My First Visit To Eaglesham Church

A Memory of Eaglesham.

My first and last visit to Eaglesham church was when i was a schoolboy at lawmuir agricultural school in nearby Jackton. I must add that lawmuir was a boarding school in those days, and pupils went there on a voluntary basis, all paid for by Glasgow corporation education department, the idea was that we had half a days schooling and the other half working on the farm, the school was split into two different groups, giving the farm work a full days cover, we boarded for a fortnight at a time, and went home every second week-end, leaving one group of lads to help milk the cows, feed the pigs etc, over the week-end. our resident headmaster seemed to think that our spiritual needs required some education, so he decided that those of us who were not required on the farm, should scrub up, put away our copies of the News of the World, and pay our respects to the local vicar and his parishoners during their mid-morning service, baring in mind we were a bunch of glasgow lads from all areas of the city, who only ever went to church to be christened, married or buried, even under these circumstances very reluctantly,
fortunately it was a nice spring morning as we had to walk from Jackton, to Eaglesham, there was about twenty of us walking double file, and the teacher a Mr. Macindoer, a no nonesense Islay man, who i beleive may still live in eaglsham to this day, was the man in charge of us that fateful morning. The nearer we got to the church, the more nervous we got, most of us had never seen the inside of a church, let alone go to a service. We finally arrived at the entrance and Mr Macidoer lined us up and warned us of the dire consequence, and wobetide, any of us who should step out of line and show not only the school up, but, him in particular, he did not want to be there any more than we did, no doubt he was a god fearing man who probably was a churchgoer, but, he certainly did not want to be in charge of the riff raff of glasgow youth. We were led into the church by Mr Macindoer, and Eaglesham, being the godfearing place it is the church was full,
all except for two rows of pews that had been reserved for us, to a man all eyes were on us, we felt as though we had invaded their holy land, our nervousness began almost immediately we sat down, there was a few giggles, that Mr Macindoer
soon put a stop to, but, even he could not contain our mass hysteria when during one of the psalms a large lady with a voice so shrill and off key, that we all went into fits of giggles that just could not be contained, the more our teacher tried the worse it got, it was infectious through all of us, somehow we got to the end of the service, and Mr Macindoer could not get us out of there fast enough, and we were all of the same mind...escape. The strange thing was he never said a word to us all the way back to the school, perhaps he was afraid of what he might do to us if he vented his anger, then again it was not our idea to go to church, after all we were not choirboys.........needless to say church service was never mentioned after that,
and it was back to the good old News of the World on a sunday morning......heaven.
I would just like to add that I would love to get in touch with any old boys from back then at Lawmuir, and any of Mr McIndoers family.