PARISH HISTORY

The face of the countryside sometimes changes radically from one century to another. The Nether Ward of Lanarkshire is an extreme example of such a thorough transformation. A look at any old map, made before the Nineteenth century, shows Lanarkshire as a countryside of small villages, hamlets and farms, and so it had remained from the Middle Ages. In a few localities such as Rutherglen, Hamilton, Douglas, Biggar Carnwath or Bothwell fragments of Medieval churches still show where important religious centres of the pre-Reformation church had been, but by the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, the once flourishing Medieval Catholicism of Lanarkshire had long since faded to a memory of the historic past and only a few isolated Catholics were to be found here and there. An account of the civil parish of Bothwell, written in 1836, claims that, while the total population of the parish in that year was 6,581, only 118 of these were Roman Catholics.

Section of a Seventeenth century map showing the Carfin district. The section 'Caerfin' can be seen in the centre of the map

In the first half of the Nineteenth century, however, spectacular change affected both the scattered Catholic flock and the very landscape of Lanarkshire. Beneath the orchards and garden and pasture-lands of the Nether Ward of Lanarkshire, lay hidden immense treasures of coal and iron ore, and with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, this wealth must be exploited and, as a result, the population of the county increased in an altogether unprecedented fashion. The cotton mills of Robert Owen's New Lanark become a show piece, visited by progressive industrialists and social reformers: the furnaces lit up the night sky and darkened the day sky with their smoke: the turning wheels of the pit-shaft became a familiar sight as the cages rose and sank. Clachans became large villages and villages grew into bustling towns, and the rural scene gave place to Scotland's industrial belt.

The Industrial Revolution coincided with the tragic exodus from famine-stricken Ireland and the Clearances of the Highlands. The effect on the Catholic Church in Lanarkshire was spectacular. The new villages and towns of the Industrial Revolution now counted their Catholic congregations by the hundred or thousand. The bishop who then had charge of the Catholics in Lanarkshire - the Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of Scotland - was faced with a well nigh insoluble problem. From all sides urgent demands for churches, and above all, for schools. One can follow roughly the rapid expansion of Catholicism in Lanarkshire with a few dates: the new church of Saint Andrew in Glasgow was opened in 1816 and was, for a time, the only Catholic church in the county. The year 1836 saw the opening of Saint Margaret's, Airdrie, and Saint Mary's, Hamilton, followed in 1846. St Patrick's, Coatbridge dates from 1848 and, in 1859 came Saint Mary's, Lanark; Saint Athanasius, Carluke and Saint Ignatius', Wishaw thereafter. Till the end of the century, new churches were opened every few years.

When the Mission of Wishaw opened in 1859, its extensive territory contained a number of new villages where the Catholic population was increasing day by day and where there was urgent need to establish schools and churches. The Rev. John McCay, who was in charge of the Wishaw Mission, tackled the problem with vigour, and 'stations' for catechism and Mass were established in several villages throughout the district. The village of Carfin was one of these Mass-centres.

Carfin was typical of a score of villages in the northern part of Lanarkshire. Up to the early Nineteenth century, it had been a mere hamlet. In the mid-Nineteenth century coal-mining, brick-making and other industries were firmly established in the district: the coal-masters and other industrialists built houses for their workers in Carfin until the hamlet had completely altered in size, appearance and population. The plan of the village shows its general arrangement from the latter part of the Nineteenth century down to the time of the First World War. The houses, built of brick or local stone, where of the 'miners' row' type, common all over the industrial belt of Scotland.

The Reverned John McCay who as a young man founded the Carfin Mission in 1862

It was no easy task for the Rev. John McCay of Wishaw - 'Jock the Builder' - his people affectionately called him - to open any new mission-station for his poverty-stricken Catholic flock, in those days of vigorous animosity. The difficulty of the task is illustrated by a notice written by Father McCay in 1861: 'Carfin - A school-house is much required here. An application for school accommodation for the Catholic children, who attend no school at present, was lately refused on the ground that Catholic schools are where "idolatrous superstition and damning delusion" is inculcated. With the sum of £150, a school-house, having the government requirements for 100 children, can be built. A Protestant has promised £10 with a site. Will any Catholic lend a helping hand?'

