Cardross Parish Church hosted its first live concert in more than two years as part of their 150th anniversary year – and celebrated a charitable link to the village that goes back more than 120 years in the process.

The night of music featured the Erskine Community Choir with special guest star and Scottish music legend, Alistair McDonald.

The enthusiastic audience were entertained with a selection of traditional Scottish folk songs and some big hits from the world of musical theatre at the venue, home to Cardross’s Church of Scotland congregation since its previous home, on the north side of the A814, was destroyed by a Luftwaffe bomb in 1941.

The concert was also a fund-raising event for the Dr Graham’s Homes charity, which provides and funds education, board and lodgings for around 250 children in Kalimpong, West Bengal, India.

The charity was founded in 1900 by Dr John Graham, who lived in Cardross as a child and later became a Church of Scotland minister and missionary.

Dr Graham was ordained as a minister in the Kirk in January 1889, and just two months later he and his new wife, Katherine, arrived in Kalimpong to work as missionaries, setting up a church, a hospital, a school for boys and a workshop which employed only women, the first time women had been paid a wage for working.

The Homes themselves, constructed over a period of 20 years after the charity was founded and known as the ‘Children’s City’, accommodate around 1,500 children, some as young as three years old and many of whom would otherwise have lived destitute on the streets of Kolkata.

More than £600 was raised for the charity at the concert on April 22.