St. Andrew’s Church, Airth

(Dunmore Episcopalian Church)

(SMR740)

NS 8900 8892

TIMELINE

1850:  Built as a family chapel.   A plate inside the building read:  “To the Glory of God, and in memory of her husband, Alexander Edward, 6th Earl of Dunmore, this church was dedicated by Catherine, Countess of Dunmore, in the year of our Lord, 1850.”  A carved wooden decalogue occupied the wall of the chancel, with biblical sections in the nave.   The church was oblong in shape with a slightly narrower chancel at the east end.   A south facing porch gave access to the nave.   The east gable contained two large lancet windows, separated by a chamfered buttress.   Above the buttress and central to the gable was a rosette window, and above it a belfry.   Paired buttresses on the corners were echoed by further buttresses along the north and south walls.   There were three two-light windows in each of the side walls of the nave, covered by moulded hoods that terminated in human figures.

During the 1850s and early 1860s a mission was run at Carron and in Falkirk before the latter erected a church of its own.

1938: Union with Christ Church, Falkirk.  Shortly afterwards a mission station was set up at Throsk owing to the presence there of an Admiralty Depot.

1976: Demolition was approved in 1962, but deferred to 1976 when the badly deteriorated building was demolished and parts taken to the Episcopal Church in Falkirk.

MANSE

A large parsonage was built to the east of the walled garden that houses the Pineapple, facing the main road north from Airth, in the 1850s.

FITTINGS

The elaborately carved panels are fully described in the Stirling Inventory.

WINDOW

See separate entry for stained glass.

CHURCHYARD

The church was surrounded by a family graveyard that also contains some of the family’s dependants.   The Elphinstone Tower to the north-east was converted into a mausoleum.

RECTORS OF ST.ANDREWS

1850	Provost Grub
1858	Hinxman,C.
Jul 1859	Sutherland, G.
1861	Hill Smith, T.
Mar 1862	Cave-Brown, W.H.
	Sutcliffe, J G	Aug 1900
Jan 1901	Griffiths, Alfred
1938	Ramsay, Ivor E. St.Clair

            G.B. Bailey (2019)