I am grateful to Mairi Macritchie of Urras na Gearrannan(The Garenin Trust)for the following information which helps me in my obsessive search for the truth about Dalmore Church(Ruins of),as I seem to be the only person ever to have been born on or in the church.Bodach Glass surely believed we stayed in the church,or at least within part of it.After all,it was built for him and he knew "from whence came its stones"
The minister who was transported from Keose in Lochs to take the services in Dalmore was the Reverend Robert Finlayson(Statistical Account of Scotland,Western Isles,1833),but only every 3 months.Dalmore was in the Established Church(ie Church of Scotland),and was in the parish of Lochs.Other than the aforesaid gentleman,Dalmore never had their own minister.This was strange since Carloway(nearby with no church)had in 1833 a population of 901.
The Disruption,when the Free Church came into being,happened in 1843,and only the churches at Barvas and Stornoway remained in the established church.All the others joined the Free Church of Scotland,accounting for almost the entire population of Lewis
The Free Church in Carloway was the first to be built there in 1884,or so I thought,but Mairi tells me that a Free Church was in fact built in Carloway in 1846(near the site of the present church).I don't know if they got their own minister from the outset,or whether they got a stand-in,like Mr.Finlayson,assuming he was now Free Kirk.
Now,we know that the roof timbers of Dalmore Church were removed and taken to Tolsta Chaolais in 1848,which is 2 years after they built the church in Carloway.The church in Dalmore could not now compete,if it ever could.It was a small building(only 60 feet long),out of the way,with only a few "proper"services a year.Its days were numbered in the year 1843.Did the church in Dalmore have elders,and if so who appointed them ? Did they take the services between times,or was Dalmore Church one in name only. Was the church really a big mistake from its inception, about which date I am still obsessing.
Dalmore Daytime
Sandy Beach
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Hi, Donald John
I live in South Shawbost and I'm best known as a weekly columnist in the Scottish Daily Mail, but I'm presently writing a religious history of Lewis and Harris and can fill things out a bit for you. At the Reformation, Lewis was reduced to just two parishes - everything south of a line from Fibhig to the Laxdale River was Stornoway, and everything north of it was Barvas. In 1742, four parishes were recognised - Barvas, Stornoway, Lochs and Uig. Lochs was bounded to the north by the River Creed and to the south by Loch Seaforth, but extended west to include most of Carloway (from Kirivick) and Shawbost. The area from Kirivick to Callanish inclusive was in the parish of Uig.
During the Lochs ministry of Alexander Simson (1761-1830) a "mission-house", or small manse, was built at Carloway for the joint use of the Lochs or Uig ministers on their quarterly visits to their districts in the area. You correctly cite that Rev. Robert Finlayson, Mr Simson's successor, preached once in the Carloway district, every three months (as he reports in the 1833 Statistical Account), but it is most unlikely that was regularly in Dalmore; he is as likely to have preached in a schoolhouse (there were several SSPCK and Edinburgh Gaelic School Society schools in the Carloway district by his time) or, still more likely, in the open air. He does record grimly that no service took place in Carloway save when he was there, and it is most unlikely there were any elders in the entire district.
It took the Disruption of 1843 before anything more systematic and meaningful was done for the souls of Carlowegians.In the first instancem, a Catechist - Kenneth Ross, from Crobeg in South Lochs and an experienced Gaelic teacher and lay-preacher, was appointed. Carloway was recognised as a Free Church "sanctioned charge" in 1844, but such was the shortage of Gaelic ministers that it was 1858 before the first, Rev. John MacLean, fom Islay, was inducted. The first Free Church building was erected in 1846, behind the present one, built in 1884. Mr MacLean was the first of ten Free Church ministers in Carloway to date. The charge was rather reduced in 1893 when the Shawbost people requested disjunction from Carloway (becoming a congregation in their own right in an uneasy alliance with Bragar) and reduced again by the loss of some Tolsta Chaolais and Breasclete families to the new Free Presbyterian Church in 1893, more substantially by the split of 1900 (when the minister and a minority of the congregation joined the United Free Church) and in 1971, when Callanish and Breasclete were hived off as a new, autonomous Free Church charge. Most of the United Free Church, including all its congregations in Lewis, returned to the Church of Scotland in 1929 and it is only from that point we have Church of Scotland ministers in Carloway.
