# St Michael's Church Consecrated in Blantyre (1891)

URL: https://allhistories.com/malawi/timeline/1891-st-michael-s-church-consecrated-in-blantyre
Location: Blantyre, Malawi
Themes: main-event

The Blantyre Mission had been founded by the Church of Scotland in 1876 in the Shire Highlands and named after David Livingstone's birthplace. After a troubled early period, when mission staff were recalled for exercising harsh civil jurisdiction over Africans, the Reverend David Clement Scott reorganised the station and made it a centre of education, craft training and worship. Scott, who had no formal training as an architect, designed a large church in a mixture of Romanesque and Byzantine styles. It was built between 1888 and 1891 by African bricklayers and carpenters, many of them Mang'anja and Yao converts, using millions of locally fired bricks. The church of St Michael and All Angels was consecrated on 10 May 1891, only days before the British government formally declared a protectorate over the region. The church became one of the best-known buildings in Central Africa and a symbol of the Scottish missionary presence in the Shire Highlands. It served as the mother church of what became the Blantyre Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, and it remains in use today as a landmark of the city of Blantyre, which grew up around the mission and the trading stores of the African Lakes Company. At this point in the timeline (10 May 1891), the Commissioner and Consul-General of British Central Africa was Harry Johnston (1 February 1891 – 16 April 1896).

## Why it matters
The church embodies the Scottish missionary foundation of Blantyre and of Presbyterian Christianity in southern Malawi.

Ruler at the Time: [Harry Johnston](https://allhistories.com/malawi/rulers/harry-johnston)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — St Michael and All Angels Church, Blantyre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Michael_and_All_Angels_Church,_Blantyre)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Blantyre Malawi](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Blantyre+Malawi)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Malawi](https://www.britannica.com/place/Malawi)
- [Wikipedia — British Central Africa Protectorate (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Central_Africa_Protectorate)