Scotsman Obituaries: Rev Mary Spowart, trailblazing church of Scotland minister

Her intelligence was evident from an early age and she was frequently dux of her year at high school, before going on to teacher training at Jordanhill in Glasgow.

She met and married David Spowart, a minister with the Church of Scotland, when he was on furlough from his post in Udaipur in India. He was still due to serve another five years with the Church of Northern India so they set off for India together in 1952, despite Mary’s qualms about leaving her recently widowed mother and younger sister, Isobel.

Two babies, David and Helen, arrived in quick succession but before David could complete his term, Mary fell very ill with dysentery and on the advice of doctors came back to Scotland with the children.

The family was forced to spend a year apart and it was with relief that they were reunited in the summer of 1957. David accepted a charge in Letham, Perth, where their third child Nan was born. There David built up a thriving congregation and Mary also became heavily involved in church work as well as looking after their growing family.

In 1964, David was called to the Old Parish in Grangemouth.

As well as again becoming fully involved in church life, Mary went back to teaching part-time to help with the family finances.

In the early Seventies, Mary decided to act on the increasingly strong call she felt to become a minister.

She was accepted as a candidate by the Church of Scotland and graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree from New College in Edinburgh, three very happy years later.

At that point David and Mary wanted to share a charge but their offer was turned down by the Kirk so it was decided that David would retire from the Old Parish, where he had worked for almost 15 years, to become an unpaid assistant to Mary in her own charge.

Woman ministers in the Church of Scotland were still very rare and treated with some suspicion in many places, but Richmond Craigmillar in Edinburgh was quick to offer her a post and Mary was ordained there in early 1978.

However, disaster struck early in her ministry when David suffered first a heart attack and then a major stroke. Doctors were pessimistic about his return to mobility but Mary was having none of it. After seeing him make little progress in hospital, she insisted on taking him home, where she nursed David so well that he recovered enough to be able to walk with a stick, although his left arm remained stubbornly useless.

It was a difficult time as Mary was still getting to know her parish, but the greater the obstacle, the more she seemed to rise to it. She managed to combine her nursing with running the parish where the congregation quickly warmed to her unique mix of practicality, spirituality, light-heartedness, frankness and kindness.

She in turn came to admire them greatly for their loyalty, hard work and dependability, along with their readiness to share a laugh despite the difficulties many faced in life.

David recovered enough to be able to take Sunday services at the linked Newcraighall Church and assist at home by doing the dishes (slowly).

After seven years Mary was called to the Church of Scotland in Westray and Papa Westray, where she and David adapted well to island life and made many friends.

The current Church of Scotland minister, Iain MacDonald, said: “She was just universally loved here and her ministry, and also that of David, was greatly appreciated by everyone.

"She got the whole island thing in a way that many folk fail to do and understood that some things have to work differently here. She just rolled her sleeves up and developed a real community ministry alongside folk. A lot has been built on her shoulders.”

Mary and David spent several happy years in Orkney before retiring to a small cottage in David’s beloved Fife.

Here they spent a blissful two years before David’s sudden death of a heart attack at home in 1994 when he was approaching his 80th birthday.

It was a terrible blow for Mary, who at times felt she would never recover, but true to form she refused to give up and went back to the Church of Scotland to offer her services. Now almost 65 years old, she was given a year’s locum post in Shetland, where the people welcomed her and she found solace in her work. Mary returned to mainland Scotland with renewed vigour in time for the birth of her fifth grandchild.

Now in a new home in Coldingham, she continued her ministry, filling in at St Andrew’s in Berwick-upon-Tweed, as well as other kirks in the Borders, where she again became well respected for her preaching and singing.

She retired for good in her seventies but continued her poetry writing and language learning, as well as developing a previously untapped, modest talent for painting.

She died in Kelso cottage hospital on January 18 in her 97th year after a brief illness.

She is survived by her three children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren who were a source of great joy for her.

Obituaries

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