We were clearing out North Leith Parish Church on Madeira Street late last year. Rummaging through cupboards that hadn’t been opened for decades. The city museums, the Archives Department and Custom House have all taken some items.

We booked a waste disposal outfit to take away stuff of no value. The day before they were due, I was doing a last sweep, not expecting to come across any surprises. And there, at the back of a cupboard, was this apothecary jar, about 6’’ high, with a perfectly fitting stopper. The label reads:

A bottle found in the foundations of

the old Free Church North Leith

upon its being taken down June 1876

It’s not difficult to fill in its history.

North Leith Parish church in Madeira Street opened in 1812. In 1843, the year of the Disruption, it had no minister. The Patronage Act, in force at the time, gave the power to call a minister to a local aristocrat or landowner.

It was an intolerable intrusion into the Church’s internal affairs.

At North Leith the power was in the hands of the ’hail inhabitants’, effectively the male heads of families. This was difficult to organise. Much effort was spent verifying the signatures and identity of the men.

And it was difficult to manage. With two candidates for the post of minister, rival parties formed in support of Mr Davidson and Mr McNaughton respectively. The matter went before Presbytery, the General Assembly, the Court of Session, and back in reverse order. It was a lengthy, exhausting, and unseemly business.

The Church of Scotland can claim a big part in early experiments with democracy in Scotland. But this was never a matter that was suitable for an open, public, democratic process and decision.

Just over half of the elders (nine) at North Leith left, along with probably the same percentage of the congregation (about 600), to become founding members of what was at first known as The Free Presbyterian Church.

Those ministers who remained in what was now the Established Church of Scotland were easily mocked in a popular jingle of the day, as having neither principle nor conscience, determined to keep their stipends, come what may:

The wee kirk, the Free Kirk,

The kirk wi’oot a steeple,

The Auld Kirk, the cauld kirk,

The kirk wi’oot the people.

The newly formed Free Church immediately built a new church only a few hundred yards away at the top of Coburg Street at the corner with North Junction Street. This bottle was put into the foundations, and it opened in 1844.

Indicating the considerable ambition of its founders, the church could hold 1,000 people. In 1857 the energetic new minister, Rev. William MacKenzie, organised the building of a magnificent new church nearby at 74 Ferry Road.

It was completed in 1859, with capacity for 1,100 people. It was known as St Nicholas church, and latterly, following a union with another local church, as St Ninian’s.

The Coburg Street building was demolished in 1876, giving way to a new block of tenements and, at street level on the corner, a bank, now Downes Opticians. It seems that this bottle, found in the foundations, was taken just up the road to the new building.

There are no signs of it ever having been cleaned, nor has there been any attempt to protect the label or the writing. It all suggests it was in the back of a cupboard.

The Church of Scotland eventually got rid of the Patronage Act in 1874, removing the prime cause of the 1843 Disruption. At General Assembly level, the Established Church of Scotland and what was by then the United Free Church of Scotland reunited in 1929.

But there had been much splintering within the Free Church, and reunification did not restore the pre-1843 situation. The more socially conservative presbyterian churches are still self-governing.

St Nicholas, now a Church of Scotland parish, along with many other parishes around the country, remained fully functioning and in place. In 1981 the congregation merged with North Leith and Bonnington Parish Church on Madeira Street, to form North Leith Parish Church.

The St Ninians building was demolished to make way for the Port of Leith (now Harbour) Housing Association block of sheltered accommodation named St Nicholas Court.

It seems that this bottle made the very short journey with the congregation. There it remained unseen and ignored, for forty years, until a few months ago.

At Easter last year the congregation merged with the South Leith congregation in the Kirkgate. We have taken the bottle with us; its third move, and its first trip over the Water of Leith, in 180 years.

Now it’s proudly on display, still blinking in the first daylight it has seen in all that time.

It may well be that it is Leith-made, in the glass works on Salamander Street that survived until 1874.

If so, the bottle has never been outside Leith. ■