Building update

From Ann Raith...

The land adjacent to the church housed the old Hall and behind it, a large house called "The Priory" where Sunday School, Youth Fellowship, and various other meetings were held, and a succession of Curates were housed in a section set up as a self-contained flat. We all assumed the house had been used as an ecclesiastical residence of some sort, and were amused to discover much later from Tom Muirhead that it had been built by a bookie who had won a lot of money on a horse called "The Priory"!

The Hall was built under war-time restrictions and was awful! The floor was concrete about 3 feet thick, covered with some composition, red in colour, that became slimy with condensation when any social activity took place. I well remember a Youth Club party to which I wore a new dress, white with sprigs of flowers (I felt I was the bee's knees!), and falling on this red sludge during an over-enthusiastic birl in some game or other. Kitchen and toilets were basic, to put it kindly.

Both buildings fell into disrepair for lack of funds and the land was sold to the developers of the present block of flats. It was the proceeds of this sale that enabled the re-structuring of the interior of the church to convert it to a multi-purpose building with extra rooms in the crypt. Tom oversaw all of this and was a tower of strength. Hence "The Muirhead Room".