St. Paul's Church

St Paul's Church was built in 1807, and was the first new church in Perth since the middle ages. Perth's population rocketed during the 18th century, from about 9,000 in 1755 to nearly 20,000 in 1793, so the old parish church of St John's was severely overcrowded, despite being split into three congregations. During the construction of St Paul's, iron rings were found in the stone walls of the Lade, showing where barges had been moored in earlier times.

Nowadays, most of Perth's population lives in the suburbs, and St Paul's has become redundant. The last service was held in 1986, but the building still dominates the High Street with its octagonal nave.

High street, looking west to St Pauls 1841

St. Paul's Hospital

On the south side of Old High Street, just west of New Row, was the Chapel and Hospital of St Paul, founded in 1434. The site is now occupied by Victorian buildings, but in the 1860s a vast amount of human bone, probably from the chapel graveyard, and a well were discovered during work on the site.

Hal o' te Wynd House

This is an interesting early 18th-century private house in Mill Wynd, preserved and incorporated into the rear of the Clydesdale Bank in 1979, and fancifully linked to a character in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Fair Maid of Perth. Some of the oldest buildings in Perth are in the early suburbs, where they have escaped the more frequent modernisations in the medieval core of the burgh.

Grant Miller Memorial Hall

This neat little building was originally (1839-1929) a meeting place of the Glasites, a small, independent denomination founded in the early 18th century by John Glas, former Minister of Tealing, near Dundee. It later served as a church hall for St Paul's, and more recently as a fitness club.

The Glasites were nicknamed locally as "The Kail Kirkers", from their habit of eating meals together, after weekly communion. John Glas was connected by marriage to the well-known Sandeman family in Perth, so his movement was also known as the Sandemanians.

Old High Street

Medieval Perth was one of the few walled towns in Scotland. The western wall of the burgh ran roughly along South Methven Street, with a wet ditch just outside it. The ditch, or Town's Lade, still exists underground as a stone-lined culvert, passing under St Paul's Church.

The High Street crossed the town defences at the Turret Brig Port, then continued along Old High Street and Long Causeway. Despite its name, Old High Street was originally outside the burgh, but the western suburb around New Row began to develop as early as the 1180s. The buildings along Old High Street today are all 19th century or later.

Clydesdale Bank

The building at the north-west corner of South Methven Street and High Street, now McCash & Hunter Solicitors, was originally the North of Scotland Bank, whose coat of arms adorns the facade. Later it became the Clydesdale Bank. The Clydesdale Bank's move up the street to new premises gave an opportunity to excavate the new site in 1979, when traces of 14th century timber buildings were found, just outwith the town ditch. The present Clydesdale Bank is one of Perth's few consciously modern building designs.

St. Paul's Church - Old High Street