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The United Reformed Church was a union of churches from Presbyterian, Congregational, and Churches of Christ background until 2000, when it united with the Congregational Union of Scotland, forming a new United Reformed Church. St. Columba's with New Lendal's historyhas two strands, the building where we meet is that originally built by the Presbyterians in 1879, while New Lendal was built in 1934. The two churches united in 1994.
Mr F.H. Legg has written a history of St. Columba's, and this is given below.
In May 1873 Dr W P Mackay started services in the Victoria Hall, Goodramgate, a hall which in turn served Baptists, Presbyterians, and the Salvation Army until each built its own church. The response to those services was a petition sent to the Newcastle Presbytery "praying to be recognised as a preaching station in connection with the Presbytery" - a prayer that was willingly granted, and a provisional Session appointed with Dr Mackay as Moderator. In its first recorded meeting, the Session enrolled fifteen members - a cause small enough to make it spiritually and financially dependent on Hull. It also owed much to Alderman Hedley of North Shields. For the first two years students David and James Smith conducted the services, with occasional visits from Scottish ministers.. The Smith brothers later became ministers of the church in Grimsby.
In March 1875 the church was raised to full status, and invited the Revd. James Collie from Aberdeen as its first minister. Collie had a great reputation as an evangelist, and certainly made his new church evangelical. He had three week-night meetings for prayer and Bible study, and missions, in addition to the regular Sunday services. The session clerk, William Kirkland, must have found his Sundays exhausting: as well as the two regular services he conducted a Bible class in the afternoon - and a mission in Hungate after the evening service!
Mr Collie was a man of great drive. He became chaplain to the Scots Greys at Fulford Barracks. He also recognised the opportunity provided by York’s growth as a railway centre, attracting Scottish workers with a Presbyterian background. Sites in Davygate, Micklegate and Castlegate were considered before a site in Priory Street became available at ten shillings a square yard. Courage and faith were needed to plan a building holding 700 when the membership was only 100. By late 1877, the plans were accepted and a building fund started. The cost of the land was £6000 - a large sum for a mainly working class memmbership, which did a lot of the work in both schoolrooms and church. Large sums of money came in from the newly-formed Presbyterian Church of England, as well as from other churches in York, and in January 1879 the foundation stone was laid by the Earl of Kintore. On November 6th the building was opened, the first sermon being preached by Dr Donald Fraser, Moderator Elect of the Presbyterian Church of England. It took ten years of hard work to pay off the debts. In 1881 a harmonium was bought to accompany the singing. Mr Collie went from Priory Street to St Paul's, Bootle, and died in 1912. His family presented the three stained-glass windows at the back of the gallery in memory of him.
His successor was the Revd. William Linn from Whitby who was known and loved. He began his ministry in January 1885 - a ministry sadly cut short by his death a year later at the age of 41.
The Revd. Alexander Stirling began his ministry in November 1886. From a steady 100, the membership passed 150 in 1905. In 1892 the Deacon’s Court gave place to the Board of Managers to run the business affairs of the church. The Free Church Council was founded in 1896 and began to draw together the Noncomformist churches. Scottish regiments continued to play a lively part in both services and the social life of the church. The Black Watch band was a great favourite until the tragic day in December 1899 when the regiment was largely destroyed on its way to the relied of Ladysmith.
Mr Stirling was a founder member and chaplain of the St Andrew Society which began in 1894, with the Lord Mayor, Alderman Mackay, as its first President. Our minister has always been chaplain to the Society which visits the church for the annual St Andrewtide service.
In 1905 Mr Stirling accepted a call to the "Wee Free" church at Rothesay, a call not sanctioned by Presbytery during the legal battle between the "Wee Free" and the United Free Church of Scotland. Our new minister as the young and energetic Revd. John McIlvride from Newbiggin-by-the-Sea. By 1910 his lively services had helped swell membership to 250, and by 1914 it passed 300. In 1907 a pipe organ was installed which was so placed that the organist could se the choir, but neglected the need for clear space at the celebration of the Lord's Supper, weddings and funerals. It was moved forward in 1964. A new vestry was built, electric lighting installed, and a congregational magazine started.
In spite of criticism in 1900, by 1914 the Sunday school had 27 teachers and 164 scholars, serving the whole neighbourhood around the church. A Boys’ Brigade Company was founded, and a lively guild provided lectures on a wide variety of topics, as well as debates and amateur dramatics. The Sunday school choir captured a shield by three times winning the schools competition. In 1910 the Royal Scots Greys at Fulford provided the most colourful aspect of the ministry, parading on Sundays in full dress and led by its band from its barracks to Priory Street. In the services the band joined the organist to lead the singing. Anniversaries were celebrated by recitals given to crowded audiences. Prince Arthur of Connaught, Colonel of the Greys, attended service when he was in York. The Greys felt it wasn't fitting that a cavalry regiment should have an unmounted chaplain, and provided a grey horse for the minister on parade. In 1936 a memorial tablet was erected to those soldiers who worshipped in the church in from 1910 to 1914, and especially to those who died in the war.
The Royal Scots Greys on parade after a service in 1911. The church is visible in the top left corner
In 1914 Mr McIlvride was called to Liverpool and his successor was the Rev Herbert Stephenson, a probationer of the Presbyterian Church of England. He became a chaplain and was called to the front, services being taken by chaplains to the forces in York. The church helped to maintain Belgian refugee families, parcels were sent to troops, and the hall was used as a soldiers’ recreation room. When Mr Stephenson returned his main focus was on the young. The King's Missionary Band was started to interest the young in foreign missions. At the end of 1929, Mr Stephenson was called to St Andrew’s Hammersmith and in 1949 became Moderator of the General Assembly.
