Scots Church – North Terrace

Scots Church was built in 1850-51 and was originally known as Chalmers’ Free Church, a congregation of migrant Scottish free churchmen.

The 120-foot (37 metre) spire which once dominated North Terrace was added in the late 1850s and the southern section in the early 1860s.

Chalmers Church combined with the Flinders Street Presbyterian congregation in 1929 to form Scots Church. The original pipe organ installed in the 1880s was sold in 1958 and the present organ from the Flinders Street Church was rebuilt and installed in 1959.

Scots Church is significant for being one of the Colony’s major Free Presbyterian churches and is one of the grandest of those that have survived. It is also the only survivor of the Presbyterian Churches erected in Adelaide prior to Presbyterian Union in 1865 and is the second oldest church of any denomination remaining in the city mile (South Adelaide).