In 2016, on the Solemnity of our Patron, St Andrew, our parish celebrated our sesquicentennial: 150 years of the present Roman Catholic community being officially recognised as a parish. 150 years of responding to the call Our Lord issued to St Andrew and to us: Follow me!

We had existed long before 1866, of course, from the times of the Celtic saints. After the Scottish reformation, a new chapter in our story began when Irish immigrants began to arrive on Bute looking for work in the early 1800s. Heroic priests (many from the Catholic Highlands) and parishioners, both devout and generous, sometimes with the support of munificent landlords (Kames and Bute), reestablished churches, schools, convents and the community that
exists today as St Andrew’s Parish, Rothesay: faith-filled, generous, ecumenical and forward-thinking. We have much to be proud of, much to be grateful for, much to build upon.

We don’t know many details of those founders of the parish in 1866, but these pages attempt to tell something of the story of which they, and we, are a part.