2014 marks the community of Clermiston's 60th anniversary. Once grazing land and the farmlands of Buttercup Farm, the area became a thriving residential area in the 1950s.
At the celebrations to mark St Andrew's-Clermiston silver jubilee, Rev. Dr. Ross Mackenzie spoke of his memories of the beginnings of the church and its community:
'In the autumn of 1954 the first congregations walked through mud and dust by new or half-built houses to worship in the wooden hut of Clermiston Parish Church...'
He remarked on the enormous change that had occurred worldwide in the fifties, and how the five years between 1954 and 1959 were particularly remarkable and hectic for the early residents of Clermiston:
'It was important for us because during these years a small community of dozens became scores and then hundreds, a wooden hut without water or electricity became in a true sense home to congregations, political parties, garden club, drama club, Saturday film club, health centre, whist centre, and anything else it needed to be to those who used it. During these five years a boys' club started in the manse garage and expanded to Fox Covert school. The church became a place of meeting for brownies and girl guides, cubs and scouts, Boys' Brigade and boys' clubs. And in one of the best years Basil Spence, the architect of Coventry Cathedral, came to see the first church he had ever designed opened here, with all its colour and life, and its unimpeded view of the Firth of Forth and the peaks of the highlands when the day is clear.
The same kind of thing was taking place all over the country. After World War II enormous new towns and communities spread rapidly over the countryside, when people, more than a million of them in the end were moved from the centre of the cities and large towns of Britain. But this was our town, our time, and our place.'
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