The Rev William McNaught from Whithorn, Wigtownshire was his successor, and under him the church began to develop a stream of activities that lasted until the Second World War, including lectures on music, literature, travel, natural history and current affairs. Dramatic activity developed and a Social Circle provided mainly indoor entertainment for the young. A library of 300 books was acquired. The Jubilee of the congregation was celebrated in 1925 attended by the Lord Mayor, with visiting preachers, Dr R G Gillie and Professor Carnegie Simpson. 37 East Mount Road was bought as a manse, but it proved an unfortunate choice as few ministers chose to live in it.
Mr McNaught left for Aberdeen in 1927 and was succeeded by the Revd. Roy Whitehorn who had a reputation as a scholar and athlete at Cambridge. He had served with the YMCA in India during World War I, and had been minister in Malaya from 1923 to 1927. The 50th anniversary of the church was celebrated in 1929, minsters Stephenson and McNaught returning to take the services on the Sundays before the anniversary and on the day itself. The Moderator of the General Assembly, the Rev P J Maclagan was the preacher.
1929 saw the start of the slump and it became urgent that the church should develop its social conscience. Dr Temple became Archbishop of York, becoming deeply concerned with the social implications of Christianity. He was the first President of the British Council of Churches, and of the World Council of Churches as it was being formed. The Priory Street church played its part in these movements. For the first time an Anglican vicar preached in its service, in commemoration of the Oxford Movement, and at this time the first talks of Presbyterian-Congregational union were held. By 1931 church membership had passed 350; a new emphasis was given to foreign missions. The Dramatic Society emerged as an independent and ambitious group, tackling full-length plays in the church hall.
Mr Whitehorn left for Oxford in 1933 and, in 1938, was appointed to the Chair of Church History at Westminster College, Cambridge, later becoming its Principal. In 1950 he became the second Moderator of the General Assembly to have been a minister here. New Zealander, the Revd. Malcolm Wilson then came to the church, bringing youth and a fresh outlook to the ministry. He and his wife had great gifts of personality, friendship and an infectious gaiety which soon endeared them to the congregation. All branches of the church flourished and membership reached 384. In York all Protestant churches combined in a ‘Youth for Christ’ campaign as the darkening clouds over central Europe led to an influx of refugees, the church becoming concerned with their relief. It was with a great sense of loss that members heard of Mr Wilson’s decision to return to New Zealand in 1938, later to become Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand.
His departure brought the Revd.William Colquhoun from Kilbarchan to the church in 1939, and was soon facing the problems of war - blackouts and restricted transport being just two of them (one part of the Sunday School met in a private house in Acomb). Whilst numbers were depleted, the war led to a deepening of religious thought. In 1941 the Rev George Macleod of Iona filled a hall at St John's College to overflowing as he spoke on "Worship". The post-war period brought its problems. It proved impossible to revive the Guild, the Dramatic Society, or the Social Circle, and cultural evening activities were meagrely supported. But The Messiah aroused a generous response with nine annual productions including soloists as distinguished as Norma Procter and Janet Baker filling the church to overflowing. Youth activities were revived: Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides all thrived. The church spoke to the world for the first time on Whit Sunday 1956, when the morning service was broadcast. Occasional evening services were jointly held with the Baptist church. In 1955 two of our members left for the mission field: Miss Margaret Barclay to serve in Formosa; Mr Craigie Hay in Livingstonia. The church was enriched by many gifts: a manse in Hobgate, an oil-fired heating system, the moving of the organ console, a baptismal font, the furnishing of the vestibule, and a service of communion plate. Mr Colquhoun brought great dedication to his work; no stranger was unwelcomed, no sick person unvisited. He is gratefullly remembered for his work as chaplain to Fulford Barracks and to Bootham Mental Hospital. Not the least of his assets was his friendship with DrWilliam Barclay. In 1965 Mr Colquhoun was called to the church in Guernsey where he ministered until shortly before his death in York in 1968. His ministry in York had lasted over a quarter of the church's life.
A call was made to the Revd. Alasdair Walker of Blackhill, County Durham, who quickly established himself as both preacher and adminstrator. He was made Presbyterian chaplain to the new York University, Clerk to the Yorkshire Presbytery, and served on several Assembly committees. In 1969 the church decided it was time to have a name, and very suitably chose St Columba - the first of the Scottish saints, from whose monastery on Iona Scotland and Northern England were converted. In 1970 the front interior church was replanned: the old rostrum pulpit was removed, and the choir reseated facing the organist; a new pulpit was made as a memorial to Mr Colquhoun; a new communion table and chairs were a memorial to Mr C B Mein; other chairs were given by relatives of departed members; and the whole area was made more open. Experiments were made in the evening services, some taking the form of dialogues with visiting laymen, followed by discussion. The 1900th anniversary of the founding of York was celebrated in our church with a flower and music festival. Comfortable pew covers for the pew seats were presented by the Ladies Sewing Meeting.
In 1972 came the culmination of ten years' conversations on union between the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Union in England and Wales when, on October 5th, the Union was formally celebrated in Westminster Abbey. The Union was celebrated locally on October 8th when what had been the Presbyterian church and the New Lendal Congregational church met together in a Communion service, and became branches of The United Reformed Church.
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