Publication Account

Date 1978

Event ID 1018042

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018042

Rutherglen parish church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was assigned to Paisley Abbey sometime before 1189. Paisley Abbey maintained patronage of the church until the Reformation when it passed first to the Hamiltons of Elistoun and then to Daniel Campell of Shawfield (Ure, 1793, 80). The Norman church as it existed in Ure's day measured about sixty-two feet (19m) in length and twentyfive feet (7. 6m) in breadth, the walls being four feet (1. 2m) thick and twenty feet (6. lm) high with ten pillars - five on either side of the church - supporting it (Ure, 1793, 80). The choir which extended thirty-three feet (10.lm) to the eastern tower, virtually the only relic of the medieval church to survive, had been removed at a date prior to 1793. The tower itself was built in the fifteenth century or early sixteenth with the steeple and clock both added at later dates. The eastern gable of the medieval church with Norman masonry can be traced on one face of the tower. A small, scattered number of Norman capitals, which once formed part of a garden rockery (Shearer, 1922, 32), lie at the tower's base, dangerously exposed to the elements. A seventeenth-century lych-gate forms the first entrance to the church which stands near the present Town Hall on the North side of Main Street. The first known reference to the churchyard is in a 1262 charter of land granted by Cecilia, widow of John de Perthec, to Paisley Abbey. This land is described as lying 'inter cemiterius ecclesie Sancte Marie Virginis et aquum de Clud' (Pais. Reg., 1832, 377).

Information from ‘Historic Rutherglen: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1978).