Township: Balemartine

Map Reference: Balemartine b

Name Type: church

Meaning: Balemartine Baptist Church

Other Forms: Baptist Chapel - ONB p218, "a small building situated at Balemartine and capable of accommodatinng about 120 persons."

Related Places:

Information:"The church found itself with meeting houses which were far too small for the numbers who wished to attend...In the autumn of 1854, therefore, the church set about rebuilding the Balemartine meeting house and the congregation moved temporarily to the local schoolhouse. In September 1854 [John] MacFarlane [the local pastor] was able to report progress to the Baptist Home Missionary Society for Scotland as follows:
'The wall of our chapel is finished, and I trust the roof will be on in the course of a fortnight or so. The size of it is forty feet by about twenty four. It will seat about 300 people.'
He explained that the cost of erecting the new chapel was met by subscriptions and voluntary labour:
'We have subscribed £40 in this island itself, besides the quarrying and driving of the stones by the people gratis, the cost which would come to another £40.'
When the building was complete MacFarlane found that it was still not big enough:
'Our chapel, though it seats about twice as many as the old meeting house, is by far too small to contain all the people on fine Sabbaths....We are grieved that, as the chapel cost us so much, we did not make it larger.'" Donald E Meek, Island Harvest, Tirree Books, 1988, p12.

Local Form:

Languages : Gaelic

Informants: multiple