In the following year, 1862, Father McCay decided that, even without a school or other building, Carfin should be established as a Mass-centre and, in that year, he began saying Mass on Sundays in Carfin. Local tradition has preserved the fact that these Sunday Masses were celebrated in the house of the O'Neill family, which was the end house in the 'Bellerophon Row' (this was the site of the old church). The memory of that hallowing was popularly preserved in the name 'The Ghost House' by which the O'Neill's house was known to the later generations. Confessions were heard and Stations of the Cross conducted in another house, that of Mrs, Kerr (or Carr) some 200 yards nearer Carfin Cross.

In 1863 Father McCay was given an assistant to help him in the care of his widely-scattered flock, and this assistant, Rev. George McBrearty, must be the Wishaw curate, whom Carfin tradition remembers as having walked one day, in the rain, over the rough country road to Carfin and sat down before Mrs. Carr's fire to dry his sodden boots. Sally Carr noticed that the soles were worn through and saw to it that the word was passed round the generous-hearted families of the village street, with the result that the embarrassed curate went home with more than enough to buy a strong pair of new boots.

The main street in Carfin in 1899. Showing on the right typical brick-built 'rows' and on the left the Saint Francis Xavier School built in 1897

The same year, 1863, saw the building of a chapel-school at Carfin. The 1894 Handbook of Motherwell tells us that the new chapel-school was opened on 23^rd August 1863, and informs us that the 'opening services were conducted by Rev. Joseph Small, Dunoon.' This priest, a native of Hamilton, was a young man full of zeal, who had recently built a church at Dunoon and was now busy building another church at Largs, but was destined to die at the early age of 27, in the typhus outbreak in Greenock in 1864. Father McCay refers to the new school-house in the Catholic Directory of 1864, 'Carfin - a commodious School-house has been built there within the past year. The Protestants of the neighbourhood subscribed generously towards it. Average attendance at Day School is 160.' The Protestant subscribers would be the coal-masters and industrialists who normally were anxious to improve the condition of their employees. The school-house was used, of course, on Sundays for catechism and Mass, and at this period the Mass vestments were kept in the nearby Brady family home.

The titular saint of the new mission-station was chosen in the following year, 1865: Saint Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary was a choice surely influenced by the dedication of the mother-church at Wishaw to Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The notice which appears in the 1866  Catholic Directory tells us a little more about the services held at this new chapel-school, 'Carfin, Saint Francis Xavier's, 1862. Sittings 400. Attended from Wishaw, Mass on Sundays and Holydays at 10 o'clock. Confessions during Lent and Advent and within Octaves of principal Feasts, on Fridays at 4pm.'

Quite evidently Catholics in Carfin were not prepared to rest on their laurels, because a new notice now appears in the Directory and is repeated for several years, 'The clients of Saint Francis Xavier's Church are hereby specially requested to build a handsome new Church here.' And in 1869, the further progress is reported in the 'Day Schools at Wishaw and Carfin, in which three certificated teachers and ten pupil teachers are engaged [there is an] average attendance of 450.' The first Head Mistress was Miss Jane McCool, who was succeeded by Miss Seyers.

All round, the ecclesiastical scene was changing: in 1871, Rev. James Gilmour took the place of Rev. George McBrearty, as curate in Wishaw, and, in 1873, a new mission-station, also served from Wishaw, was established at Motherwell which in the course of time was to become the cathedral parish of the modern diocese.

After being served from Wishaw for twelve years as a mission-station, Carfin was cut-off from Wishaw and formed into a separate mission in 1875. The first priest to take charge of the new mission of Carfin was the Rev. Thomas Moran, and Irish priest, who had been ordained in 1873 and spent the intervening years as a curate in Wishaw, no doubt with particular charge for the Carfin district.

Reverend Thomas Moran

The new priest-in-charge came to reside at Carfin: the chapel house of that day was a 'but-and-ben' on a site once occupied by the previous Reliquary Chapel in the Grotto (now used by the Gardening team of the Scottish Training Foundation). The 1876 Catholic Directory discloses that the Carfin Mission was in full working order, 'Sittings 500. Rev. Thomas Moran, 1873. Mass on Sundays at 10 and 12. On holydays at 10. Confessions on Saturdays before first and third Sundays of the month at 11 and on vigils of principal feasts at 4pm. Schools - Sunday school, attendance 400. Day school, under certificated teacher, attendance 240.'

