Pulpit

The carved stone heads on the lower part of the pulpit represent the four Evangelists, Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The canopy or ‘sounding board’ over the pulpit is made of cedar wood, from the Invergowrie estate of Alexander Clayhills.

Alexander Clayhills, of Invergowrie House, donated the pulpit and supported the effort to clear debts and furnish St Paul’s Church, enabling its Consecration on All Saints Day, 1865. Clayhills died shortly before the Consecration and was commemorated at this event as ‘a munificent contributor to the Church, a complete gentleman, and a kind landlord to his tenantry’.

Alexander Clayhills was one of the fourteen individuals who donated stained glass windows to St Paul’s between 1855-65, which cost £1,100 in total. He presented the double light window* on the south side of the apse (semi-circular east end of the chancel), above the sedilia, in memory of Lieut. Charles Clayhills of the Madras Regiment, who died at sea in 1836; and the two small windows over the entrance to side chapels in memory of James Clayhills of Invergowrie.

*The right-hand light of this window is of particular interest. It portrays the Ascension of the Risen Lord. You can see Christ’s feet at the top, disappearing into a cloud, with his footprints left on the damp grass below.