Browse Items (658 total)

The first written records for Leuchars Parish Church date from the 1180s. However, there may have been Christian activity here at an earlier date. The eastern end of the church has a remarkably fine Romanesque apse and chancel, with elaborate…

A Free Church congregation was established in Leuchars in the 1840s, in the immediate aftermath of the Great Disruption. During the 1890s the church was substantially rebuilt. In 1900 the congregation joined the United Free Church. Following the…

Balmerino Parish Church opened in 1811. Previously the residents of Balmerino had worshipped at an older church in Kirkton of Balmerino. In 1838 Balmerino Parish Church was described as ‘a plain building without any ornament’. However, in the 1880s…

The burial ground towards the southern edge of Kirkton of Balmerino reflects the site of the old parish church. According to local legend the parish church moved here from Balmerino Abbey in 1611 because the aristocratic family who then owned the…

Balmerino Abbey was founded in the 1220s by Queen Ermengarde and her son Alexander II. The new monastery at Balmerino was a Cistercian community, and was established with the assistance of monks from Melrose Abbey. Balmerino was a relatively small…

There seems to have been a parish church at Flisk as early as the 1170s. The medieval parish church survived into the late eighteenth century, before eventually being demolished and replaced by a new building constructed ‘near the site of the former’…

There appears to be the remains of a chapel in the southern section of Flisk Wood. Its origins are uncertain. James Gordon of Rothiemay’s 1642 map of Fife appears to show two churches at Flisk. The western one is labelled ‘Flisk Kirk’ and appears to…

Creich and Flisk Free Church was founded in the 1840s. The congregation was established by Dr Taylor, who had formerly been minister of Flisk Parish Church, but left the Church of Scotland during the Great Disruption of 1843. Following the union of…

There is thought to have been a chapel located slightly to the east of the ruins of Ballinbreich Castle. In the 1840s it was noted that ‘the foundations of an ecclesiastical edifice’ could still be seen here. It is possible that this was the site of…

Dunbog Parish Church was constructed around 1803. It had seating for 200 people, and in the 1840s had on average about 135 communicants. At this time the minister of Dunbog described the church as being ‘in excellent repair’. Similarly the early…

Today all that is visible of Dunbog’s old parish church is a small abandoned graveyard near Dunbog House. There was a church on this site from at least the twelfth century through to the beginning of the nineteenth century. For much of the Middle…

The origins of the ruined chapel at Ayton are unclear, although it has (probably incorrectly) sometimes been thought to be the same site as a chapel granted to Arbroath Abbey in the 1170s. A church is shown at Ayton on James Gordon’s manuscript map…

The building now occupied by Newburgh Flooring is widely believed to have once been a church. In reality for much of its history it appears to have functioned as a church hall. In 1885 John Livingstone paid for the construction of a stone hall for…

The west end of the former Livingstone Hall. (Source: Open Virtual Worlds / University of St Andrews)

On the east side of Clinton Street stands Newburgh’s United Reformed Church. This building has a complicated denominational history. In the early 1840s over a hundred people who disagreed with the congregation at the former Burgher Church on Clinton…

There were some Episcopalian families in Newburgh in the eighteenth century. However, they do not appear to have had an official place of worship. In the 1890s a small Episcopal Chapel was built on the corner of Abbey Road. In the 1920s a peal of…

For several centuries St Katherine’s Church (which was formerly located on the north side of the High Street) served as Newburgh’s parish church. The church is first recorded in 1470 when it was described as ‘the chapel of St Katherine the Virgin’.…

Newburgh Parish Church was built in the early 1900s. It originally served as the United Free Church. The building was designed by the Dundee architects Patrick Thoms and William Wilkie (who had then newly gone into partnership together). In 1929 the…

Lindores Abbey was founded in the late twelfth century by David, Earl of Huntingdon. The earl had recently fought in the Third Crusade and established the abbey to give thanks to God for his safe return to Scotland. Lindores was a Tironesian…

A Burgher Church was built on the west side of Clinton Street in the 1780s. The Burghers were a break-away movement from the Church of Scotland and enjoyed considerable support in Newburgh. In the 1790s the local Church of Scotland minister commented…

