St Oran's Church was a Gaelic-speaking congregation of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh. Originating in the early 18th-century, the congregation continued until 1948, latterly meeting at Broughton Street.
Gaelic public worship in Edinburgh began in the early 18th century and culminated with the opening of the first Gaelic Chapel at Castle Wynd near the Grassmarket in 1769. This was the first Gaelic-speaking congregation in the Scottish Lowlands. A second, larger chapel opened at Horse Wynd in 1813 and the two congregations united in 1815, following which the Castle Wynd building was sold. In 1835, the chapel was raised to the status of a parish quoad sacra. The Disruption of 1843 saw all the church's office holders and almost all of its congregation depart the established church to join the Free Church, creating another Gaelic-speaking congregation in Edinburgh: the Gaelic Free Church. Civic improvements in the Old Town forced the congregation to vacate Horse Wynd in 1870. It settled in the former Catholic Apostolic Church on Broughton Street in 1875. In 1900, the congregation adopted the name "St Oran's". The former Gaelic Free Church – by then known as "St Columba's" – had rejoined the Church of Scotland in 1929 due to denominational unions. The General Assembly concluded the maintenance of two small Gaelic-speaking congregations in Edinburgh was unnecessary and, in 1948, St Oran's and St Columba's united to form the Highland Church, using the St Columba's buildings. Greyfriars Kirk maintains St Oran's tradition of Gaelic worship in Edinburghto the present.
The first Gaelic Chapel was a simple T-plan building with seats for 800. It was demolished in the 1830s. The Horse Wynd building stood on a rectangular plan and was executed in a plain neoclassical style. It was swept away in the public improvements that created Chambers Street. The Broughton Street building – the only building occupied by the Gaelic congregation that still stands – is a neoclassical, temple-like building of 1843–1844, attributed to John Dick Peddie. It is now in commercial use.
History Beginnings: 17th century–1769
By the late 17th century, the number of Gaelic-speaking migrants from the Highlands in Edinburgh had grown significantly.Pinkerton 2019, p. 15. Attempts to provide a place of worship for them were stymied by the paucity of Gaelic-speaking ministers in the Church of Scotland and by the Kirk's insistence from 1694 that Gaelic-speaking ministers remain with Gaelic-speaking Highland parishes unless authorised by their presbytery. The Kirk's requirement that there could be only one place of worship in each parish also complicated the establishment of an extra-parochial Gaelic chapel.Pinkerton 2019, p. 16.MacDonald 1989, p. 45. The General Assembly did, however, make provision for Gaelic preaching in Edinburgh in 1704; nevertheless, this could not be effected due to the lack of a Gaelic-speaking minister.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 12.
Gaelic worship began after the appointment of Neil McVicar as minister of the West Kirk in 1707. McVicar was a Highlander fluent in Gaelic and English. The Presbytery of Argyll approved McVicar's move to Edinburgh on the basis that there were three to four hundred monolingual Gaelic-speakers in the West Kirk's parish, which covered a large area outside the city walls of Edinburgh. Highlanders may have made up as much as a tenth of the parish's population at this time. McVicar was preaching in Gaelic even before the Presbytery of Edinburgh formally charged him to do so in 1710.Pinkerton 2019, p. 17.
After McVicar's death in 1747, army chaplains based at the Castle may have maintained Gaelic worship until Dugald Buchanan's arrival in Edinburgh in 1765. Though a layman, Buchanan gathered round him a Gaelic-speaking congregation which met at College Street Relief Church in the Southside.Pinkerton 2019, p. 18.Withers 1998, p. 164. Buchanan was unable to qualify as a minister before his sudden death in 1768.MacDonald 1989, p. 47.
Castle Wynd: 1769–1815
At the time of Buchanan's death, plans were already underway to create a permanent Gaelic church. In 1766, some prominent Edinburgh citizens, led by burgess William Dickson, issued an appeal to create a formal Gaelic chapel. Dickson raised £300 and purchased a plot of land between the Castle and the Grassmarket. This was near the White Hart Inn: a favoured meeting place of Highlanders. Building commenced in May 1767 and the chapel – a simple T-plan building with seats for 800 – opened in summer 1769.MacDonald 1989, p. 47. The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge was responsible for nominating preachers while the chapel came under the jurisdiction of Old Greyfriars kirk session and was managed a group of twelve deacons.Pinkerton pp. 20-21. As a full Gaelic Bible had not been published by the time the chapel opened, the church's reader was responsible for translating the readings into Gaelic.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 13.
The chapel was the first designated Gaelic-speaking place of worship in lowland Scotland. Gaelic chapels in Glasgow (1770); Perth (1781); Dundee (1791); Greenock (1792); Paisley (1793) soon followed. A Roman Catholic Gaelic chapel was also established in Edinburgh in 1776 and burnt in anti-Catholic rioting in 1779.Pinkerton 2019, pp. 18-19.Withers 1998, p. 172. The first minister was Joseph Robertson, who had assisted Buchanan at College Street. A member of Clan Gregor, Robertson re-adopted the surname MacGregor after the clan's legal suppression was ended in 1774. During MacGregor's enthusiastic ministry, Edinburgh's Gaelic community became renowned for its probity. The poet Duncan Ban MacIntyre was a friend of MacGregor's and a regular worshipper at the chapel.Pinkerton 2019, p. 22.MacDonald 1989, p. 47.
