Glasite Meeting House
Visitors Welcome
The building is open between 9am and 5pm, Monday through Friday. For more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact the AHSS National Office on 0131 557 0019 or email nationaloffice@ahss.org.uk
Office to Let
14.8 sq m, 1-2 people
Please ring the AHSS National Office on 0131 557 0019 for further details or to arrange a viewing.
History of the Meeting House
The Glasite Meeting House was built in 1836 and was used as a Glasite chapel until 1989, when the number of congregants had dwindled from around two hundred to six, and the live-in housekeeper wanted to retire.
The plot at 33 Barony Street where the building stands was bought by the Glasite congregation with the intention to build a new hall to replace the one near Chambers Street that they had previously used. The project was the first commission of the architect Alexander Black and was built to the Glasites’ specifications. They wanted a very simple design that reflected their beliefs, and as the building has not changed much since it was built, we can still see how it was intended to be.
The Edinburgh Meeting House is one of the few Glasite Meeting Houses still in existence. Others can be found in Perth, Galashiels and Dundee, but with the exception of the Dundee chapel, which is now incorporated in halls of the town’s St Andrews Church, the meeting houses are no longer used for religious purposes.
In recent years the Glasite Meeting House has undergone repairs to the stonework and the cupola above the meeting hall. If you would like to learn more about the work, please download the PDF document in the right hand column.
Who were the Glasites?
The Glasites were a Christian sect founded by John Glas.
Glas was born in 1695 in Auchtermuchty, Fife, to a parish minister. He later became ordained in the Church of Scotland himself, however in the early 18th century he began to question the spiritual nature of the Church. His preaching on the subject caused a great deal of conflict, and as a result he was eventually denounced in 1730.
After his parting from the Church of Scotland, Glas continued to preach his ideas and later established his own Church. His followers became known as the Glasites, or Church of Christ. They believed that Christ’s kingdom was purely spiritual and should not be controlled in any way by the State, as it was entirely separate from the earthly kingdom.
As the Glasites based their ideas and practices on the exact words of Christ in the Scriptures, they believed themselves to be the only true Church.
The Glasites ideas began to spread across Scotland, and Glasite Meeting Houses became established in places such as Dunkeld, Dundee, Glasgow, Montrose, Perth, Arbroath, and Aberdeen. With the help of John Glas’ son-in-law, Robert Sandeman, several chapels also appeared in England and as far afield as America, where the followers were more commonly known as Sandemanians.
The Glasites had a very simple style of worship, and their services usually consisted of blessings and psalms sung without musical accompaniment of any kind. Another important element would have been the breaking and sharing of bread. There was no central figurehead such as a minister who conducted the proceedings; instead several Elders were elected from the congregation to fill this role.
Their chosen method of prayer was the ancient one of uplifted arms, and in the Edinburgh Meeting House especially we can see that the places in which they worshipped were often specifically designed to incorporate these practices. The pews in the main hall of the building are very narrow, and do not have space for congregants to kneel in prayer.
The services would have lasted most of the day, the only break being for a meal. This would usually have been kale soup, which gave the Glasites their nickname of the ‘kail kirk’.
While the Edinburgh branch of the Glasites continued until the late 1980s, in America the sect had all but died out by the 1890s, and is now thought to be extinct.