They say that in Carfin the staple diet provided by the housekeeper was not to Father Moran's liking. Anyhow, he left Carfin after a brief period and went to stay with his brother, Father John Moran, who was the resident priest at Chapelhall, and for a few months Carfin was looked after from there. In 1876 Father Moran took up residence at Cleland where he started building the much-needed Chapel-School and he attended the Carfin-Cleland mission from that centre. From 1876 until 1890 Carfin appears in the Catholic Directory as a station, attended from Cleland.

Saint Francis Xavier's Church about the year 1900. Right to left are the Chapel House built by Father Cunningham (see below); the Church built in 1892; the small white building is the original Chapel-School and on the extreme left is the school built in 1897. The view is taken from the ground now occupied by the Grotto

The had been for several years, talk of a new church for Carfin, but an entry in the Catholic Directory of 1892 gives us some information about the inauguration and progress of this enterprise, 'A beautiful church in the Early Gothic style, designed by Messers Pugin, Westminster, was commenced at Carfin in June last, is now (November 1881) being roofed and slated and will be ready for opening about the end of Spring. It will accommodate around 700 and will cost nearly £1,700. It will be dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier, a relic has been presented by a Priest to the Rev. Thomas Moran for the church. Funds to complete the building are greatly needed and the Priest-in-charge appeals confidently to the charity of the faithful.'

The building of the new church of Saint Francis Xavier at Carfin was completed and solemnly opened on 2^nd July 1882. The description of the church is given in the Catholic Directory, 'It is Gothic in design , of the early decorated period, and contains nave, chancel, to side chapels and sacristy and porch. At the South end are three long single-light windows, with trefoil heads and quatrefoil panels below the sills. The gable finishes with a belfry, having a bell 4.5 cwt., surmounted by a stone cross. The side windows of the nave are lancet in form and the chancel has a circular windonw filled with tracery. The nave is divided into eight bays, with an open timber roof. Two bays at the south end are filled with an organ-gallery, 22 feet in depth, with front of monumental wood-work. The length of the church in 88 feet, width 34, height from floor to apex 35 feet, to top of cross 62 feet. The interior is handsomely finished and decorated.

The interior of Saint Francis Xavier's Church

The High Altar and reredos, admirably executed by Messers P.J. O'Neil and Co., Dublin, are of Caen stone; the table, pillars and other parts, of Sicilian, Galway and Cork marbles. The panels on each side of the tabernacle have quatrefoil carvings of the four Evangelists, and on the panel under the table of the Altar - 5 foot 6 inches by 3 feet 4 inches - is a group of figures representing the death of Saint Joseph. The seats are of varnished pitch pine and the windows are glazed with small quarries in tinted cathedral glass. The opening services took place on Sunday, 2^nd July, when the Church was crowded to its utmost capacity. The leading Protestants of the district were present. High Mass coram Archiepiscopo (in the presence of Archbishop Eyre of Glasgow) was celebrated by the Rev. F. George OSF, Glasgow, and the sermon was preached by the Rev. F. Daly OP, Dublin, who also preached in the evening to a dense congregation. The offerings during the day amounted to about £100.

Shortly after the opening of Carfin's new church, Father Thomas Moran returned to his native land to work for another thirty-nine years in the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, and he died on 6^th November 1921, as Parish Priest of Newcastle and Fourmilewater.

Rev. John Hughes

Father Moran's place as pastor of the Cleland-Carfin mission was taken by Father John Hughes, a priest from Co. Kilkenny, who was ordained in 1877, and who had served, in the intervening years, as assistant priest in the Airdrie mission. Father Hughes resided at Cleland and was often on the road between the two villages either 'in horse and gig' or striding along in tightly-fitting black coat and soft hat, with a large blackthorn stick. He devoted himself wholeheartedly to the welfare of his people. We hear of him climbing up to the belfry to muffle the bell because it was wakening the night-shift miners trying to sleep during the day. He started new societies and gave new impetus to the already-established ones. He organised the Carfin branch of the Catholic Health Insurance Society and the local branch of the Total Abstinence Society.

