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. One of these was the Spiritualist Church, located on Methil Brae. It was…
Shortly after the start of World War II a small chapel was built in Methil Docks to cater to the dock personnel and those involved in war production at the site. The chapel was demolished at the end of the war and its exact location is unknown.
In 1931, some 300 years after the closure of the parish church in Methilhill, a new Church of Scotland parish church was constructed on Chemiss Road, close to the site of the medieval church. As with the new Methil Parish Church on Wellesley Road,…
In the early 1920s the steady growth of the population of the town led the Church of Scotland to construct a new parish church in Methil to replace the West Church (1838). Land on Wellesley Road was gifted by the Wemyss family and the commission was…
Nearly four centuries after the Protestant Reformation, a Roman Catholic congregation returned to Methil with the opening of a church in 1903. Located on Methil Brae and called St Agatha’s, the congregation had expanded to such an extent that in the…
As a result of the large numbers of German sailors visiting Methil annually in the late nineteenth century a missionary from the German Church in Edinburgh (located in Leith) began to make periodical visits to the town. In 1898 the heads of that…
Following the Great Disruption in 1843, a quod sacra Free Church parish was set up in Methil, before a full mission was established in 1852. The mission initially met at the Salt Girnel, before in 1882 a full congregation was formed in Methil, and in…
The Scottish Coastal Mission, founded in 1850, was a Protestant organisation dedicated to ministering to sailors and maritime communities. By 1861 they employed 10 missionaries and had 29 stations along the east coast of Scotland. They began services…
From the early 1600s to 1838 Methil was part of the parish of Wemyss and the congregation attended the church in Easter Wemyss. Following an increase in the population in the early nineteenth century, a church was built in the High Street with room…
The church of the medieval parish of Methil (spelt Methilkil or Methilhill) was located inland, on the banks of the River Leven about a mile and a half from its mouth. It is first recorded in 1207 and 1218. The archbishops of St Andrews gifted the…
On the coast a little way north of the burgh of Crail (near Crail Airfield) is land known as Kilminning. This name is thought to derive from the Gaelic for ‘Church of Monan’. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries human bones were often…
Towards the end of the 1840s the Free Church congregation in Crail built a church on the road then known as Jockeys Port (now called St Andrews Road). The original Victorian building was demolished near the beginning of the twentieth century, and…
The early nineteenth century saw major divisions in the Church of Scotland over secular interference in religious affairs. In the 1840s a large number of relatively evangelical ministers broke away from the established church and founded the Free…
A plot of land on the south side of the Nethergate in Crail has long been known as ‘The Nunnery’. However, written records suggest that there was at no point a convent of nuns in Crail. The name is perhaps derived from an association with the nuns at…
By the late eighteenth century there was a tradition in Crail that there had once been a medieval priory by the sea, a little to the south of what is now called Prior’s Croft. In reality the name probably arises from the land being owned by the nuns…
The site now occupied by Holy Trinity Church has been a place of worship for several different denominations. A church was built here in the 1790s for Crail’s Burgher congregation. In 1847 the congregation became part of the newly created United…
When the Church of Scotland adopted Presbyterianism at the start of the 1690s a number of ministers refused to support the change. The minister of Crail, Alexander Leslie, was among those who opposed the re-establishment of Presbyterian government…
The parish church at Crail has been a place of worship since at least the twelfth century. During the reign of Malcolm IV (who died in 1165) revenues from the parish of Crail were
given to the Cistercian nunnery at Haddington. The nuns at Haddington…
There appears to have been a castle at Crail by the middle of the twelfth century. In 1359 the castle chapel is described as being dedicated to St Ruffinus – which is thought to be a Latinised form of St Maolrubha (an early medieval saint who was…
During the First World War an airfield was built at Crail, but the site was abandoned following the end of hostilities. At the start of the Second World War Crail was once more brought into military use and expanded to become an important base for…
The United Secession Church had its origins in the splits within the Church of Scotland in the eighteenth century. The congregation worshipped for some years in the two burgher churches on South Street, but in the 1820s moved to what is now 52 North…
St Salvator’s College was established in the 1450s by Bishop James Kennedy. The new university college was dedicated to Christ the Saviour, and was intended to resist heresy and increase understanding of ‘divine wisdom’. Kennedy wished to create a…
