About Us
The history of the Catholic Church in Partick was published as a 48 page booklet in 2008 for the 150th anniversary of the founding of the parish (1).
In 1855 Fr Daniel Gallagher was sent from St Patrick’s Anderston to find a place to say Mass in the West End of the city. Born in Tyrone he was brought up in Blantyre and was thanked in David Livingstone’s autobiography for having taught the famous explorer Latin, enabling him to attend Glasgow University.
Fr Gallagher’s difficulties in finding a place to say Mass are well remembered by the umbrella, still kept in St Peter’s, which was held over his head when the rain penetrated the hut he used in Vine St. It took him 3 years to get the funds to open a church in (Partick)Bridge St. The architect was Charles O’Neill who later emigrated to New Zealand and Australia and is the subject of a biography as the founder of the St Vincent de Paul Society in the Antipodes (2). Fr Gallagher’s successors were John McGuire and Angus MacFarlane who went on to become respectively Archbishop of Glasgow and Bishop of Dunkeld.
By the end of the century the church proved too small and it was proposed to build a bigger church in Partickhill beside the then seminary. However the new and young parish priest Fr (later the legendary Dean) McNairney held out for a site nearer Dumbarton Rd and managed, despite the misgivings of his parishioners, to acquire a substantial site at Hyndland St which would also embrance a school. The laying of the foundation stone of the massive Pugin building in 1901 was among the last acts of Archbishop Eyre who possibly hoped it might one day become the new cathedral.
The old church was turned into a parish hall. It was later used for Sunday Mass until 1945 when it was reopened as a separate parish with the original name of the Apostle, Simon.
When Partick ceased to be a separate burgh in 1912 it had been the most densely populated local district in Scotland thanks to the massive shipping and shipbuilding industry on the River Clyde. The parish clergy were ably helped by the Marist Brothers who had taken over the Partickhill property and the Notre Dame Sisters with their massive Teacher Training College in Observatory Rd. The first Supreme Knight of the Knights of St Columba was the delegate from St Peter’s and the first praesidium outside of Ireland of the Legion of Mary met in the old presbytery in Bridge St. It was also the first parish in Glasgow to host an AA meeting. The senior curate in the 1930s was James Black who became the first Bishop of Paisley. One of his altar servers was “Donny” Renfrew who became an auxiliary Bishop of Glasgow.
St Peter’s had very close ties to the University until a separate chaplaincy was erected in Turnbull Hall. It has always ministered to the Western Infirmary.
Recently the wheel has begun to turn a full circle when Fr Willy Slavin, parish priest of St Simon’s, was asked to become parish priest also of St Peter’s. The immediate need had been to find a bigger place for the Poles who had flooded into Glasgow since 2004 and who like the Irish at the turn of the century had found the little church in Partickbridge St too small for their needs.
The Catholic in Church in Partick 1858 – 2008.
Captain Charles: Engineer of Charity by Stephen Utick