The Baptist Chapel on the north side of the High Street in Newburgh was built in the early 1880s. It replaced an earlier chapel on a wynd on the south side of the same street. The funds for the new building were largely raised by James W. Wood, who…

In 1808 a Baptist chapel was founded in Newburgh. The congregation was established by Archibald McLean, who was leading figure in the Scotch Baptists (a group which developed in Edinburgh in the eighteenth-century and was rather more hardline than…

The hill known as Mares Craig was for many years a stone quarry. In the 1920s a Celtic handbell, of the type associated with early medieval religious foundations, was discovered here, along with a considerable number of dressed stones and lime…

Abdie and Dunbog Parish Church opened its doors in 1827. It was built to replace Abdie’s medieval parish church. The architects for the new building were James Milne and William Burn. In the 1830s the new church was described by the minister of Abdie…

There has been a parish church at Abdie since at least the 1190s. For most of the Middle Ages the rectorship of Abdie was held by Lindores Abbey. The abbey benefited from income from the parish, and in exchange appointed a vicar who was meant to take…

The Buckhaven Church of God was formed as a breakaway from the Open Brethren in 1986. They are an evangelical organisation part of the global organisation known as the Churches of God. The church is still active.

Jehovah’s Witnesses were first established in Buckhaven in 1971, moving into a building constructed c.1900 and previously occupied by a group known as the Church of Christ. The building underwent significant renovation in 1980, and is still in…

The Buckhaven Christian Fellowship moved into the building on Institution Street in 1969. It had formerly been a United Free Church constructed in 1934. The Fellowship were a Pentecostal Church, originally known as the Assembly of God. The group had…

A corps of the Salvation Army was first launched in Buckhaven in 1897, fell into abeyance and but was re-founded in 1936. They met in Mullin Hall until 1978 when they moved to their current site in Michael Street in a former telephone exchange. They…

Buckhaven’s Baptist Church was formed in the early 1900s as part of a wider revival moment in Fife. The earliest mission began in November of 1908, with a church formally founded in 1910. This early congregation had 20 members and met in the…

In 1901 a Church of Scotland ‘chapel at ease’ was established to serve the inhabitants of Buckhaven. Constructed in St Michael’s Street, it became a full parish church in 1929, and was known as Buckhaven Parish Church until 1972 when there was a…

After the Great Disruption of 1843, adherents of the Free Church in Buckhaven initially attended the church in East Wemyss, before the decision was taken to form a separate congregation in the town in 1866. About 140 members of the church at East…

By 1869, the congregation of the United Presbyterian Church on Buckhaven Links took the decision to construct a new, larger, place of worship on Church Street. The new building, called St David’s, was capable of seating 860 people and built at a cost…

In 1739 a Buckhaven resident and one of the elders of Wemyss Parish Church, Mr John Thomson, seceded from the Church of Scotland with a number of others and joined the Burgher Church. They attended first Bethelfield Associate Church in Kirkcaldy, and…

At the Great Disruption in 1843 a large group of the congregation of East Wemyss parish church broke away and joined the Free Church. They began building a church in Main Street the following year and it opened for worship in 1846. In 1929 the…

A Church of Scotland ‘chapel at ease’ was built in what is now Church Street in West Wemyss in 1835. It was intended to save the villagers the long walk to East Wemyss. This structure was replaced by a full parish church in 1895, and briefly served…

St Mary’s Chapel in West Wemyss was connected to the parish church in East Wemyss, as a dispute of 1527-28 noted that offerings at the chapel should be paid to the patrons of that church. No record survives of when the chapel was constructed,…

The parish church of St Mary in East Wemyss, first recorded c.1230, belonged successively to the Hospital of Soutra and the Church of the Holy Trinity in Edinburgh in the Middle Ages. The church was largely rebuilt in the 1520s, and considerable…

In 1952 Alexander Smith listed a number what he described as Other religious bodies in Methil, including a Gospel Hall, the Central Gospel Mission and the Methil Town Mission. It is unclear where that organisation met, but a group with the same name…

In 1952 Alexander Smith listed a number what he described as Other religious bodies in Methil, including a Gospel Hall, the Central Gospel Mission and the Methil Town Mission. The Gospel Hall was found on Wellesley Road. It is unclear when it fell…