The history of Dalmore is pretty riven by mass-emigration and subsequent resettlement, but we know three things about its church history - bearing in mind that we are really talking about two completely different villages; the pre-1852 community and the post-WW1
community.
First, there was a "church" of some kind in Dalmore, but we know very little about it save its dimensions and really rather recent, c 1820 construction. In his interesting history of Carloway Free Church (The Burning Bush in Carloway, 1984), Rev. Murdo MacAulay (born in Carloway in 19807) writes, "There was a church at Dalmore, which was still standing when I was a boy. It was under the hill at croft No. 5. It is reputed to have been of comparatively recent date. It was an ordinary oblong structure with no features of interest. I was told, as a boy, that after the service, drink and tobacco were sold outside the church. This was a common practice when Mr MacLeod [Rev. Alexander MacLeod] came to Uig in 1824." It was in fact general practice after sermon in the West Highlands until the general Evangelical Awakening, which reached Lewis around 1820.
It is also recorded that the Evangelical movement, which had otherwise overwhelmed Lewis by 1830and was cemented by another huge revival in 1859-60, completely bypassed Dalmore and Dalbeag - to the extent that they were the only villages on the island where no prayer meetings were held, provoking Rev. Alexander MacLeod to speak darkly of "fithich nan Dailean", "the ravens of the Dells."
The only other certainty is that most of the people who acquired Dalmore crofts after the Great War were United Free, or at least relaxed enough to fall in with those who were, for as far as I know all the families there now belong to the Church of Scotland.
In my opinion - based on some evidence and hard hunch - the building in Dalmore was really a schoolhouse, in which religious services were very occasionally held and do not seem greatly to have been appreciated by the residents. A lot of little schools were knocked up by the EGSS over Lewis and Harris in the years after 1811 - usually in hamlets where there was no existing SSPCK school, which would certainly have been the case in Dalmore - and their remit was simple: to teach people to read the Gaelic Bible and, on Sabbath, to encourage the folk to come and listen to the Gaelic Bible being read aloud. After a year or two, the salaried teacher moved on, leaving the school to be run by the township and a suitably trained pupil. EGSS teachers were expressly forbidden to preach or exhort, though.
It seems to me most unlikely, especially as by foot Dalmore is no mean hike even from Carloway, that Finlayson would have been there much, if at all; and, whatever young Murdo MacAulay was told about "drink and tobacco", that story really originates on Lewis from the very corrupt order MacLeod found on his 1824 arrival at Uig. The first Dalmore people were not a religious bunch, it seems, and when they emigrated they took their secrets with them.
Hi, Donald John
I live in South Shawbost and I'm best known as a weekly columnist in the Scottish Daily Mail, but I'm presently writing a religious history of Lewis and Harris and can fill things out a bit for you. At the Reformation, Lewis was reduced to just two parishes - everything south of a line from Fibhig to the Laxdale River was Stornoway, and everything north of it was Barvas. In 1742, four parishes were recognised - Barvas, Stornoway, Lochs and Uig. Lochs was bounded to the north by the River Creed and to the south by Loch Seaforth, but extended west to include most of Carloway (from Kirivick) and Shawbost. The area from Kirivick to Callanish inclusive was in the parish of Uig.
During the Lochs ministry of Alexander Simson (1761-1830) a "mission-house", or small manse, was built at Carloway for the joint use of the Lochs or Uig ministers on their quarterly visits to their districts in the area. You correctly cite that Rev. Robert Finlayson, Mr Simson's successor, preached once in the Carloway district, every three months (as he reports in the 1833 Statistical Account), but it is most unlikely that was regularly in Dalmore; he is as likely to have preached in a schoolhouse (there were several SSPCK and Edinburgh Gaelic School Society schools in the Carloway district by his time) or, still more likely, in the open air. He does record grimly that no service took place in Carloway save when he was there, and it is most unlikely there were any elders in the entire district.
