Saint Margaret

Introduction

The church was designed by James Malcolm Baikie of Kirkwall in 1911. The church is a 5 x 1-bay gothic church of rectangular plan with apsed chancel.

History

The first Mass in Lerwick was said by the Apostolic Prefect of the North Pole Mission. The Apostolic Prefect established a Catholic chapel dedicated to Saint Anne in the cellar of a building opposite the Shetland Times Bookshop.

The official dedication of the church is to the Sacred Heart and Saint Margaret. The Jesuits took on Shetland as a parish in 1954, sending two priests to develop the church. The sanctuary was remodelled in the 1960s and a new altar brought forward. The original glass from the 1911 building was in square panes, later replaced by diamond pane windows.

The church was re-dedicated in 1958 after the Jesuits took responsibility for the parish. The parish covers the entire Shetland Islands and serves the oil and gas industry and ships in Lerwick Harbour.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is built of bull-faced squared and snecked Bressay freestone with polished Eday sandstone ashlar dressings. The church has purple-grey slate roofs with fishscale pattern to the apse. The interior has an open timber roof over 4 pointed-arched trusses bearing on plain ashlar corbels. The church contains a marble memorial slab to Margaret Cruickshanks, benefactress who died in 1910.

The sanctuary has an ornate timber screen fronted by altar with carved relief of Last Supper. The interior has a 2-leaf inner entrance door with vertically-boarded panelling. The interior has diamond pattern glazing with coloured glass to windows.

The Sullom Voe window is made of French hand-made glass, painted, stained and acid-etched, leaded into about twelve panels, with a surface area of ninety-two square feet. The window shows Shetland after oil with a woman carrying a kishie of peats with sheep and Lerwick in the background. The window includes an oil platform in the North Sea and an oil tanker loading at Sullom Voe. The window's background blue represents the surrounding sea and sky, its geometric form symbolising man's controlled harmony with it.

The window's light border shows Shetland patterns with seabirds, fish and seal. The original glass was very plain, laid out in square formation, and weakened by metal hoppers, in a bad way by the 1980s. The parish priest wanted the window to be a memorial to migrant workers and proposed an inscription to the unknown migrant workers who built the chapel during the herring boom and restored it during the oil boom.

Music and liturgy

The first post-Reformation Mass in Shetland was said in October 1860. An Orthodox priest for Shetland, who is also a theologian and parish priest in Aberdeen, visits to celebrate the Liturgy.

The North Pole Mission was established by Pope Pius IX on 8th December 1855, the first anniversary of the proclamation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The North Pole Mission comprised six principal stations, served by eight priests, listed in 1865, including Shetland, Orkney and Caithness, and Lerwick, Shetland Islands. Djunkowsky arrived in Lerwick by sea on 30th September 1860 and established his base at the Zetland Hotel. The first chapel in Lerwick was established in a warehouse (Clark's Lodberry) reached from Sinclair's Beach.

In 1864 the Zetland Hotel building was bought and Mass was said in an upstairs room, accessed from Queen's Lane. A priest was summoned to Lerwick from the Faroes to take charge of the new mission in Shetland, remaining until his death on 30th May 1871. A priest joined the North Pole Mission as a seminarian, was ordained in 1859, sent to the Faroe Islands, then transferred to Shetland within a year, serving eleven years until his death from smallpox at age 39. Three Catholic servicemen whose funerals were conducted at St Margaret's Church between 1939 and 1942 are buried at the Knab Cemetery, Lerwick. Sergeant Richard Denley, an Australian airman killed in a training exercise when his Beaufighter crashed near Quendale, had his funeral at St Margaret's Church on 13th February 1942.

Parish life

There are monthly Masses in Brae, Unst and Fetlar and occasional Masses elsewhere as arranged. The Czestochowa Chapel, located within the Parish Room adjacent to the Church, is available for private prayer.

Alcoholics Anonymous meets every Friday in the Parish Room, 87 St Olaf Street, Lerwick. The parish has a Parish Pastoral Committee with a chair and members. The parish priest has been in charge of the Shetland Parish since June 2017. The Orthodox Community of Saint Ninian meets in the Czestochowa chapel once a month.

Sacraments and pastoral care

The parish has a weekly Sunday bulletin with details of weekday Masses and events, downloadable from the 'Bulletin' page. The parish has a link to the Papa Stour History and Community Group (SCIO). For the first time for centuries in the Catholic Church in Shetland Mass was celebrated on Christmas Eve 24 December 1941, with one Mass at the airport and the other in the chapel at Lerwick.