Bowden & Melrose Parish

Bowden & Melrose Parish Church


Melrose Parish Church		Bowden Kirk

On the 11th January 2007 the congregations of Melrose Parish and Bowden Parish were uniting to form Bowden & Melrose Congregation. This is a congregation with two places of worship under the Ministry of Rev A G Bennett.
Sunday services are held at Bowden Church at 9.30 AM and at Melrose Church at 11.00 AM.
Since the Service of Union there have been initial discussion on how this website will be revised to reflect the new congregation and the activites surrounding the two places of worship. This site has started to adopt some of the changes in taht the calendar, magazine and duties are now included for the new combined congregation. However some of what follows is the pre-union website for Melrose Parish Church, where much of the material is still applicable. Intorduced is a link to the details that already exist regarding Bowden Kirk as detailed on the Bowden Village Website.

The Parish Church is located centrally in Melrose on the Weirhill. This is a Church of Scotland congregation and offers a welcome to all its members, visitors and those new to the community.

Along side the Parish church the town also has the Roman Catholic High Cross Church, and the Scottish Episcopal Church of Holy Trinity.

The Parish Church endeavours to provide a service to all the community, both member and non-member alike. The buildings are in almost daily use by the people of Melrose and in the following pages we hope to provide information on the many ways in which the Parish Church forms a vital part of the Community.

The Church in the area has a long and interesting history. For those interested in more detail CLICK here.

For any person or family new to the area the Church also publishes a small leaflet about the churches in the town and the various community services, all with useful contact numbers. Should you wish to receive the leaflet please send an e-mail stating your name and address and the fact that you would like a newcomers leaflet.

Roof Refurbishment 2007
A major refurbishment of all the roofs at the Melrose Church is now successfully completed. Major funding by Historic Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund with additional funding by Berwickshire Community Councils ' Forum Environmental Group, the William Hill Trust, the Scottish Churches Architectural Heritage Trust and the Baird Trust, Glasgow has made this possible.

Historic Scotland Logo Heritage Lottery Fund Logo

There was of course a large input from Church funds together with a special appeal fund from the Congregation.
Completion was achieved by the end of 2007, even so there are still some questions:

What happened ?

What is the benefit of the work?

Was it done on Budget ?

Do we need more donations?

All are questions which may still be going around the congregation and community. Well Alastair Matthews the Fabric Convenor, was able to answer most of these questions some few months back and it may still be of some interest today.
To get the full story click here and read his report in the previous Church Magazine.

VISITORS BOOK
We would be delighted to know who is visiting the Church's website and we would encourage you to use the e-mail* link to give us your name and any message that you would like to leave the congregation. We will endeavour to periodically update the visitors book page with this information.

* In submitting your details you are in effect providing your explicit consent that the webmaster may enter these details into our electronic visitors book. This visitors book is freely visible to anyone on the internet. (This notice is included to comply with the Data Protection Act 1998 of the United Kingdoms)

To access the Visitors Book entries click HERE.

Scottish Charity No: SCO 06480