The early Barony Church, which was established in a crypt was mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy.

The part of the vaults thus occupied, though capable of containing a congregation of many hundreds, bore a small proportion to the darker and more extensive caverns which yawned around what may be termed the inhabited space."

One of the Church's own ministers, Dr. Norman McLeod, is reported to have advised Queen Victoria that it was "the ugliest Kirk in all Europe".

Church attendees decided to return to St. George's Tron, others to Dennistoun Blackfriars and many came back to the place where Barony originated from, Glasgow Cathedral.

An article in the following day's Glasgow Herald made no direct comment on the building but focused on the sermon by John Caird, the Church of Scotland minister and Principal of the University of Glasgow, in which he "dealt with art in relation to worship, stating that it was weak and foolish to identify purity of worship with ruggedness and baseness of form".

[4] The church was in use for over 100 years, but the congregation dwindled rapidly from the 1950s onward after the Townhead CDA was established and the mass demolition of surrounding homes took place to make way for the Royal College of Science and Technology's growth into what is now the University of Strathclyde.

The last service was held on 6 October 1985 and all the Castle Street buildings were acquired by Strathclyde University in 1986, making it the third church in the area to be acquired by the university and its predecessors - it having already purchased the Ramshorn in 1983, and St. Pauls Church on Martha Street had been purchased by the Royal Technical College in 1953.

[1] The development, designed by David Leslie Architects, cost £3.4 million, with sums received through grants and hundreds of private donations.

[5] The war is also marked by a memorial to the dead – a plaque bearing 125 names connected to the church at the side of the stage in the Great Hall.

A Bach-style organ, the first of its kind to be commissioned in the UK, the instrument is designed for performances of Bach's music in its original form and has since been played in numerous concerts and recitals.

The bellows feed air blown by foot pedals, as happened in the Baroque period, or can be worked electronically.