Gigha’s glorious stained glass memorials
Well done to those who correctly identified the building in last week’s Down Memory Lane as the Lorne and Lowland Church. While it may have been obvious to some people, there may be others who never noticed some of the smaller intricacies on the 148-year-old building. Look out for similar challenges in future editions.
Kintyre has many fascinating and unique churches but few are as beautiful as the one on Gigha.
The current building, which was designed by minister and architect Donald MacFarlane in a Romanesque Revival style, with round-headed windows, features many stained glass windows.
They aren’t obvious to the untrained eye from outside, but once inside it is impossible not to notice the vivid displays which bathe the pews in all the colours of the rainbow.
Dedicated
Interestingly, when the church was built in 1923, it had only one stained glass window which was dedicated to those who lost their lives in the First World War. Depicting Jesus on the cross, it also featured the words he is said to have spoken the night before he died: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’
The other stained glass windows – some dedicated to previous ministers, one to a former laird and others to members of the McNeill and Galbraith families who are members of two of the island’s main clans – were added over the years.
According to a display inside the church, Christianity came to Gigha in about 563AD with the missionary monk St Columba, who was travelling up the coast of Argyll from Ireland to Iona.
The display reads: ‘One of his contemporaries, a monk called Catan, subsequently built a cell at the site of a holy well, and this became Kilchattan church and graveyard serving the south of the island. There was another chapel to serve the north of Gigha, founded by a monk called Fionnlagan, also with a graveyard.’
Apparently the remains, a stone cross amongst a pile of stones, can still be seen in a field opposite Tarbert Farm. The large stones are said to have been burial markers which were cleared to the centre of the field in order to increase the area of agricultural land. There is also a chapel on the island of Cara, founded by a monk called Finla.
The display continues: ‘St Columba and his contemporaries belonged to the Celtic Church, which was based on monasteries and missionary monks. By the 13th century the church was ruled from Rome with a parish system of bishops and priests. It was at this time that the Kilchattan church was built.
‘It became a part of the protestant church, Church of Scotland, at the time of the Reformation in the 16th century and was used until the 18th century, after which it became a ruin.
Disrepair
‘In 1712 a new church was built on the site which is now the hotel car park, and when that fell into disrepair another church was built in 1780 on the same site, a portion of the wall of that church being all that now remains.
‘By the early 20th century a new church building was needed and fortunately the minister at the time, Reverend Donald MacFarlane, had been an architect.
‘He therefore designed the present building, which was relocated on ‘Cnocan a’ Chiuil’ (the hill of music), and constructed from the black whinstone of the previous church. It was completed in 1923, but sadly Donald MacFarlane died in that year. The St Columba window at the front left of the church is dedicated to his memory.’