Travel in Time – Thomson’s Scotland – Lochaber Series: No.19 Fort William
For a year, photographer and history researcher Estelle Slegers Helsen has wandered around Lochaber in the footsteps of WS Thomson MBE, 1906-1967. Estelle has made a series of photographic remakes around 70 years after Thomson originally captured the landscape. She has talked to local people along her journey. Each fortnight Estelle is taking readers to a different place in Lochaber. This week she focuses on St Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Fort William.
As a landscape photographer WS Thomson occasionally took photographs of buildings, mainly hotels, producing postcards he probably offered for sale at the hotel receptions.
He also pictured hotels and shops for advertisements in the official local tourist guides.
As a local businessman, Thomson provided these photographic illustrations and co-edited and co-produced the guidebooks.
A series of the Fort William guidebooks such as Fort William Official Guide, Guide to Fort William and District, and Fort William and Romantic Lochaber, which were produced during the late 1940s and into the 1950s, are kept in the
West Highland Museum collection.
Interior shots are even rarer, although there are two prints of an interior in Thomson’s booklet Let’s See Fort William and Lochaber.
The first is Croft Interior, West Highland Museum, which Thomson described as “an attempt to recapture the life of our forebears in the lonely glens of the Highlands” and which shows a box bed, a shotgun, a bagpipe, a wooden butter churn, a kitchen sideboard with crockery, a large kettle above an open fire and a full-size mannequin dressed as an old lady.
When refurbishing the museum the display was removed.
The second is the interior
of St Andrew’s Episcopal Church on High Street.
On the first days of my planned five-week stay in Lochaber in May and June 2022 it rained continuously and I limited my work for the Travel in Time project to scout places.
Sometimes the visibility was so bad the landscapes vanished in dense curtains of grey.
So why not try the remake of an interior?
In the Let’s See booklet, published at the end of the 1940s or the early 1950s, Thomson gives an account of the church’s history.
“The plot of land, on which both St. Andrew’s Church and the Rectory stand, is held by the Episcopal Community of Fort William by direct grant from the War Office, and no feu duty is or ever has been paid for it.
“With the settling down of the Highlands at the end of the 18th century, and the continued steady growth of the town of Maryburgh [an antiquated name for the town] round Fort William, the Episcopalian community gathered money to build a place of worship, the first in the town.
“Through the generous help of a Lady Rosse [Countess of Rosse] and the activity of a Mr J Bowdler of Eltham, Kent, a little chapel was erected in 1817. Two years later, a house for the incumbent was built from the stones taken from the disused Garrison Brewhouse.
“This house is very much as it was 120 years ago, one of the first houses permitted to be built of stone.
“The Rose Chapel, a plain little white-washed building consisting of nave, chancel and tower, served its purpose faithfully till the seventies of the last [19th] century, when extensive decay in roof and floor decided the congregation to set about rebuilding the church.
“Led by the late Mr GB [George Baynton] Davey of Spean Bridge, funds were collected and, under his inspired leadership and practical generosity, the present Church of St Andrews was erected and consecrated on 9th September, 1880 [by the Episcopalian Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, Dr Mackarness].
“Designed by the late Dr Alexander Ross of Inverness and built of Abriachan granite, the Church is one of the landmarks of Fort William, and is a very beautiful example of the best architecture of its day.
“The carvings of the doors and the mosaic flooring of both Baptistry and Chancel should be particularly noticed, as should the Reredos and Altar of Caen stone.”
I have a look on a rainy Sunday morning. The church is surrounded by a wall and is separated from High Street by its churchyard.
I enter a small churchyard via a lychgate where an information panel indicates Sunday Services – 10.45am
Sung Eucharist. Approaching the massive stone church portal, where St Andrew overlooks who is coming in and going out, I hear voices singing and decide to wait for the end of the service before entering.
A bit later, when all the churchgoers, local folk and some tourists from France have left, I greet Reverend Guinness and tell him I am on a mission. After explaining, he says: “It is all yours.”
At first glance, I am struck by the simple layout.
Pinpointing the place where Thomson stood for his picture is relatively easy; just in front of the votive candle rack blocking the steps leading to the baptistery.
It is a challenge to spot seven differences, no? Although between the old and new photographs is a gap of 70 years.