Begun in the early 15th century and still with its original oak roof beams, this is one of Scotland's finest medieval parish churches.
The Reformation was far more extreme in Scotland, the destruction of medieval buildings more thorough. The Calvinists not only rejected ornaments in places of worship, but the churches themselves. The Holy Rude is one of the few medieval parish churches to escaped destruction, losing its ornamentation, but the basic fabric of the church survived intact.
"In the Middle Ages picturesque Church Services of all kinds went on almost continuously. Services not only for individual citizens but for the numerous corporations, trade guilds and the like which made medieval burgh life so richly diversified."
"It was the Church which provided such education as was then available; she cared for the poor, the sick and the unhappy; the stranger and the outcast, the refugee from violence or from the cruel penal code of the times."
"We are working to rediscover something of all that - working together in partnership for the common-weal of all the people."
Rev. Morris Coull (Retired)