As early as 1787, members of the congregation were raising concerns over the state and capacity of the chapel. That year, Sir John Macgregor Murray gave £50 for the chapel to be enlarged on the condition that the front pew be reserved for him, his family, and, in their absence, any members of his clan who could not afford to rent a pew.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 15.
In 1807, John McDonald became minister. By that year, less than a tenth of the congregation was monolingual in Gaelic. McDonald was nevertheless resistant to the introduction of English-language worship.Pinkerton 2019, p. 24.Withers, 1998, pp. 168-169. McDonald was so popular a minister that, in 1813, his final service was held in the West Kirk, the congregation being too large for the Gaelic Chapel.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 16. Following McDonald's departure, the congregation introduced an English service to supplement Gaelic worship.Dunlop 1988, p. 101.
Horse Wynd: 1815–1870
During McDonald's ministry, overcrowding in the chapel had remained a problem. To address this, the congregation planned a new chapel. In 1808, a site was purchased on the corner of Horse Wynd and North College Street, near what is now Chambers Street. The new chapel opened in 1813, under the name the Gaelic and English Chapel of Ease. The chapel could accommodate 1,093 worshippers. The Writers to the Signet and the Corporation of Edinburgh supported its £3,000 cost. The new chapel's first minister, Charles Matheson, served for little over a year. Both Gaelic charges were now empty while the new chapel had accrued significant debts. The SSPCK transferred its interest to the new chapel and the two congregations united in 1815. That year, the Chapel Wynd building was sold; it was demolished in 1830s.Pinkerton 2019, pp. 24-25.Pinkerton 2020, p. 20. The united congregation was known as the New Gaelic Chapel.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 18.
In 1835, the Gaelic Chapel became a parish quoad sacra with a ministry to all Gaelic speakers in Edinburgh rather than to a geographic parish.Pinkerton 2019, p. 28.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 17. In 1850, the Court of Teinds supported the congregation's status as the Gaelic parish church for the city and designated it the Gaelic Church and Parish of Edinburgh with no territorial parish but a responsibility to all Gaelic speakers in the city.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 27.
At the Disruption of 1843, the vast majority of the congregation, including all its office-bearers, joined the Free Church. This effectively created a new congregation: the Gaelic Free Church. The Free congregation continued to meet in the Horse Wynd building until 1844. The few congregants who had remained in the established church were not in a position to appoint a new board of trustees until 1845.Pinkerton 2019, p. 29. The established congregation recovered somewhat and, in 1846, was able to appoint a new minister, Alexander MacKellar.Dunlop 1988, p. 102. During the ministry of Donald Tolmie Masson between 1862 and 1897, the wider life of the congregation grew stronger: monthly Gaelic evening services began in 1856, a Sabbath School in 1863, and a congregational choir in 1864.Pinkerton 2019, p. 33.
Broughton Street: 1870–1929
The Edinburgh Improvement Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vict. c. xliv) provided for the creation of Chambers Street, which required the demolition of the Horse Wynd chapel. In 1869, the congregation received £6,000 in compensation in return for vacating their building. The congregation vacated the Horse Wynd building the following year and worshipped nearby at the Protestant Institute on George IV Bridge until 1875, when they purchased the former Catholic Apostolic church on Broughton Street.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, pp. 27-29. The SSPCK retained its right to nominate the church's minister even after the abolition of patronage in the Church of Scotland in 1874.Pinkerton 2019, p. 34.
By the end of the 19th-century, the congregation appears to have been depleted. Responding to reports of the declining use of Gaelic in the worship of Highland parishes, the Gaelic church's minister, Donald Tolmie Masson, wrote to the editor of The Scotsman in April 1896:
In response, another correspondent, writing under the name "Argyle Square", noted that, though the church had been well-attended forty years prior, the move to Broughton Street had affected its congregation. The correspondent nevertheless attributed the bulk of the congregation's decline to Masson's "dry manner and cold reserve". Masson wrote two further letters to The Scotsman to defend himself against these accusations and against another correspondent named "Highland Churchman".
Likely motivated by the union of the Free and United Presbyterian churches in 1900, the congregation that year adopted the more distinctive name of "St Oran's". Saint Kessog and Saint Chattan were also considered as potential dedicatees. In 1916, John Campbell Macgregor, the church's minister since 1911, died of wounds sustained in the First World War and James Duff MacDonald succeeded him as minister the following year.Dunlop 1988, p. 104.
Union: 1929–1948
Ahead of the union of the Church of Scotland with the United Free Church in 1929, ownership of St Oran's transferred from the SSPCK to the Church of Scotland and the voluntary supplement was redirected in 1935.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, p. 29.Pinkerton 2019, p. 36. In the years prior to James Duff MacDonald's death in 1945, the church's membership had begun to tail off. The Free Gaelic congregation that had split from the established church in 1843 had, by this point, adopted the name "St Columba's" and, though denominational unions, joined the United Free Church in 1900 and rejoined the Church of Scotland in 1929. In this context, the General Assembly concluded the maintenance of two small, Gaelic-speaking congregations in the city was unnecessary and, from 1930, sought to unite the charges.MacKay in MacLeod 1951, pp. 29-30.