Saint Joseph's Church, Broomhouse

Introduction

The parish of Saint Joseph's Church, Broomhouse, in Edinburgh, opened for worship on Easter Sunday 1950. The present church at Saint Joseph's, Broomhouse, was built in 1953.

The building of Saint Joseph's Church, Broomhouse, was meant only to be temporary and was first designed as a hall. The official name of the parish is Saint Joseph's, Sighthill, although the church stands in the middle of Broomhouse.

History

Saint Joseph's was not always meant to occupy Broomhouse Place North. A decision to build on the corner of Calder Road was withdrawn because Traffic Control might not cope with large congregations leaving onto two main roads. Wartime restrictions postponed the church, with a temporary hall to be built on the plot set aside.

The diocesan archives hold no documents about how the site of Saint Joseph's was selected. People of Parkhead and Sighthill gave one shilling a week to the Building Fund. German prisoners of war from the camp at East Calder at one time belonged to the Murrayburn congregation. Parishioners found the new church walls already half-way up, almost in Corstorphine and as far from Parkhead as Saint Cuthbert's.

After Saint John Ogilvie's, whose foundation stone was laid in summer 1977, opened in 1978, Sunday attendance at Saint Joseph's fell from about 500 to just over 250, and the other 250 became parishioners of Saint John Ogilvie's. Friars of the Order of Saint Augustine served the parish for 25 years from 1995 to 2020.

The sixth parish priest arrived in October 1995 and established Saint Joseph's as an Augustinian parish. In 2001 an ordination to the priesthood, only the second in the parish's history, took place in the church after the ordinand chose Saint Joseph's for it. In September 2020 care of the parish was handed to the Society of Saint Paul.

The parish gives particular attention to members who cannot attend functions in the church. The parish undertakes care of the sick and weaker members of the community. A book of remembrance is kept at the back of the church.

Architecture and furnishings

The sanctuary was altered for the modern liturgy by removing the altar rails, opening it up and replacing the altar. A false ceiling was installed, with rafters leading the eye to the crucifix above the altar.

In 2008 a new hall was built because church land was taken for housing, the outside of the church was renovated, and a new entrance door and porch were constructed, the hall becoming an extension of the church. The sanctuary received a baldacchino over the altar, a new red carpet, linoleum up the aisles, and proper seats in place of the old wooden benches. A statue of Saint Joseph the Worker, established as patron of the parish, was bought for the church. Stations of the Cross were specially commissioned from the French artist Gabriel Loire, who also designed the Stations in Saint Mary's Cathedral, Aberdeen.

For the Golden Jubilee in 2000 a stained glass window was installed at the side of the church. A sign above the door proclaims "You're a stranger here, but once".