St. Ninian Cathedral (Perth, Scotland)

In 1689, the Scottish Episcopal Church was dissolved by decree of William III , and all its churches were either transferred to the ownership of the Presbyterian church , or were closed, or transferred to the Presbyterian rite. In 1848, several young Scottish aristocrats and students at Oxford University decided to revive the temples of the adherents of the episcopal church. London architect William Butterfield took over the development of the Perth Cathedral project. To finance the design and construction by subscription, 5751 pounds were collected, of which less than 150 pounds came from citizens of Perth, most of them from the families of Lord Forbes and from the Honorable George Boyle. This amount was only enough to build the altar, one span of the nave and the northern wall. Nevertheless, on December 10, 1850, the consecration of the cathedral took place. The bishop of the diocese, His Grace Patrick Torrey, who was already 86 years old, was too weak to be at the head of the ceremony, so this case was entrusted to His Grace Alexander Penrose Forbes of Brikina . Patrons wanted to dedicate a temple in honor of the Apostle John (presumably considering this as a kind of retaliation to the Presbyterians who consecrated the church in the village of Kirk Hammerton in honor of John the Baptist ), but Bishop Torrey ordered the name of the cathedral in honor of St. Ninian , which brought the gospel message to Scotland in V century. That was the first church dedicated to this saint in Britain after the Reformation . The stained glass windows designed by Butterfield designed by Alexander Gibbs were installed in 1876 on the east window. They depict "Sitting on the Throne" from Revelation 4: 1. The first abbot of the cathedral, Torrey, had great sympathy for Catholicism, which was completely unacceptable to his Grace Charles Wordsmith, who was elected successor to Torrey after the death of the latter in 1852. In the first thirty years of the cathedral’s existence, the number of its parishioners rarely exceeded twenty, but with the appointment of Rev. Vincent Rorison in 1885 as church rector, church attendance increased. In view of this, it was decided to complete the project of stained glass by William Butterfield and to conduct a small reconstruction of the towers at the western end, which was done in 1890. All stained-glass windows added subsequently were executed by Burlison and Grylls.

• Cathedral page on the official website of the Scottish Episcopal Church