Baillieston St Andrew's Church

Baillieston St Andrew's Church is a congregation of the Church of Scotland serving the town of Baillieston in the east of Glasgow, its church standing on the corner of Bredisholm Road and Muirhead Road. The present congregation is young by Scottish standards — established in November 1966 by the union of Baillieston Old Parish and Rhinsdale churches — but the two streams that flow into it carry the story of Baillieston's church life back to the 1820s, through the great upheavals and reunions of Scottish Presbyterianism.

The older stream is Baillieston Parish Church. Its origins reach back to the late 1820s, when George Scott of Daldowie donated a site on Crosshill Farm for a church, to be known as the Crosshill Chapel of Ease, together with provision of a cemetery for the village — until then, the only church in the district was Old Monkland Parish Church. Built at a cost of £507 and opened on 7 July 1833 with seating for 500, the church in Church Street, Crosshill, holds a particular distinction: it was the first church in Scotland erected under the First Church Extension Scheme of the Church of Scotland, the great campaign to plant churches in the country's growing industrial districts. Its first minister, the Rev. Andrew Gray, doubled as a teacher in the local school while still a probationer; he served until the Disruption of 1843, when he was called to Dumbarton. Six more ministers followed across the next 123 years, among them the Rev. Hugh Ramsay (1856–92), under whom the seating was extended and a manse built, and the Rev. Dr Alexander Andrew, whose 48 years (1892–1940) made him the longest-serving minister in Baillieston's history. The church's war memorial to the fallen of 1914–18 was extended after the Second World War to include the names of 1939–45, and at the unveiling and dedication service on Sunday 15 April 1951, conducted by the Rev. Roy McVicar, the memorial was unveiled before a packed church by William Reid VC — the celebrated Lancaster bomber pilot and holder of the Victoria Cross. Members' gifts at the same time included a full suite of choir chairs and a special memorial chair matching the Communion chairs.

The second stream is Rhinsdale Parish Church, known in Baillieston originally as the U.P. Kirk. It began in March 1862, when a group from Baillieston and district met for services in the school building at Fauldshill as a United Presbyterian preaching station, drawing their preachers from the U.P. Presbytery of Glasgow; James Hunter, a Glasgow merchant living at Rhinsdale House, who in all probability owned Fauldshill, was a moving spirit in the venture. Resolving to have a church of their own, the members collected subscriptions which, with help from the U.P. Building Fund and the Ferguson Bequest Fund, reached £1,200. The site they secured came with a notable pedigree: it was given by James Beaumont Neilson, the inventor of the hot blast process that had revolutionised iron smelting in Coatbridge in the 1830s. By October 1863 building was well advanced, and the 81 members petitioned the Glasgow Presbytery to form a congregation; permission was granted, and in January 1864 the U.P. Church in Baillieston was born, opening for worship on 17 February 1864, with a Session House and Vestry at the rear and a small hall above. The first minister, the Rev. John McIntyre, was ordained on 1 June 1865 and later left to become a missionary in North China; eight more ministers followed over the next century, including the Rev. William Brown, ordained in 1916 and almost immediately granted leave to serve as chaplain to the 1st/8th Royal Scots in France, and the Rev. Robert Inglis, whose 1931–58 ministry was the congregation's longest. Sixteen men of the Rhinsdale congregation were killed in action in the First World War, their names inscribed on a memorial plaque incorporated into the Communion Table.

The two congregations united in November 1966 as Baillieston St Andrew's, and the new charge called its first minister, the Rev. John J. C. Owen, in June 1967. The union posed a practical problem: the "Old Church" of 1833 had served for some 140 years but now needed almost continual and costly maintenance, while the influx of the Rhinsdale congregation had considerably swelled the membership. Under Owen's leadership a building fund was raised with the generosity of the congregation and the public, and the new church was dedicated in December 1974 — the building that serves Baillieston today.

The ministers of St Andrew's after Owen, who served until December 1979, have included the Rev. Tom C. Houston (1980–2000), a popular evangelical who came from St Andrew's Church in Jerusalem; the Rev. Robert Gehrke (2001–06); and the Rev. Alisdair T. MacLeod-Mair (2007–11). In 2013 the congregation entered a linkage with Baillieston Mure Memorial Church under the Rev. Malcolm Cuthbertson, and the linked churches are served today by the Rev. Fiona Morrison, inducted on 13 June 2024. From a £507 chapel of ease and a school-room prayer meeting to a united modern parish, Baillieston St Andrew's carries nearly two centuries of east Glasgow's Presbyterian story.