| Hillhead Baptist Church/version 2 | |
|---|---|
 Hillhead Baptist Church, Glasgow, Scotland | |
| Location | Glasgow |
| Country | Scotland |
| Denomination | Baptist Union of Scotland |
| History | |
| Status | Parish church |
| Founded | 19th century |
| Consecrated | 1883 |
| Architecture | |
| Functional status | In use |
| Architect(s) | Thomas Lennox Watson |
| Architectural type | Traditional gable with end projection porch |
| Specifications | |
| Capacity | 600 |
| Administration | |
| Presbytery | Baptist Union of Scotland |
Hillhead Baptist Church is a Baptist church in the west end of Glasgow, Scotland. It was admitted to the Baptist Union of Scotland in 1883.[1] The church building opened in 1883. LINK It has operated for over 125 years, one of 164 active Baptist churches in Scotland in the early twenty-first century. LINK
External features include prominent Greek columns, casement windows, and a triple-doorway front access, with doors by tradition painted sky blue. Internal features include a columned gallery and two levels of seating. It was designed by architect Thomas Lennox Watson (1850-1920), of Glasgow, one of several Baptist churches built in the city during the late nineteenth century.[2][3]
Historic Scotland designated Hillhead Baptist Church a Category B preserved building in 1970.[4]
Geography
editHillhead Baptist Church is located at 53 Creswell Street, Hillhead, Glasgow, Scotland, KA19 7DN.[5][6] Reflecting the church’s corner location on Creswell and Cranworth streets the church's address sometimes shows as '53 Creswell Street and 30 Cranworth Street.'
The church's National Grid Reference (NGR) is NS 56742 67139,[7] Canmore ID is 203792 and Site ID is NS20NE 60.[8] Its coordinates are 256742, 667139. The church is marked on Google maps[9] and UK streetmap.[10][11]
The church is 1km from the Kelvingrove Art Museum. Other active Baptist churches to the south of Glasgow include Ayr Baptist Church, Thomas Coates Memorial Baptist Church[12] and Maybole Baptist Church in Ayrshire.
History
edit
19th century
It is estimated new Christian congregations in Scotland increased from a handful mid-nineteenth century to 184 assemblies in southern Scotland by 1900.[13] Hillhead was part of this trend. The setting for Hillhead Baptist Church further benefited from the new Baptist Union for Scotland, formed in 1869, fourteen years before the church opened[14][15] and flourishing missionary work in the expanding British Empire.[16]
By 1891 the church already had an established congregation including commercially active and prosperous merchants.[17] The River Clyde was an active commercial and shipbuilding area in the nineteenth century. This was significant because Baptist churches in Scotland attracted commercially active and middle class congregations.[18]
Early 20th century
XXX
Great War (1914-18)
The church response to the outbreak of war was significant. Within 1914-15 period, over a hundred male members of the congregation volunteered for military service, including most of the church's Sunday School teachers.[19]
Interwar era (1918-1939)
XXX
Post World War 2 (1945 - )
During the 1950s, members of Hillhead Baptist Church were prominent in hosting visiting New Zealand clergyman Lloyd Crawford, a visiting New Zealand clergyman. During this visit the church facilitated contact between Crawford and the American evangelist Billy Graham, leading to Billy Graham's visit to New Zealand later in the 1950s. [20]
Although congregations declined from the 1930s peak some modest increase in attendance at Baptist churches within Scotland happened in the late 20th century.[21]
Current use
editHillhead Baptist Church remains active in the early twenty-fist century. Activities include regular Christian services and community use of the church building, LINK registered charity status with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (number SC021239), LINK participating in Remembrance Sunday services held each November 11, and participating in XXX.
Hillhead Baptist Church was featured in 'The Mystery Worshipper' website in 2008, which noted Hillhead's services included “...hymns ranging from traditional to the Celtic folk style of the Iona community.”[22]
In 2011, the Church secured planning permission to convert some of the Church's peripheral buildings into residential apartments. The church was also using a smaller part of the building, referred to as the Tryst, pending repairs to the main church.[23] In 2016, Hillhead Baptist Church was used for meetings by the Scottish Baptist history project.[24]
References
edit- ^ Yuille, George (2005). History of the Baptists in Scotland (From Pre-Reformation Times) (PDF). Arkansas, USA: The Baptist Standard Bearer, Inc. pp. 223–224.
In November, 1898, evangelistic services [in Maybole] were conducted by Mr. Thomas Ramsay in the Methodist Chapel, which had just closed...[Maybole Baptist Church] was admitted into the Union in October, 1901, at the Session held in Paisley. Mr. Thomas Ramsay was the first Pastor, and continued until 1919.
- ^ "Scottish architect Thomas Lennox Watson (Hillhead Baptist Church)". Glasgow Sculpture. Retrieved 2016.
Returning to Glasgow, c. 1875, he [Thomas Lennox Watson] proved his skill in Classical design with Adelaide Place Baptist Church, Pitt Street (1875-7), Hillhead Baptist Church, Creswell Street (1883) and Wellington Church, University Avenue (1882-4)
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ "Hillhead Baptist Church". Scottish Cities. Retrieved 2016.
Hillhead Baptist Church in Cresswell Street was built in 1883, although it looks much earlier in style. It was designed by Thomas. L. Watson, a Glasgow architect who favoured the Greek form of church building.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ "Hillhead Baptist Church at Historic Scotland". Historic Scotland. Retrieved 2016.
