The first signs of Christianity coming to what is now the parish of Beith were through St. Inan who is reputed to have come over from Iona, to which island St. Columba came from Ireland and set up a monestary. In those early days there was no building where the people could assemble to worship or to listen to St. Inan. He preached to the people on the Bigholm Hills. There is a rock formation known, even until today, as St. Inan’s Chair, which, it is reputed, he used as a pulpit. Near St. Inan’s Chair there is a stone, known as the Rocking Stone, (which no longer rocks), and is thought to have been the site of pre-christian worship. This is most probably true as the first christian missionaries in Scotland usually began their work as near as possible to the spot where pre-christian rites and ceremonies took place, evidence of this being Druid’s graves near the Rocking Stone.
! Commonplacing
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