St Conan's Church

Finally managed to get to St Conan's today , just a short journey , about half an hour away but everything seems to have been working against us getting there last week, This morning we woke uo to snow on the hills and certainly heading over to Loch Awe there was a lot of snow on the side of the road.

Any way I thought you might like some info on this strangely beautiful and definitely unique building. Took so many shots today , wish I could show you Helen Campbell sister of the builder , designed and painted the stained glass window herself. The window is very large , I reckon it measures about 15 to 20 feet in diameter.

Saint Conan's Kirk Loch Awe
Although St. Conan's Kirk has already acquired a certain air of antiquity and a considerable reputation as one of the "show places" of Argyll, it is in fact quite modern, so modern that in its present form it was dedicated for worship as recently as 1930.

Nevertheless the story of how it came to. be built is not without interest. Up till the '70s of the last century, although the road from Stirling to Oban passed along the north shores of Loch Awe, there were practically no human habitations between Dalmally and Taynuilt. But the arrival of the railway made the loch less inaccessible. The Hotel was built, and a certain Walter Douglas Campbell, younger brother of the First Lord Blythswood, bought from the Marquis of Breadalbane the Island of Innischonam, on which he built for himself a stately mansion-house. Here he settled with his sister Helen and his mother. Local tradition has it that the elder Mrs. Campbell found the long drive to the parish church in Dalmally too much for her, and that her son accordingly decided to build her a church nearby.

Walter Campbell was a man of many talents, all of which he devoted to the kirk. He was a most capable if somewhat unorthodox architect, a collector of objets d'art and a skilled woodcarver.

The original church, which was begun in 1881 and finished about 1886, was a comparatively small and simple building, although adequate to the needs of the small congregation. It occupied what is now the nave, and a part of the choir of the present kirk. But Walter Campbell was not satisfied with this. He began to dream of a far nobler building.

He started work on this in 1907, and devoted the rest of his life to its execution. He died in 1914, and work had to be suspended during the First World War; but as soon as it was possible, his sister Helen carried out the plans which he had left. She in her turn died in 1927, and the project was finally completed by their Trustees. Work was necessarily slow, for not only was no labour brought in from outside, but the stone of which the kirk was built was not quarried, but consisted of boulders lying on the slopes of the hill above, which were rolled down, split and shaped on the spot.

Walter Campbell was his own architect. He did not allow himself to be trammelled by convention or orthodoxy. Although most of the kirk is in a Norman or Romanesque style, he included not only early and late types of this but other and totally different styles. He was more anxious to achieve beauty than consistency. Rumour even has it that he deliberately tried to include examples of every type of ecclesiastical architecture found in Scotland, and this is perhaps borne out by the circle of Standing Stones at the entrance gate.