seven o’clock the session-house and the church
had been totally destroyed.
A local antiquary records that "the guard being out
going their rounds, had left a fire as usual in the session-house,
without anyone to take care of the premises, when some members of a
society, who were the disciples of Thomas Paine, and who designated
themselves the Hell-fire Club, being on their way home from the club,
and excited with liquor, entered the session-house in a frolic.
While warming themselves at the fire, and indulging
in jokes against one another as to their individual capacity to resist
heat, with reference to an anticipated residence in the headquarters of
the club, they placed what inflammable materials were at hand on the
fire to increase it; and ultimately having, in bravado, wrenched off and
placed some of the timbers of the session-house on the ignited mass,
they could no longer endure the heat, and fled in dismay from the house,
which contained much dry wood, as it was seated like a church.
It was soon a mass of fire, and the flames caught the
church, which was totally destroyed in a terrific conflagration, so that
on the north side of the Trongate, between it and Bell Street, where
Antigua Place in Nelson Street now is, a quantity of hay in stack was
with difficulty saved from the embers, which were wafted through the air
from the blazing church." The steeple, built in 1637, was not, however,
destroyed.
In the following year the present church was erected,
James Adam, one of the architects of the infirmary, being entrusted with
the plans. The remains of the records of the Presbytery and General
Session were afterwards carefully collected; and a fairly accurate
transcription was made of them. The clock dials were lighted by gas
reflectors in the winter of 1821-22, and this is believed to have been
the first steeple in the kingdom so illuminated. The inventor of this
expedient was, says Clelland, "Mr. John Hart, an ingenious and
scientific pastry baker of this city."