[Hillhead Baptist Church features...] Greek revival. 2-storey church with attached single storey hall and lower 3-storey caretaker's house. Polished ashlar, snecked rubble rear and return elevations. Casement windows with glazing bars…. [and intertior]... columned gallery with panelled front. Pilastered upper walls, apsidal (liturgical) E end with pedimented aedicule framing organ case. Compartmented, coffered ceiling. Anta pilastered hall with compartmented ceiling and circular roof lights.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ "Hillhead Baptist Church". Hillhead Baptist Church. Retrieved 2016.
53 Creswell Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G12 8AE
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ "Hillhead Baptist Church map". Geograph. Retrieved 2016.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ "Scottish Churches, Maybole Baptist Church". www.scottishchurches.org.uk.
- ^ "Maybole, Carrick Street, Baptist Church". Scotland's Urban Past.
- ^ "Maybole Baptist Church location". Google Maps. 2016.
- ^ "Maybole Baptist Church location". Streetmap. 2016.
- ^ "Maybole Baptist Church detailed coordinates". Streetmap. Retrieved 2016.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^
"Thomas Coates Memorial Baptist Church". Retrieved 2016.
High Street, Paisley, Scotland, PA1 2BA.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ Dickson, Neil (1991). "Brethren and Baptists in Scotland" (PDF). Biblical Studies.
There were only a very few Open Brethren assemblies prior to 1860, but in the decade after at least thirty assemblies came into existence, and by 1887 one source calculated that there were 184 assemblies. They were formed mainly in those Lowland communities which had known recent social and economic change.
- ^ Balfour, Ian (1996). Baptist Union of Scotland (1996 Chapel Document). Edinburgh, Scotland. p. 1.
The Union was formed in 1869, when 51 Scottish Baptist churches agreed:"That a Union of evangelical baptist churches of Scotland is desirable and practicable, and that its objects should be to promote evangelical religion in connection with the baptist denomination in Scotland, to cultivate brotherly affection and to secure co¬operation in everything related to the interests of the associated churches."
{{cite book}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help); Check date values in:|accessdate=(help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Murray, Derek Boyd (1969). The First Hundred Years: the Baptist Union of Scotland. Glasgow, Scotland: Baptist Union of Scotland.
- ^ Bebbington, D.W. (1989). "Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A history from the 1730s to the 1980s". Routledge.
…in Scotland Evangelicals gained most ground in the vast parishes of the Highlands as well as in the new industrial regions… Land for erecting a chapel was far more likely to be available in open parishes where landownership was fragmented.
{{cite web}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help); Check date values in:|access-date=(help); Missing or empty|url=(help) - ^ Hillis, Peter (2000). The 1891 Membership Roll of Hillhead Baptist Church. Glasgow, Scotland: Scottish Church History Society. pp. 172–192.
[See Records of the Scottish Church History Society, Volume 30 (2000) 172-192]
- ^ Brown, Calum G (1997). Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. p. 30.
Baptists had mixed social compositions of urban middle classes, especially in Glasgow and Dundee, and peasant and fishing communities in the northeast, Orkney and some west-coast ports and islands.
- ^ Clements, Keith W (19xx). Baptists and the Outbreak of the First World War (PDF). Edinburgh, Scotland: The Baptist Quarterly. p. 76.
An irate letter appeared in the Baptist Times from William Tulloch, a member of Hillhead Baptist Church, Glasgow. He declared that in Scotland men, at the call of duty, did not wait for the consent of their parents (as the Manifesto put it). Hillhead Church had not waited for any manifesto but had already responded by sending 120 from the Church and mission to the colours. All but one of the male Sunday School teachers had volunteered.
{{cite book}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Crawford, Bryan (2009). Letters my Grandfather wrote me. Bloomington, Indiana, USA: Author House. pp. 73–74.
He [Lloyd Crawford] was met at the wharf [on the River Clyde] by the Secretary of the Hillhead Baptist Church who took him to his home for a weeks stay… [and]… a few days later Lloyd preached at the Hillhead Baptist Church before a congregation of about 600 people, and there had discussions with Billy Graham which were instrumental in Bily's later visit to New Zealand.
- ^ Brown, Calum G (1997). Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. p. 159.
Only one denomination which has experienced membership decline in Scotland has sustained a late-twentieth-century reversal - the Baptist Church. Baptist membership declined from the 1930s until 1976, and then started a modest but steady growth in the last quarter of the century.
- ^ "Hillhead Baptist Church review of services". Ship Of Fools. Retrieved 2016.
I guess you'd probably describe it as a straightforward, uncomplicated hymn sandwich, with the hymns ranging from traditional to the Celtic folk style of the Iona community.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ "Hillhead Baptist Church update". Retrieved 2016.
The Planning Application and Listed Building Consent to convert what was the Church Sanctuary into flats and redevelop the Tryst into a new Church Facility was granted on the 12th April 2011. The Church is now actively looking for a development partner to take this forward. Meanwhile the Church will continue to use the Tryst for all it's activities.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) - ^ "Meeting of Scottish Baptist history project". Retrieved 2016.
There is to be a meeting of the Scottish Baptist History project on Saturday 23April 2016 at Hillhead Baptist Church, 53 Cresswell Street, Glasgow G12 8AE
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help)
External links
edit- Hillhead Baptist Church[1]
- History of the Baptists in Scotland Yuille, George (2005)
- Brethren and Baptists in Scotland Dickson, Neil (1991)