


 It might be thought that in the light of the seriousness with which church-going was regarded at this time - and as suggested by the Reverend Menzies - competition between the various places of worship for such a relatively small population would have been intense and given rise to frictions within the community.  This, at least by the twentieth century, does not appear to have been the case.  Relations between the churches and their members are testified to have been by this time, on the whole, extremely easy.  Miss Seath, who moved to Abernyte in the 1920s when her father took up the post of Dominie, remembers


"When we first went to Abernyte there were two churches with two congregations.  Mr Chalmers was Parish Minister and Mr Smith the Free Church minister.  They had a very easy-oasy arrangement because everybody just visited everybody else.  The Smiths did all their visiting by pony and trap [and] occasionally I would have a ride.  But we actually went to the other church where Dad was an Elder with lots of parish duties.  We all got on well together.  When the two churches had to unite in 1929, then the tensions started."

 

In all the testimonies recorded, this last comment by Miss Seath is the only reference to the presence of any strains from this cause within the community.  The good relations probably had much to do with the example set by the two ministers in office at the turn of the century.  George Innes Smith, MA (1857-1941), was appointed minister of Abernyte Free Church in 1886 at the age of 29 and served the community for almost half a century, until his demitting and retiral in 1933.  During much of this time the incumbent of the established church and the successor to Reverend Menzies, was William Liston Milroy, MA (1863-1925), who came to Abernyte in 1890 and served until his death in office at the age of 52.  The Reverend Milroy was a popular and active figure in the community, often to be seen cycling around the parish visiting his congregation.[18] In 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War he founded the Men’s Club in Abernyte.  (See Chapter XX.)  This venture may have stemmed in part from Mr Milroy’s war-time experience when, in 1917, he served as a volunteer in France with the Young Men’s Christian Association.  During his absence from Abernyte, Reverend Innes Smith of the United Free Church conducted services, alternating between the North and South churches.


The two ministers were not the only ones to play a prominent part in the shaping of the religious ethos that prevailed in Abernyte.  An actor who took a leading role was the formidable and very devout Lady Frances Victoria Clifton (b.1880-1960), wife of Kenneth, 12th Baron Kinnaird.  She led by example and very much from the front.  At Rossie Priory she saw that each day began with a service of prayer attended by the entire household.  Her daughter-in-law, Lady Diana Kinnaird, wife of the 13th Baron recalled:

 

If you weren’t there it was not at all approved of.  The gong rang at 9 o’clock.  There was no panting in at five past nine!

 

Mr Perkins, the family’s butler also remembered the routine well – along with some of the distractions:


 The bell went to call all the staff together, they all came running, changing their aprons, putting a clean one on and all sorts; I don’ t think anyone was pleased about it but still there you are.  [It] lasted about ten minutes or so.  Then there was a dog there and he was always running in and out. And there was the boy, we called him a boy, about 14, he couldn’t keep serious – this dog.  They knew that the boy was laughing and they’d come to me of course and say ‘can’t you do something to stop that boy?’ and I said, ‘Do you think it would be more convenient if he didn’t come in at all?’, but, ‘Good heavens, no!’, because he had to go in to prayers.  So he just came in and laughed along.  I had a job to keep serious but I saw everybody kneeling down there and anyway, that was the rules and regulations.

 

On Sunday mornings the family attended one of the four principal churches connected to the estate.  Inchture, Longforgan and the two churches of Abernyte were each visited in turn.  In times of petrol shortage during the Second World War they walked.]  The route taken to Abernyte South church was via the well-trodden path through the Baledgarno Den, used by parishioners and maintained for that purpose, although the social rank of the Kinnairds was marked by their entry to the church through a door separate to that of the rest of the congregation.

