Many Scottish congregations need to make difficult decisions about the future of their building, and – our especial concern – the fate of the stained glass. Church members don’t always know that when a congregation moves it is also possible to move the stained glass.

In 2025 we met at West Kilbride Parish Church, which is a superb example of a Victorian church reordered for modern worship and where the windows were also reordered when they were moved from Overton Church. Our trustee Moira Malcolm described the pros and cons involved in moving stained glass from one Church to another, and her slides showed fine examples of windows being reordered at her workshop, Rainbow Glass Studio in Prestwick.

Our Chair led a tour of the stained glass windows, most of which changed either size or shape when they were moved at the time of the union of the West Kilbride Churches. In the photo seen above, the window on the right has been made bigger by the addition of new borders and new tracery. The two central windows by Gordon Webster were enlarged by incorporating glass by the same artist that was surplus to requirements when Langside Church was rebuilt after a fire.