This article has been kindly provided by Martyn Baguley to explain the story of St Mark’s Unitarian Church on Castle Terrace.
In the early hours of 1st May 1685, 58-year-old John Brown, a devout Presbyterian, having led family prayers, left his home at Priesthill in Ayrshire to cut peat. As he worked, he was surrounded by a party of soldiers on horseback under the command of the staunch Royalist John Graham, Viscount Dundee, otherwise known as “Bluidy Clavers”. Graham was responsible for policing southwest Scotland against Presbyterian Covenanters. John Brown was forcibly taken back to his home and, without any trial, after the soldiers refused to shoot him, was shot by John Graham himself before his wife and two children. His crime? Refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the King and being a Presbyterian Covenanter.
The history of dissent in Christian churches is littered with movements to break away from Catholic ‘Popery’ and the Anglican church which was governed by bishops. By signing a ‘National Covenant’ in 1638, dissenters pledged to defend their faith against state interference and achieve uniformity in worship throughout Britain. This spawned the formation of the Baptists, Quakers and Congregationalist and the ‘Great Ejection’ in 1662, when 2000 Puritan, Presbyterian and nonconformist Church of England ministers were forcibly removed from their churches.
There was nothing exceptional, theologically, about John Brown – he was only one of many dissenters or ‘Non-Conformists’ in the 17th century – but he was an ancestor of Robert Cumming who was one of the original members of a small group of educated tradespeople who lived in Berwickshire and believed that everyone was capable of salvation by God. The members of the group have a special place in the history of Edinburgh’s St. Mark’s Unitarian Church, because in 1776 they left Berwickshire, travelled to Edinburgh to find work, settled in the East of the city and established a society of Universalist Dissenters from which the church evolved.
During the next 59 years the group met in six different halls in Auld Reekie. By 1813 it had adopted the name Edinburgh Unitarian Society and established a building fund. The successors of the original group now lived in the fashionable New Town so, not relishing having to travel to a meeting place in the decaying wynds of the old town, in November 1834, after several unsuccessful attempts, they signed a lease on the present Castle Terrace site of the church. The distinguished Scottish architect, David Bryce, who had designed Fettes College and the former Royal Infirmary, was commissioned to design the church, the building work was quickly started and the church, designed to seat 700, first opened its doors in 1835. It had cost £1500; £80,000 in £2026. For nearly 200 years the Baroque-style church, one of only two Unitarian churches in the world identified with a saint’s name, has been stolidly nestling between Victorian buildings in Castle Terrace. Yet, surprisingly, it continues to be one of Edinburgh’s best kept secrets.
There have been many changes made over the years to the interior of the church. The original pews were replaced in 1881 and the elevated mahogany pulpit was removed in 1972 and replaced with a raised platform to accommodate a grand piano and take advantage of the excellent acoustic properties of the sanctuary by providing room for musical and other artistic performances. A mahogany canopy, called a sounding board, originally located above the pulpit and designed to project the speaker’s voice into the congregation, remains in place and now crowns a beautiful woven and ceramic panel made by church members and reminiscent of Scottish countryside. A two-manual organ, sadly not playable at present, was installed in 1911. It was built by the notable firm, Ingram and Co. who specialized in building small organs with a rich tonal quality that belied their size, and partly paid for by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust.
Worldwide, the spiritual characters of individual Unitarian churches (some are called chapels or meeting houses) have evolved with the passage of time. High above the solid oak front doors of St. Mark’s, engraved in the stone façade, a favourite 19th century Unitarian biblical text (1 Timothy 2.5: To us there is but one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus) proclaims the Judaeo-Christian roots of the church’s founders. Today St. Mark’s is a theologically liberal, inclusive community, focused on free thought and spiritual exploration uninhibited by traditional Christian church creeds.
What will a newcomer to a service at St Mark’s experience?
The welcome you will receive on arriving and the peaceful atmosphere of the church sanctuary are not unique to St. Mark’s, but you will find that aspects of the service are different from conventional Christian services. It may be led by either the resident minister, The Reverend Janine Sim, a visiting minister or lay preacher. There may, or may not, be readings from the Bible, but there will be thought-provoking readings from secular works, references made to other religions and probably a short story for any children. There will be moments for meditation or prayer and a sermon on the theme of the service, which can be found up to three days before the service on the church’s website.
There will be musical interludes when a talented pianist plays the superb Weinbach grand piano (worth coming just for that!) and probably three hymns. Some, but not all, of the hymn tunes may be familiar to you, but the words may not be. Don’t worry – you can sit or stand, and just quietly reflect on the meaningful words. After the service you can enjoy light refreshments in the adjacent church hall where you will probably meet and make friends with people from not only Edinburgh but also from many other places in Britain and the world.
St. Mark’s serves a wide congregation both in Edinburgh and, thanks to modern technology, outreaching worldwide. Anyone who doesn’t want, or is unable, to travel to the church on Sunday mornings, can find out how to join Zoomed services, and much more about the church community, from the church website (see above). For reasons of confidentiality, and to avoid infringing copyright laws, services are not recorded.
The church offers much more than Sunday services. It has a Bereavement Support Group, runs Mindfulness sessions particularly for busy office workers in Edinburgh during lunchtimes on Tuesdays, has a Poetry and Prose Group on Saturdays and is active in Edinburgh’s Inter-faith community.
St. Mark’s can be a spiritual home. Whatever your beliefs may be – or even if you don’t have any – the only requirement is that you are tolerant of the beliefs and convictions of others.
If you join a Sunday service, either physically or virtually, you will feel welcome and part of a warm spiritually-minded community.