It took the Disruption of 1843 before anything more systematic and meaningful was done for the souls of Carlowegians.In the first instancem, a Catechist - Kenneth Ross, from Crobeg in South Lochs and an experienced Gaelic teacher and lay-preacher, was appointed. Carloway was recognised as a Free Church "sanctioned charge" in 1844, but such was the shortage of Gaelic ministers that it was 1858 before the first, Rev. John MacLean, fom Islay, was inducted. The first Free Church building was erected in 1846, behind the present one, built in 1884. Mr MacLean was the first of ten Free Church ministers in Carloway to date. The charge was rather reduced in 1893 when the Shawbost people requested disjunction from Carloway (becoming a congregation in their own right in an uneasy alliance with Bragar) and reduced again by the loss of some Tolsta Chaolais and Breasclete families to the new Free Presbyterian Church in 1893, more substantially by the split of 1900 (when the minister and a minority of the congregation joined the United Free Church) and in 1971, when Callanish and Breasclete were hived off as a new, autonomous Free Church charge. Most of the United Free Church, including all its congregations in Lewis, returned to the Church of Scotland in 1929 and it is only from that point we have Church of Scotland ministers in Carloway.
The history of Dalmore is pretty riven by mass-emigration and subsequent resettlement, but we know three things about its church history - bearing in mind that we are really talking about two completely different villages; the pre-1852 community and the post-WW1
community.
First, there was a "church" of some kind in Dalmore, but we know very little about it save its dimensions and really rather recent, c 1820 construction. In his interesting history of Carloway Free Church (The Burning Bush in Carloway, 1984), Rev. Murdo MacAulay (born in Carloway in 19807) writes, "There was a church at Dalmore, which was still standing when I was a boy. It was under the hill at croft No. 5. It is reputed to have been of comparatively recent date. It was an ordinary oblong structure with no features of interest. I was told, as a boy, that after the service, drink and tobacco were sold outside the church. This was a common practice when Mr MacLeod [Rev. Alexander MacLeod] came to Uig in 1824." It was in fact general practice after sermon in the West Highlands until the general Evangelical Awakening, which reached Lewis around 1820.
It is also recorded that the Evangelical movement, which had otherwise overwhelmed Lewis by 1830and was cemented by another huge revival in 1859-60, completely bypassed Dalmore and Dalbeag - to the extent that they were the only villages on the island where no prayer meetings were held, provoking Rev. Alexander MacLeod to speak darkly of "fithich nan Dailean", "the ravens of the Dells."
The only other certainty is that most of the people who acquired Dalmore crofts after the Great War were United Free, or at least relaxed enough to fall in with those who were, for as far as I know all the families there now belong to the Church of Scotland.
In my opinion - based on some evidence and hard hunch - the building in Dalmore was really a schoolhouse, in which religious services were very occasionally held and do not seem greatly to have been appreciated by the residents. A lot of little schools were knocked up by the EGSS over Lewis and Harris in the years after 1811 - usually in hamlets where there was no existing SSPCK school, which would certainly have been the case in Dalmore - and their remit was simple: to teach people to read the Gaelic Bible and, on Sabbath, to encourage the folk to come and listen to the Gaelic Bible being read aloud. After a year or two, the salaried teacher moved on, leaving the school to be run by the township and a suitably trained pupil. EGSS teachers were expressly forbidden to preach or exhort, though.
It seems to me most unlikely, especially as by foot Dalmore is no mean hike even from Carloway, that Finlayson would have been there much, if at all; and, whatever young Murdo MacAulay was told about "drink and tobacco", that story really originates on Lewis from the very corrupt order MacLeod found on his 1824 arrival at Uig. The first Dalmore people were not a religious bunch, it seems, and when they emigrated they took their secrets with them.
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