The congregation which built their new church in Fountainhall Road in 1897 had begun in the Bethel Chapel in the High Street in 1828, and moved to the Cowgate, before the restrictions of that site set the congregation to move to the developing suburb of the Grange. In 1958, the congregation united with the neighbouring congregation of North Mayfield.
The building was demolished and the Newington library was built on the site. Fountainhall Road Church is commemorated by a bench in front of the library and by donated benches in the garden of the library in memory of a former member of the church.
Churches – personal memories
| In the 1930s Allotments at Blackford were superseded by the Reid Memorial Church, which we watched being built. Later Fountainhall Road Church was amalgamated with Mayfield and the building demolished and replaced by the present Newington library. Sundays were much more strictly observed than now. My grandfather, a convert of Sankey and Moodie, the American evangelists, served as a missionary in China, and was deeply religious. His diaries of the 1920’s and 30’s recorded the exact text and a resume of the sermon preached at Warrender Church. From the age of seven I walked with my family to the Church in the morning and again in the afternoon for Sunday School: No gardening was done and a general quietness pervaded the household: I do not remember ever resenting this: swings at the Meadows were tied up to prevent their use, and last year when I passed at noon on a Sunday and heard the noise emanating from the circus, I paused. Perhaps the Scottish Sabbath was too strict, but has the pendulum not swung too far? Maud Harrison – July 2003 |