Scottish Catholic Observer

Having taken another look at parishes and their significance as forming the very fabric of our Faith, it would seem appropriate to recognise a parish anniversary which will occur in the next few days.

This week, on the feast day of their patron saint, the parish of St Anthony’s, Polmont will celebrate their centenary. It is known to some as St Antony’s Rumford, because the church and presbytery have always been sited there. A choice of title for the parish is hardly surprising in that it serves 12 villages in the surrounding area, each one with its own particular identity. Known in the past as a ‘scattered parish,’ the term used in a geographical sense, St Anthony’s identity could always claim unity as one of its characteristics. It was ‘my parish’ until I was married and moved away. Like many of the present parishioners, much of the history of the parish was related to me by the older generations of my family… And in common with most parishes, its identity was in the detail…

First of all, the topography of this parish is an interesting one. Just outside Falkirk, the ground rises steeply into what could be called a long hill. On that hill, and to either side of it are most of the places which make up St.Anthony’s parish. Westquarter, Redding, Brightons, Polmont, Rumford, Reddingmuirhead, California, Shieldhill, Wallacestone, Whitecross, Standburn, Avonbridge… The area is known to some as ‘the Braes,’ for obvious reasons. There, in hard winters, the snow comes earlier and lies deeper. Rumford, as a roughly central point to this area would seem to have been a sensible place in which to site the church, and later, the presbytery.

A hundred years ago, it was a very small village, with two rows of houses owned by Carron Company, and a scatter of cottages. Employment in the area was plentiful, with collieries at Redding, Shieldhill, Standburn and just beyond Maddiston, at Craigend, which also had a brickworks. A network of freight-carrying railways had also been built across the area and had added to an increase in the general population, many of the workers having come from Ireland.

At first, St Anthony’s church served also as a school. This arrangement continued for several years, it being noted as ‘Chapel and School’ on an Ordnance Survey map of 1920. In the early years of the parish, however, there was no presbytery and the first priest lived in rented premises at Prospect House on Sunnyside Road.

Fr Grant figured prominently in these initial years of the parish. He would seem to have been a man who favoured a direct approach to trouble and was known to have removed his clerical collar on one occasion to make his point more forcibly… According to my grandparents, he was a remarkable priest. After the First World War, the 1920s brought the Depression. Fr McGarvey, then parish priest, a man known for his benevolence and uproarious sense of humour, organised the building of a presbytery and church hall by the unemployed men of the parish. It would seem to have been a huge undertaking, but everybody helped, including the ladies of the parish who provided meals for the workers. Today, the presbytery stands as a tribute to their industry. The hall gave decades of good service before the new church and hall were built adjacent to the presbytery in 1985.

That building work in the 1920s must have been an awesome task, given that a large pond on the site had to be drained before a brick could be laid. The young people of the parish were said to be rather disappointed, as one of their favourite recreations was to skate there in the winter.

In 1937, Fr McGarvey, then canon, went to Kilsyth and Fr Thomas McCann came to St Anthony’s as parish priest. A native of Denny, he was an accomplished musician, having trained as a lyric tenor while a seminarian in Rome. He was also a pianist of professional standard and was said to have chosen the priesthood rather than a career as a musician. There began a period of richness in church music at St. Anthony’s… Fr, later Canon McCann remained in St Anthony’s until his death in 1975, the year of his golden jubilee in the priesthood. As a small child, I used to look forward to his visits, because he would play our piano and sing nursery rhymes to me. He introduced me to music…

I was born in Rumford, in a house that was yards from the gate of the church. It was a busy place. Morning Mass, with a daily Catechism class for the children attending the local school, this because the nearest Catholic school was in Falkirk. There was Rosary and Benediction on Thursday evenings, two Masses on Sunday, the second one being a Missa Cantata, the choir singing Plainsong with the occasional piece of Palestrina. Sunday Catechism class was at three o’clock on Sundays, followed by Children’s Benediction. At 6:30, there was Rosary and Benediction. On the first Sunday of every month, we had Holy Hour. Forty Hours Adoration took place once a year and in Lent, Stations of the Cross and Benediction took place on Tuesday and Thursday.

There were May and October Devotions. Most of the parishioners relied on public transport at that time. Others cycled or simply walked all the way to church. One way or the other, in fair weather or foul, summer or winter, the church was well attended, more often than not with capacity congregations. And those parishioners in the immediate area, and if the wind was in the right direction, as far away as Standburn, were always reminded of their duties by the ringing of the church bell…Fifteen minutes before Thursday, Sunday or Holiday of Obligation services began, the bell began its single, dignified peal. Five minutes before, and there was urgency in a double peal which sometimes brought the sound of running feet.

