Old Parish Church Guide Book

The Interior of the Church
The photograph clearly illustrates
the spaciousness of the building.
The church can comfortably seat
1,200 people and it is interesting to
note that such a large and beautifully
constructed building was built for
£9,500 in 1885-7.
There are memorials to those
members of the Parish Church who
fell in both World Wars. The First
World War memorials are on either
side of the chancel walls while the
memorials to those who fell in the Second World War are on two large “signet
rings” on pillars on either side of the nave.
The Standards of the Peebles Branch of the Royal British Legion Scotland were
laid-up on the chancel pillars on 15th September 2019, following the closure of
the Branch, believed to have been formed in 1926 five years after the Royal British
Legion Scotland was established in 1921 to assist those returning from the horrors
of the First World War. Following the Second World War and National Service
until the 1960s, branch membership peaked at around 400 in the 1990s, with a
commensurate level of activity providing welfare and comradeship for the exservice
community and remembrance of the armed forces’ service to the nation.
The flags hanging high near the roof of the nave are the Colours of the Peeblesshire
Militia, raised after 1801, during the Napoleonic Wars. It was disbanded in 1816
after Waterloo. Mungo Park, a local doctor and West African explorer was a
member of this militia.
All of the twenty-six stained glass lancet windows in the north aisle, south aisle
and at the west ends of the south and north galleries, are the work of Cottier of
London and were installed between 1886 and 1914. The long west window in the
chancel is a reproduction of a window in a Nuremberg Church. It is also the work
of Cottier and the Life of Christ is the theme of the whole window. At the western
end of the nave, high above, is the Rose Window, also by Cottier.
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