Father Charles Cunningham

However, the administration of the double mission was difficult even for an energetic man like Father Hughes, and even the experiment of having a curate at Cleland, in the person of Father John Cameron during the year 1889, did not really solve the problem and the result was that, in 1890, Carfin once again became an independent mission with its own resident priest, Father Charles Cunningham. The territory of the mission form this date down to 1946, included not only the village of Carfin itself, but in the northeast, the village of Newharthill and, in the north west, the village of New Stevenston, and it extended along south west Motherwell Road as far as the River Calder. Father Cunningham, the new pastor of the Carfin Mission, was a native of Glasgow, who had studied at the Scots College, Rome, and had been ordained there in 1885. After his appointment to Carfin he lived for a time in the Old Chapel House and for a time in a house in Rankin's Building at Skree Street, until the present Chapel House was built. It was with regret that the people saw him depart in 1896 as the priest-in-charge at the Linwood mission in Renfrewshire.

The next priest who took charge of Carfin in 1896 was Father Thomas Smith, a native of Dumfries, who had been ordained by Archbishop Eyre in Glasgow in 1886, and had spent some years as assistant priest at Kinning Park and as priest-in-charge of the mission at Dalry in Ayrshire. The urgent task awaiting Father Smith was the provision of a new school to replace the original Chapel-School. This new school, a two-storey building, accommodating 400 children was completed in 1897. By the time the school was completed, Father Smith had fallen victim to the disease, creeping paralysis, which was soon to prove fatal. For a time, in 1898, he had the help of a curate, Father Michael Ahern, but towards the end of his life he was almost entirely crippled. It is recalled how Father Smith attended two Catholic miners after an explosion in 1900, at the Blackie Pit near Holytown Station, and, so badly crippled was he that he had to be supported by two men. Father Smith died at Carfin on 20^th June 1900. There was a solemn Requiem Mass which was attended by a great number of clergy from all over the Archdiocese of Glasgow. The statue of the Sacred Heart, still used in the church at Carfin today, was set up as his memorial by his disconsolate flock.

It should be mentioned that, during Father Smith's term office as priest at Carfin, a young man, the son of Martin Connolly, went off to become a Franciscan lay brother - the first of many vocations from the parish - and the pulpit in the old church commemorated that family.

Father Charles Webb

To succeed Father Smith, Father Charles Webb came to Carfin in 1900. Father Webb, a native of Brighton, had been ordained by Archbishop Eyre in Glasgow, in 1898, and had experience of pastoral work both a Saint Patrick's, Coatbridge, and at Saint Andrew's, Glasgow, before he was appointed as priest-in-charge of the mission of Carfin. To satisfy the needs of the greatly increased Catholic population of the mission Father Webb had to provide three Masses each Sunday morning (8am, 9.30am and 11.15am). For this he required the assistance of a curate, and Father John O'Dea, newly ordained, from Ireland, came to Carfin. Father O'Dea was at Carfin for only four years but in that time he did much to stimulate the social life of the village. The Gaelic League (to encourage the retention of the Gaelic language) was introduced to Carfin. Father O'Dea returned to Ireland in 1904, to be followed to Carfin by two curates of German birth, Father William Orr (1904-1906) and Father Gisbert Hartmann (1906-1911). Father Webb was transferred to the mission of Cardowan in 1908, but before he left Carfin he made an important purchase: he secured an acre of waste ground opposite the church which, in due course, became the site of the Lourdes Grotto.

Father Denis McBrearty

One of the first acts of Rev. Denis McBrearty, who took charge of the Carfin mission in 1908, was to purchase an additional piece of ground and build on it a new entrance of the school to supply increased accommodation for three hundred pupils. In 1915 Father McBrearty was transferred to Saint Aloysius', Springburn, where he was to remain the pastor for over thirty years.

