Tour Scotland wee video of old photographs of Kilmacolm a village and civil parish in the Inverclyde council area, and the historic county of Renfrewshire. The parish church in this Scottish village was mentioned in a papal bull of 1225, indicating its subservience to Paisley Abbey and sits on the site of an ancient religious community, dating to the 5th or 6th centuries. The character of the village changed significantly in the Victorian era with the arrival of the railway in Kilmacolm in 1869. Many of Kilmacolm's modern buildings were constructed between this date and the outbreak of World War I. The white painted church with a tower was built in 1830 by James Dempster of Greenock, on the site of 13th and 16th century churches. James Dempster was born in 1797, the son of James Dempster, master joiner, and his wife, Elizabeth McFarlane. He practised as an architect and land surveyor in Greenock. Dempster was involved with a number of the town's works, he was involved the layout of a park developed from land given by Sir Michael Shaw Stewart in 1852, and must have been reasonably prosperous as he bequeathed money to the ragged school in his will. James Dempster died on 19 July 1867. He was single. Jim Kerr of Simple Minds and Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders were residents of Kilmacolm as was Gerry Rafferty in the 1970s.
