October 16, 2011
The church that has been a pillar of Bellshill for 250 years Comments Off
It has dominated Bellshill’s Main Street for decades but many of the town’s residents won’t be aware that the St Andrew’s United Free Church has been a pillar of the community for almost 250 years.
The church’s congregation are gearing up for a year of celebrations as the 250th anniversary of the church approaches in 2012.
Established in 1762 as the first relief church in the west of Scotland after the congregation at the time refused to accept a minister they were being appointed, the church has stood the test of time in Bellshill’s Main Street.
Hugh McWhinney, of the church’s 250th anniversary committee, said: “There’s lots of different paths the church has taken – we have ducked and dived from the Church of Scotland to the United Free and we have been with the United Free since 2001.
“We were allegedly the first relief church in the west and what started that was a thing called patronage where the local landlord picked the minister. At that time it was the Duke of Hamilton, who was about nine. His factor said we were going to get a minister from Shotts and Bothwell and the congregation at the time walked out of Bothwell because of that and set up in the open air in Bellshill.”
The church’s anniversary committee have spent months looking into the extensive history of the church from finding out that a mound in the graveyard was a mass cholera grave from an epidemic in the mid-1870s to establishing how influential the church has been in the development of the town.
• Full story at STV.