 

Traditional rights of way were fiercely guarded and none more so than the roads used by congregations to reach their places of worship.  These were sacrosanct and not to be interfered with even by the owners of the land across which they ran.  In 1905, when the road over the hill from Ballindean to United Free Church was closed across land belonging to Abernyte estate, on coming to the attention of Abernyte Parish Council it was re-opened immediately.  Nevertheless, a letter was sent by the Chairman reminding the estate that the route was ‘a kirk road for vehicles’.

 

Inchture parish council, however, met stern resistance when a stretch of the same road lying in Inchture parish was closed in 1918 by Mr W. F. Stead who, through his marriage to a daughter of the Trotter family, controlled the Ballindean estate and was its representative at heritors’ meetings. It was reported that there had been encroachments to the church road from Ballindean via Hilltown and Tinkletop to Abernyte United Free Church, and also that the track over the hill to Southfield had been ploughed up.  In the early years of the Free Church, when the local congregation held their worship in the granary of Southfield Farm, this latter would have been the way taken by members travelling from Ballindean and Inchture.  The minutes of Inchture Parish Council record that this route had for many years been acknowledged as a right of way and was preserved intact in the parish of Abernyte.  A deputation from the parish council accompanied by the Rev. Innes Smith of the United Free Church was sent to interview Mr Stead.  It was agreed that no action be taken with regard to the road over to Southfield.  To this day the length of the track from Ballindean to Southfield farm that lies in Abernyte parish has been maintained, while repeated ploughing has long since erased evidence of its existence in Inchture parish.  In addition, Mr Stead absolutely refused to acknowledge that the road commonly known as the ‘Pilgirms’ Way’ to Abernyte United Free Church by Tinkletop and Hilltown to Closeburn Road, was a right of way.  Amidst long and bitter correspondence, the matter was referred to the Perth District Committee of the County Council who, in, 1919 ‘resolved to remit to a sub-committee to visit the ground and report’.  Unfortunately, no record of the outcome has so far been found.

 

Among the Christian ventures in which Lady Frances involved the local community was a Sunday school.  This she first hosted at Millhill House, where she and her husband lived before his succession to the title in 1923.  On their move to Rossie Priory the Sunday school was transferred to the private chapel there.  Eminent guests staying with Lady Kinnaird were invited to speak to the children; prominent among these was the leading suffragette, Emily Pankhurst.  Missionaries and ministers enjoying respite stays at Rossie Priory were expected to contribute to the various services.  There were also leading Evangelical preachers of the day such as Bishop Taylor Smith, K.C.B., D.D., a former Chaplain General to the Forces, Dr Graham Scroggie and the Reverend John McNeil; in the summer Lady Frances sponsored a mission tent in the Knapp.


Renowned for knowing her bible ‘back to front’ the redoubtable lady was not afraid to keep even ordained ministers on their toes.  The Reverend Gilmour, minister of Abernyte from 1933 until 1950, was more than once subject to correction.


She [Lady Frances] used to get very annoyed when the minister seemed to go off channel a bit and quote things that weren’t there.  There was a lot of tut-tutting: “That man doesn’t know what he’s talking about”, and “Oh, really!”  Directly after the service she was round into the vestry like a bullet from a gun telling Mr Gilmour exactly where he had gone wrong, and the noise that came out from the vestry was not very Christian.  …  I don’t think he was used to being hauled over the coals for what he spoke about; particularly by a woman too.


The spirit of co-operation that existed between the congregations encompassed the Sunday evening services.  These were held in turn at each of the various places of worship: the auld kirk, the United Free Church and in a meeting room in the Knapp located behind the Smiddy.  (This room had been converted for the purpose by Lady Frances, from the laundry that had served the old Dower House.  Reverend Smith took the services while Lady Frances played the organ.).  The Old Schoolroom in Baledgarno was also used and sometimes the private chapel in Rossie Priory.  When there was a fifth Sunday in the month, the Ritchie family of Littleton hosted meetings in their farmhouse kitchen.  In 1926, following the death of Mr Milroy, lantern lectures were introduced at the North church on the third Sunday of the month in place of the evening service, with money raised going to the Fabric Fund.  The evening services and meetings were an important part of the social life of the district and were particularly popular among the young.There was always a big turn out, the people from round about came.  That was where all the young lads and the young dames met.

