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The History of Holyrood Abbey Church
Holyrood Abbey Church of Scotland has its roots in two nineteenth-century missions begun in the Canongate area of Edinburgh by the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church respectively.
In 1849 the Free Church decided to establish a mission at the foot of the Canongate and a church was opened at the corner of Horse Wynd and Abbey Strand in the following year: Holyrood Territorial Free Church Mission. Its first minister was William Balfour, who was followed after his death by Peter Macdonald (inducted 1896).
Meantime in 1855 the United Presbyterian churches at Broughton Place and Rose Street also opened a mission in the Canongate, headed by William Gillespie. This only lasted 4 years due to poor financial support, but a congregation was established in 1859, and Mary's Chapel UP opened in 1860 with Gillespie as their first minister.
They moved to a new building in Blackfriars Street in July 1871, with seating available for 500 people, and now they became known as Blackfriars street UP Church. Gillespie retired in 1889, and William Allan was inducted as minister in 1890.
In 1895 the congregation left Blackfriars Street to serve as a church extension charge in Abbeyhill in an iron building, as Abbeyhill UP Church; but the foundation stone of our present building was laid on 30 September 1899, and the church was opened on 22 December 1900.
Its name was changed once more, because in 1900 the greater part of the Free Church merged with the United Presbyterian Church to form the United Free Church of Scotland. The congregation meeting at Dalziel Place therefore now became known as Abbeyhill United Free Church.
At the same time, Holyrood Free Church became Holyrood United Free Church. Peter Macdonald died in 1906, and was succeeded by William Young. It was Young who became minister of Holyrood Abbey United Free Church in 1910, when the Holyrood and Abbeyhill congregations united, meeting in the Dalziel Place building (to which the hall was added in 1915).
John Gilmour was inducted as minister in 1920 after Young's retirement, and he oversaw the congregation's move into the Church of Scotland in 1929, along with the great majority of United Free Church congregations. Since then the congregation has remained in the same building and under the auspices of the Church of Scotland, and only three ministries have followed that of Gilmour:
Archibald Russell, who ministered from 1951 until 1958; James Philip who ministered from 1958 until 1997; and Philip R. Hair who was inducted into the charge on 12 June 1998.