Father Thomas Taylor

To succeed Father McBrearty was Father Thomas Taylor, who would guide the destiny of Catholicism in Carfin for many years - almost half the hundred years of its existence until its centenary in 1962 Born in Greenock, after completing his studies for the Priesthood at Saint Sulpice Seminary in Paris, he was ordained in 1897, by Cardinal Richard, Archbishop of Paris. For fifteen years, 1900-1915, he lectured on Sacred Scripture and Ecclesiastical history at Saint Peter's College, Bearsden. During these years Father Taylor embarked on one of the great enterprises of his long career, the spread of devotion to Saint Therese of Lisieux in the English-speaking world, and when the preliminary investigation was held at Lisieux, in 1911, in preparation for the process of canonisation, Father Taylor was one of the principal witnesses to the remarkable devotion shown the Little Flower. In the following year, he published an influential translation of the saint's autobiography, and this was only one item in a large-scale publicity he was conducting on behalf of the saintly Carmelite of Lisieux. Father Taylor was already one of the most widely-known Scottish priests. The parish to which he came was going through its most difficult period. The tragic upheaval of the First World War had affected Carfin like every other community in the Western world: families had lost their fathers and sons in the slaughter, and the Lithuanian exile who came to settle in Carfin bore witness to the martyrdom of their nation.  After the war came something even worse, the economic breakdown which left the greater part of the wage-earners of the community without employment and with their families well nigh destitute. There was much need of charitable work of the Saint Vincent De Paul Society, a branch of which was set up in Carfin by Father Taylor in 1919.

Even this bleak period had its bright moments, as when Bishop Toner of Dunkeld in 1920 ordained to the Priesthood at Kinnoull Monastery, Perth, Rev. James McQuade CSSR, the first priest to be ordained from the parish.

In 1922 another project was inaugurated by Father Taylor, the famous Lourdes Grotto of Carfin, which has grown to such proportions that, in the eyes of outsiders, it has almost completely eclipsed the parish of Saint Francis Xavier. The story of the Grotto will be told in its own page on the website. 

The provision of educational facilities still continued. In 1927, a school was provided for the education of Catholic children in New Stevenston, thus further consolidating the Catholic community in that area and helping its eventual development into a separate parish. In Carfin itself the school, built in 1897, had become dilapidated and insecure because of subsidence of the ground and was completely replaced by a new school in 1934.

There was in fact a great deal of building work done in the group of parochial buildings in the 1930s. The original Chapel-School was transformed into the Little Flower Hall and connected to the Don Bosco Hall by the small Rosary Hall; confessionals were added to the church and an extension made to the Chapel House. In 1937, on the site of the original chapel-house, there was erected a Chapel of All Saints to house the extensive and unique collection of relics, used in the Relic Processions in the Grotto.

The vitality of Carfin expressed itself in many ways but particularly in the number of parishioners who have been called to the Religious Life. A list of priests and lay brothers and sisters from the congregation is available elsewhere on this website. Father Taylor was appointed to the Cathedral Chapter of Glasgow in 1937 and the to the Cathedral Chapter of Motherwell in 1949. He became a Domestic Prelate to His Holiness in 1952, being given the title 'Monsignor'. For several years (1948-1952) he was the Scottish President of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith.

During Monsignor Taylor's time as Parish Priest a number of Assistant Priests served the Parish of Saint Francis Xavier - these are listed elsewhere on the website.

1962, the centenary year of the parish, was marked in a range of ways. The parish church was crowded for a Holy Hour at 11pm on the 31^st December 1961, to ask God's blessing on the New Year which was approaching and, as midnight was approaching, the parish choir welcomed the centenary with the strains of Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus' and the church bell announced to the whole village that the year of thanksgiving and rejoicing had begun. The Parochial Renuion, held a few days later on 3^rd January 1962 in the Little Flower Hall, had to be repeated on 10^th January because of the numbers who wished to take part in it. A Mission was preached in the parish from 1^st-15^th April by the Redemptorist Father - it was calculated that there were around 14,000 Holy Communions received in the fortnight. A centenary dance had to be held in Saint Bride's Hall, Motherwell because of the numbers wishing to attend. The annual parish outing took 1,400 parishioners to enjoy the sea breezes at Ayr. The parish also sent three invalid parishioners off to Lourdes on the 11^th July during the centenary year. The centenary was marked with a Pontifical High Mass celebrated by Bishop Scanlan on 23^rd September.

Father George Mullen

After a lingering illness Monsignor Taylor died at Carfin on 1^st December 1963, in his ninetieth year. On 2^nd April 1965 Father George Mullen was appointed to Saint Francis Xavier's as the new Parish Priest. The parishioners would soon learn that his mandate from Bishop Thomson was for a new church to be erected at Carfin. The task entrusted to Father Mullen was one in which he had much experience; as an assistant priest at Saint John Bosco's, New Stevenston, and later as Parish Priest of Saint Bride's, Bothwell, and again at Saint Andrew's, Airdrie, he served his apprenticeship in raising parish funds.

The exterior of the new church

The interior of the new church