Below are extracts from a book which was written by David Duncan, our then Session Clerk, to mark the centenary in 1973.

 

“God moves in a mysterious way,” the hymn-writer tells us. “His wonders to perform.” While it might be regarded as presumption to imply that Mure Memorial Kirk was one of the wonders of God’s world, it would not be untrue to say that the conditions in which the Mure Memorial Congregation had its beginnings were predestined when the coal and iron measures of the Central Lowlands of Scotland were laid down some three million years ago.

 

Had there been no iron ore in The Monklands, and had there been no coal seams to justify the sinking of some twenty-four pits in the vicinity of Crosshill – later to become known as Baillieston – there would have been no need of a Monklands Canal to provide a means of transporting heavy loads of iron ore and coal from The Monklands to Glasgow, that hive of industry, where demand for commodities was growing fast. Roads were little more than rutted, muddy farm tracks, and such vehicles as were in existence were quite incapable of carrying the heavy loads involved.

 

This demand for iron ore and coal arose prior to the development of railways, and to the civil engineers of those days a canal was the only answer. The Monkland Canal was a very busy waterway at the peak of its usefulness. Barges, it is said, were almost nose-to-tail all the way from Coatbridge to Port Dundas. As the canal was the only means of east-west transport, it is hardly surprising that a village came into existence on the north bank of the Monkland Canal, just east of the point at which the present Easterhouse Road crossed the line of where the canal used to run. The village, locally known as “The Hole”, was properly named West Maryston and comprised houses which were occupied mainly by miners. The derivation of the name, “West Maryston”, is not clear but is thought to have arisen from the existence of a well, known as “Mary’s Well”, which was one time the source of water for the village. Local tradition has it that Mary, Queen of Scots, rested there and refreshed herself at this well.

 

West Maryston is described by some as “a hamlet”, but reports by those who lived there have it that there were upwards of a thousand people dwelling in the area. Families were large-10 to 15 children being not uncommon, and the village was not confined to one row of dwellings along the bank of the canal.

At any rate, whether village or hamlet, had there been no West Maryston there might never have been a Mure Memorial Kirk, for it was in this village of West Maryston that a small group of people, believing strongly in Free Church principles, resolved to establish a place of worship convenient to their locality. This dedicated group held its first Divine Service in a rented hall in the mining village of West Maryston on Sunday, the sixth day of September, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-three.

 

It was known at its beginning as “Baillieston Free Church”; later as “The Miners’ Church”; as “The Children’s Church”; as “The Iron Kirk”; as “Mure Memorial United Free Church, Baillieston” and now as “Baillieston Mure Memorial”.