AFTER I wrote about Airdrie: New Wellwynd Parish Church a few months ago, the minister of Airdrie: High, the Rev Dr Ian McDonald, wrote to the Editor of this magazine regarding my comment that the High Chapel mission by the Church of Scotland in the 1830s was not a success.
That comment was based on a quotation in volume 3 of the Fasti Ecclesiae Scotticanae, the official record of the ministers of the Church of Scotland and their charges. This volume deals with congregations of the Church of Scotland prior to the union of that Church with the United Free Church in 1929, and was therefore written from that perspective.
It reads: ‘A year or two later a third chapel [of ease] was built in the town [Airdrie],and was named the High Chapel of Airdrie. On 28th May it also received a chapel constitution. The High Chapel had little success, and was retained by the Free Church in 1843’.
Having re-read this account and other relevant published material I believe that for the Church of Scotland in the late 1830s the ‘High Chapel’ mission was not successful, but from the point of view of the wider Church it was indeed a success.