The Angelus was rung three times daily, at 7.30 in the morning, at noon and at 6pm. Nellie Higgins lived in a little house just opposite the church and rang the church bell for a lifetime. It was said that the belfry had been added to the church after the First World War and that the bell was in memory of the fallen. The ringing of the Angelus punctuated our lives. And if our distant memories can be likened to a series of snapshots, one of them still very clear in my mind’s eye, is of my Irish grandfather, in his garden, pausing to remove his cap as the Angelus was rung, and of us saying the words of St Luke together…

For me, these snapshots of the memory are many and varied. Some track a childhood, a youth, where the church was the axis on which lives turned, where faith formation was a natural progression of growing up. Others carry sounds… of laughter, applause, dance music. These three things came from a church hall which seemed to be constantly occupied by people enjoying themselves… wedding receptions, parish socials, dances. Our back window was very near the church hall. When I was supposed to be asleep, I used to perch at that window and listen to the distant dance music coming from it.

There was laughter too, when the Concert Party came from St Alexander’s, Denny. Singers, dancers, Hughie Lumsden, a comedian who ‘could make a cat laugh’ and Mr McCafferty, Denny’s answer to Frank Sinatra.

The parish had a lively social life. I do not remember a parish Committee as such, but there must have been an organising group to oversee all these things. Beneath it ran an unchanging routine. Weekly collections were handed to the passkeeper in the porch on Sunday mornings and immediately noted in the Collections Book. And name by name, district by district, they were read out the following Sunday… every Sunday. As a child, I loved the cadences of that recital of names and gave up nursery rhymes for a while to recite parts of the collections instead, announcing once to visitors.

“I think I’ll stop now. I’m stuck at Whitecross…”

Money was not mentioned in church. Collections seemed to be paid in total, and on time. During the Second World War, Polish troops were stationed at St Margaret’s, a former boarding school in Polmont. They became part of the parish, supported its activities and, at the end of the war, a number of them married in St Anthony’s and stayed on.

But before the Polish troops left, they gave a beautiful parting gift of an ikon of Our Lady of Częstochowa—known as the Black Madonna—to the parish. It was gifted to Carfin in 1985.

Now and then, we had the help of a curate, and now and then, a youth club was formed, but my memory is of young people, teenagers, being encouraged to participate in the life of the parish… singing in the choir, helping with the Sunday Catechism class, taking up the collection on Sunday afternoons, showing the Nazareth House nuns round the parish on their annual visit.

Certain parishioners claim a place in the memory too… Johnny O’Donnell, who set up the crib every Christmas, and worked magic with crumpled brown paper and concealed light bulbs. His crib was a labour of love and a work of art.

The musically talented Forsyth family, father and son Jocky and Hugh both gifted pianists, Hugh latterly with his own dance band stayed in memory. They made a joyful and toe-tapping contribution to parish life. There were many others, all of whom gave unstintingly of their time and talents. And that giving continued in the years of the building and opening of the new church, with Mrs Scullion’s fundraising still remembered.

Here was a real community… a community which looked after its priests. My grandfather cut the parish priest’s hair, mended his boots, tended the presbytery garden till well into retrial years. He was passkeeper, too, for what seemed a lifetime… and was in charge of that famous Collections Book. There were many who served in similar ways. He is only one example of the help given unstintingly by parishioners.

But this was a parish that was constantly developing, moving with the times. During Canon Hanlon’s tenure, which began in 1975, the planning for a new church began, new and successful initiatives were set in place and another phase in the history of St Anthony’s began. House building in the area which began in the 1960s meant that the parish had grown and the old church was no longer adequate for its needs. Canon Hanlon retired, his health failing, in 2009 and died in 2012. Recorded as having 1300 parishioners the parish is linked, at present, with St Francis Xavier’s, Falkirk.

The parish has produced three priests. The first, Fr John Sweeney, studied at Blairs College and at St Patrick’s Seminary, Carlow, Erie, where he was ordained on June 2 1932. He said his first Mass in St Anthony’s the following day. Fr Norman Cooper ordained in more recent years, served in Falkirk in the early 1980s. Sadly, he died in a climbing accident on the Cullins just a few years later.

Fr Charles Carr served in Stirling and later went to Fauldhouse as parish priest. He is now retired and is resident in St Anthony’s parish.

In 1985, a former parishioner with a special interest in history, came to pay farewell visit to the old church. He had travelled from the London area. The church had been cleared out and among the discarded items, he came upon the wooden baptismal font. On an impulse, he took it, managing to cram it into his car. Carefully wrapped, it is still in storage in the south of England… a part of the past. Or could it be a part of the future?

Fr John Sweeney was my uncle. I am family custodian of his papers, of his letters to his parents. The latter carryconstant mention of St  Anthony’s parish, of the people there, of those who offered him support and kindness on his way to the priesthood, such as Martha Alison, who sent extra postage stamps and writing paper to him when he was at Blairs College.

A copy of his address to the parishioners after his first Mass reflects this gratitude for support once again and is a measure of their generosity. Fr John spent most of his priestly life serving in Cape Town. During the Second World War, he was an Army chaplain for Allied troops, first in North Africa and subsequently on hospital ships plying between North Italy and Southampton. After the war, he returned to Cape Town. He died there barely three years later.

And so, as St Anthony’s, Rumford, Polmont reaches,         its centenary, it typifies that which makes our parishes so significant, so essential to the Faith in times where it would seem to be constantly threatened. It is an example of one of the Church’s great strengths… the parish community with its own strongly defined identity. May it grow and prosper in the Faith.

— This story ran in full in the June 14 print edition of the SCO