THE pre-Reformation parish of Kilpatrick on the north bank of the river Clyde was a large one, with its revenues attached to the Abbey of Paisley. There was a parish church in what is now Old Kilpatrick, on the site of what is now Old Kilpatrick Bowling Parish Church. The present church there was built in 1812. The mediaeval church was dedicated to St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, and his shrine there was a noted place of pilgrimage. It is often claimed that Patrick was born in or around Old Kilpatrick.
The growing population of the parish led to its division in 1649 to form Wester, or Old Kilpatrick and Easter, or New Kilpatrick, with a new church for the latter in the heart of what is now Bearsden. The churches were, incidentally, linked by part of the route of the Roman Antonine Wall; at both places there had been camps attached to the wall.
An article on Old Kilpatrick Bowling Parish Church was published in the May 2016 issue of Life and Work; here we are concerned with New Kilpatrick church, round which grew up Bearsden. This settlement was essentially a village until the opening in 1863 of a branch line from what later became Westerton, on the former Glasgow, Dumbarton and Helensburgh Railway. With direct communication with Glasgow Bearsden grew as essentially a ‘dormitory suburb’ of the city. In the 1890s Bearsden was described as ‘a fine residential suburb of Glasgow’ and in 2002 as ‘a large and leafy suburb’.