Hope Street Gaelic Chapel, originally situated at the corner of Hope Street and Gordon Street, was founded in the centre of Glasgow in 1824. It was founded as a quoad sacra parish church (that is a church that didn’t represent a civil parish so it had ecclesiastical functions but no local government functions) to cater for the growing number of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders flooding into the city. In the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 the congregation, minister and building passed into the Free Church. In 1886 the congregation purchased Ewing Place Congregational Church on the corner of Waterloo Street and West Campbell Street and worshipped there until the building was destroyed by fire in 1957. From then until 1971 the congregation had no permanent home until it negotiated a lease of the St Vincent Street Church from Glasgow Corporation. At that point it became known as St Vincent Street Free Church of Scotland.

Partick Free Church first met in 1843 and built a church and halls in Anderson Street. Their first minister, Rev. Henry Anderson, pastored the congregation for 54 years. In 1900 when the majority of the Free Church joined with the United Presbyterian Church to form the United Free Church, the bulk of the congregation entered this union to become known as Partick United Free Church. A small group, unhappy with this course of events, decided to re-form a Free Church congregation. Within a few years it had purchased land at 29 Crow Road and a new church opened there in 1910. The congregation grew rapidly and by the 1930s had a membership of 190. The congregation was severely affected by a split in 2000 when a large proportion of the congregation adhered to the Free Church (continuing) forcing those wishing to remain in the Free Church to leave to find an alternative place of worship. In 2013 those loyal to the Free Church were able to return to the property which they set about modernising to provide the comfortable facilities now enjoyed.

The Free Church of Scotland dates from the year 1843 when, in what is known as the Disruption, over 400 Evangelical ministers left the Church of Scotland over the issue of the interference of the state in the affairs of the church. The Evangelical Party wished to be free of such political control and so called the new church, the Church of Scotland, Free. The Free Church of Scotland, like the Church of Scotland, was from the start, and continues to be, a Presbyterian denomination where each congregation is governed by a Kirk Session of elected elders. It holds the Bible to be the inerrant, infallible and inspired Word of God and the supreme rule of faith and life. Its chief subordinate standard is the Westminster Confession of Faith (which you can read on our Resources page).