 

Lady Frances’ Sunday School and the evening gatherings that took in both congregations are likely to have done much to maintain ease and familiarity between the membership of the two churches.  Up until the Second World War, Sundays, especially for the younger members of the community, were a round of church and Sunday School attendance, whether adherents of the established or the Free church: Sunday School, Morning Service, Bible Club, afternoon Sunday School, Evening Service.  Mr Geordie Carr remembered the routine at the South Church

 

Sunday School was before the church.  We walked from the Knapp up to the Free Kirk across the Den.  After Sunday School you went over to the Manse and got your jammy piece from Mrs Smith, the minister’s wife.  She was an awfully nice motherly person.  …  Then your parents came and you stayed on for the morning service.  Every now and again the older Sunday School children stayed behind at the Manse.  You were invited to the Manse as a way of joining the Church.  We got our boiled egg and our cup of teas and twa or three words from the Minister and that was you joined the Kirk.

 

At the parish church ‘Mr Milroy took the Bible Club.  It was for older ones in the church.  He had us sitting down along the pews.  His stories were all about the martyrs. Another parishioner, Mrs Isa Stewart, recalled that

 

…everybody came to Lady Kinnaird’s Sunday School.  They came up from Longforgan … and down from Thrawparts.  I always felt she was ahead of her time because she gave us pictures to paint and little things to do and little texts.  Everything like the children today get.  Quite a lot of the maids came in and set it up.  We enjoyed the Bible stories she used to tell us.  It was very successful.  She was the only person that spoke; she kept everybody enthralled.  She was a really lovely woman.


Those who failed to attend, however, ‘soon got a visit from her to see why you didnae come’.


In contrast, Mrs Mary Myles enjoyed a far less positive experience of Sunday School in the Blairgowrie area where she spent her childhood.  Attendances there were ‘fell sparse!’  and, ‘I was supposed to learn Isaiah Chapter 51.  Could I make that … !’’



In addition to a picnic given by Lady Kinnaird at Rossie Priory, the two churches each held a summer outing for their Sunday Schools that were remembered as great entertainment.  Those attending were carried by horses and carts decorated for the occasion and supplied by the farmers from the respective congregations.  Redmyre Loch was the preferred venue for the United Free church outing where ‘… you’d go out on the boat and you could fish.  It was rare fun.’ While Stockmuir and Pitkindie were popular destinations for the class from the parish kirk:

 

‘We had races and ‘beezie’ and for our food we had what we called a pokey.  Usually there was a Paris bun and sometimes a sausage roll, and an iced cake and a biscuit.  And then you bust your bag!’

 

Few details of the actual numbers attending the churches or of their membership are available.  In 1900, however, the communion roll of the parish church was 161 and that of the United Free Church 125, of which 51 were males and 74 females.  The congregation of the established church was drawn essentially from a total ‘adult’ population (ie over 12 years old) of approximately 150 in Abernyte parish, plus a similar number in the northern arm of Longforgan.  The area served by the United Free Church included, in addition, the Baledgarno and Ballindean areas of Inchture parish.  By 1933 when the two congregations united, in spite of a fall in the local population of some 20%, the number on the communion roll of the established church had risen to 173, while that of the United Free had dropped by just under 10% to 114. This pattern may have reflected a return in the relative popularity of the established church from the dark days of the nineteenth century and also be a mark of the underlying problems faced by the United Free Church that drove the need for merger.  Nevertheless, the combined roll of 287 represented a very large proportion of the eligible population and can certainly account for the brimming churches that are remembered from this period.  There is no indication of any falling off in church membership or attendance before the onset of the Second World War.


