A Brief History of St Michael and All Saints' Church

For nearly a century, the church building was known as All Saints’. Its present unusual dedication dates only from 1965 when St Michael’s Church in Hill Square was closed and the members of its congregation joined that of All Saints’, bringing with them the name of St Michael’s and some of the furnishings from that church.

The All Saints’ congregation was first formed in 1853, when St John’s Church, Princes Street, established a mission school in Earl Grey Street, on the site of the present Methodist Central Hall, and used part of that school building for worship on Sundays. It was soon found, however, that a proper church was required for this congregation, especially so since worshippers at St John’s were not very comfortable with the idea that inhabitants of what was then the slum area of Portsburgh, to whom the mission school catered, should attend St John’s itself.

The present church was begun in 1866 to a design by R. Rowand Anderson (later responsible for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the McEwan Hall in Edinburgh) and opened the next year. What was built in 1866-7 consisted of the present nave and aisles, the transepts, chancel and what is now the St Michael’s Chapel on the south of the chancel. A large steeple was intended to be built at the south west corner but not begun because of lack of money and the west end of the church was finished in rather temporary fashion.

In 1875-76 the west end was finished to a new design (again by Anderson) with the addition of the narthex with a west gallery above. By this time, hopes of raising money for a steeple had vanished and instead there was put up the south west turret which contains the stair to the gallery and, at the top, the church bell.

In 1897 the church was extended by the construction of the Lady Chapel with an organ loft above the north side of the chancel. Anderson was yet again the architect but here he worked in Romanesque style rather than in the early Gothic of the rest of the church.

Since that time, the church has remained structurally the same, although there have been some changes to the internal fittings. These, and the many other interesting features of the church, are outlined in our illustrated and downloadable Brief Tour.