Polmont North Parish Church

1844 to 1969

THE NEW PARISH CHURCH OF POLMONT
1845
On Sunday morning, 20 July, 1845, the first act of public worship was conducted in the fine new parish church of Polmont. The minister, the Reverend John Ker, chose his text from Psalm 63 and preached to a hushed and attentive congregation of over 1,200. On the afternoon of the same day, the Very Reverend John Lee, Principal of Edinburgh University (and Moderator of the General Assembly, 1844-45) preached from Haggai, chapter 1, to an audience of a similar number.

Clearly this was an event of great significance to the congregation and community of Polmont, recognising as it did the tremendous efforts of the Heritors of the parish in providing a greatly - enlarged, yet simple and solemn, new house in which to worship God.

But what was so special about the event? Why was the new church built at all? Who were the people who built and paid for it? And what was the village and community of Polmont like in the 1840's? A response to some of these questions was given in the booklet published in 1969 - the 125th anniversary of the laying of the foundation-stone. It is the purpose of this modest volume now to answer the questions, and others, more fully in the light of further information and research.

We hope that you will enjoy reading it, and will help carry forward the faith and dedication shown by the people of Polmont 150 years ago.

The booklet is set out under the following headings:
The First Kirk - historical background
The First Kirk - its building
The next 100 years
Polmont in the 1840's
The Building and Opening of the New Kirk
Post - script: some significant characters

The First Kirk - historical background
Proposals had been made on more than one occasion after 1650 to create a new Parish centred on Polmont, Falkirk Parish being simply too large for one minister to serve adequately. But it must be borne in mind that the period up to 1715 was not a good time to build a new parish Kirk, for two main reasons.

First, of course, the political / religious climate of the later 17th Century was a very dangerous one for presbyterians. Episcopalian forms of worship and church government were being forced on the people by Royal order, and Graham of Claverhouse, the second Marquis of Montrose and Dalyell of the Binns were carrying out their enforcement orders with extraordinary zeal: this included turning ministers out of church and manse, forbidding them to preach; persecuting everybody who refused to renounce presbyterianism; transportation to the American colonies; and especially hunting down and killing Covenanters, to the extent of execution by drowning.

Even after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Act of Succession, the death of Claverhouse at Killiecrankie in 1689, and James II's flight to France and ultimate defeat at the Boyne / Aughrim in 1690, the fear lingered throughout Great Britain that a new attempt would be made by the Stewarts to invade and re-establish a Roman Catholic monarchy. And by the 1690's the situation in Scotland was such that a new and perhaps equally powerful reason had emerged for not creating a new parish and Kirk in Polmont: this one was economic.

Scotland at this time, and until the beneficial effects of the Act of Union (1707) began to be felt, was just about the poorest country in Europe. A population of around 1 million was spread across a country barely able to support them. A rural economy, unimproved since mediaeval times, was based mainly on boggy, undrained farms.

A few sheep and cattle were reared, and oats and "bear" (rough barley for making the staple drink of ale) were grown in exhausted fields that yielded three ears for every one sown and were tilled by heavy and primitive wooden ploughs hauled by teams of oxen.

In terms of industry, a few coal - pits were worked (by miners who, with their families, were the property of the coal - owners) and salt was produced from sea - water in some locations around the coast.

Four times in the 1690's the harvests failed across Scotland, and starvation became rife. People literally died of hunger in their homes and, trying to get nourishment from grass, in the fields. And if that were not enough, the nation's last supreme effort to create wealth from trade independently of England, and in which virtually all the disposable funds of the country were invested, ended in catastrophic failure at Darien, on the Isthmus of Panama, in 1699.

In other ways, life in Scotland - and Polmont was in no way exceptional - was much less civilised and far harsher than to-day, or even than in 1845.

Most people went barefoot; medicines were primitive and based mainly on superstition; smallpox was rife - one in five deaths of children under 10; roads, if they might be called such, were in a deplorable condition; and it was still far from uncommon for women to be condemned and cruelly executed for witchcraft, the last case being as late as 1727, in Dornoch.

And so it was perhaps not surprising that practical moves to create a new parish and build a Kirk in Polmont were kept in abeyance until the political and economic climates became more settled and favourable.

The Treaty of Union with England in 1707 was for Scotland an economic necessity. Its effects were not immediate, as many at the time indeed complained, but the creation of a hugely wider market for Scottish goods with England and her colonies was bound to have its effects, and slowly but surely unmistakeable signs were appearing: the cultivation of flax for the new linen industry was encouraged by government grants; the trade in tobacco between Glasgow and Virginia, out of which enormous fortunes were made, began to flourish; and, more locally, English cattle - buyers gradually made their presence felt at the twice - yearly Falkirk Trysts on the Redding Muir from 1716/17 onwards.

These factors, added to the defeat of the would-be King James 111 and the first Jacobite rebellion at Sheriffmuir in 1715, explain perhaps why soon after this date the Heritors (local landowners) of the Polmont area felt confident enough to take definite steps to obtain approval for their plans to separate from Falkirk Parish and build their own church and school.