 The effects of the fall in the level of the local population in the first two decades of the century can however be seen in the number of baptisms recorded in the register of the parish church.  (See Fig X below.)  (The boost in numbers seen in the 1930s reflects the addition from 1933 of the former congregation of the United Free church.)  The large proportion of baptisms that were performed in the home of the infant in front of family and neighbours is worthy of note; a custom that contrasts with the usual practice at the end of the twentieth century when almost all children were baptised in church. 


The large majority of infants were baptised in the first few months of life, but there are a number of instances of the baptism of older children and of several children from a single family being baptised at the same time.  On one occasion the five children of a ploughman were baptised together. The hold of the church remained strong in the parish throughout the 1920s and 1930s and it suggests that, be it willingly or through social and economic pressure, it was not uncommon for farm-workers and their families to be brought into its fold on obtaining employment in Abernyte.


The hierarchy that prevailed within the social and economic order of the community extended to and was reinforced by that within the established church.  The role of the heritors, with their responsibilities for the maintenance of the property and with regard to the appointment of the minister, echoed their status as landowners and landlords.  In the same way, the authority of the tenant farmers was repeated in the office of church elder.  In January 1900 the elders of the auld kirk, besides Mr Tweedie who was headmaster of the school and clerk to the kirk session, were William Millar of East Newton Farm, Hugh Martin of Balloleys, together with father and son, Robert and David Prain, tenants of the farms of Newton Bank and Hilltown of Knapp.  However, the new century brought with it change.  Mr Tweedie retired, Hugh Martin moved to Flowerdale in Collace parish, and the long serving Robert Prain died, his passing greatly mourned.  In their places five new elders were ordained.  John P. Falconer, the new headmaster, was appointed clerk and also acted as trustee for the Lochton estate.  Of the remaining four, three were tenant farmers - Alexander Lawson of Milton, Robert Fyffe of Newton Bank and Alex Farquharson of Dundriven - the exception being Andrew Clark, the blacksmith at Lochton.  At the Free Church, local artisans enjoyed a rather larger representation among the office bearers, although tenant farmers were again in the majority.  The Deacon’s Court in 1900 consisted of the Reverend George Innes Smith, moderator, David Jamieson, James Ritchie, William Ritchie and George Stewart, elders, together with William Bruce and David Greig, deacons. The Deacon’s Court managed the finances, and oversaw the running of the United Free Church, but spiritual matters were left, as in the established church, to the kirk session.


In the early years of the twentieth century both churches continued to demonstrate the overt and centuries-old Presbyterian concern with the sexual morality of their congregations.  At the Auld Kirk, discipline was exercised over two unmarried mothers who were obliged to express their penitence and be admonished by the Moderator before being restored to church privileges.  Parents guilty of ‘ante-nuptial fornication’ (sex before marriage) were similarly admonished before the child born as a result of the liaison could be baptized.  These three instances (the final one being in 1906) were the last of this nature to be recorded in the minutes of the parish kirk session. However, the more manifest zeal that was one of the characteristics of the Free Church saw the recording of such cases as late as the 1920s.  Between 1900 and 1921, three women were rebuked for the sin of fornication, one man and one couple for ante-nuptial fornication and one man for extra-nuptial fornication. 


At the established church the heritors had responsibility for the property, its maintenance and the payment of the minister’s stipend.  At the Free Church however, these costs were borne for the most part directly by its members and the greater call on this congregation is shown in the levels of the church door collections.  In 1900 the collections for the year at the auld kirk, with a communion roll of 161, amounted to £36 4s 5d, an average per communicant of 4s 6d.  In the same year the collections at the South Church came to £47 12 3d from a roll of 125, an average of 7s 7½d per communicant - some 70% above that at the auld kirk.  Many were generous in the giving of additional financial support.  The Reverend Joseph Wilson for instance, minister from 1850 to 1873, left money in trust for the augmentation of the stipend of future ministers.

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