The building now known as St Rule’s Church originally served as St Andrews Cathedral. The church was probably built on the orders of Bishop Robert during the early twelfth century, as part of his effort to modernise worship in St Andrews. Indeed,…
We do not know exactly when St Peter’s Chapel was founded. However, in 1212 there was a reference to ‘two houses by the sea beside the chapel of St Peter’ in a legal dispute between the archdeacon and cathedral of St Andrews. A later document from…
The hospital of St Nicholas was founded as a refuge for lepers in the twelfth century. Because of fears of infection it stood a little to the south of the main built-up area of St Andrews, near the East Sands. As the prevalence of leprosy declined in…
The ruins of the medieval church of St Mary’s on the Rock (also called St Mary’s Kirkhill)
stand on the cliffs looking out over the North Sea. This headland has been a place of importance since prehistoric times, and several Iron Age graves have…
The site of St Mary’s College on South Street has lengthy associations with religion and learning. In 1419 Robert de Montrose (one of the priests who served at St Mary’s on the Rock) donated a plot of land for ‘a College of Theologians and Artists in…
During the early nineteenth century the parish church of Holy Trinity on South Street became too small for the growing population of St Andrews. To address this problem, St Mary’s Church was built on the south side of what became known as St Mary’s…
Little is known about the medieval chapel of St Mary Magdalene. Sixteenth-century property records indicate that it was located within the cathedral precinct, probably a little way to the south of what we now call St Rule’s Church (then more commonly…
The parish of St Leonard’s has its origins in the Middle Ages. However, the congregation has only worshipped in the current St Leonard’s Church on Hepburn Gardens since the early years of the twentieth century. From 1761 until 1904 the parishioners…
St Serf’s Roman Catholic Church was built in 1922 after the opening of new pits at Valleyfield and Blairhall in the early twentieth century saw a large increase in the population of Culross and the surrounding villages. It was located in High…
The Free Church in Culross was formed in 1846, and in the following year, with the support Mr Cunninghame of Balgownie, a church was built on the Low Causeway in the west of the town. A renewal of mining operations in the area around Culross in the…
Shortly after the Reformation, the presbytery, transepts choir and tower of the Abbey were converted into the parish church of Culross. This situation was formerly recognised by an Act of Parliament in 1633. In 1642 the church received a significant…
The chapel of St Kentigern in Culross was founded in 1503 by Robert Blacadder, Archbishop of Glasgow (1484-1508). Kentigern, or Mungo as he is commonly known, was believed to have been born in Culross. According to the Vita St Kentigerni (composed in…
The old parish church of Culross lies around 800 metres to the north west of the burgh. It was first recorded in 1217 when it was gifted to the monks at the newly founded abbey in Culross. Most of the structure was built in the twelfth or thirteenth…
The Abbey of Culross was founded in 1217 by Maol Choluim I, Earl of Fife (1204–1228), who was himself buried in the church in 1228x1229. Dedicated to St Mary and St Serf, it housed monks of the Cistercian order, a reformed order founded in the late…
Although Culross only enters the written record in the 1200s, it is clear from archaeological evidence that a community had existed there long before that date. The burgh’s early religious history is associated with St Serf, an important local saint…
After the Jacobite rising of 1715 the British government became increasingly suspicious of Scottish Episcopalians. Ministers in the Scottish Episcopal Church were required to take an oath renouncing the Stuart claim to the throne and promising to…
The accession of George I to the British throne was soon followed by a rebellion backing James Francis Edward Stuart’s claim to be king instead. James (also known as the Old Pretender) was a Roman Catholic, but he received support from many Scottish…
When Presbyterianism was re-established in 1690 the Scottish Parliament also passed legislation banning Christmas. In 1712 this ban was lifted and the British Parliament legalised keeping Christmas in Scotland. However, most Presbyterians remained…
The British government was initially more tolerant of Episcopalians than the Scottish Parliament had been. In 1711 the laws against Episcopal marriages and baptisms were removed and new legislation ordered that Episcopalians were not to be disturbed…
Lobbying from Scottish aristocrats led to the passing of the Church Patronage Act. This stated that the old patrons of Scottish parishes (typically large landowners) could influence the appointment of Church of Scotland ministers. The move was deeply…
After much debate, the parliaments of Scotland and England passed legislation to create a new Kingdom of Great Britain. The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh closed. Until the twentieth century legislation on Scottish religious affairs became the…
Many of Fife’s Episcopal clergymen were removed from their parishes by the restoration of Presbyterianism. In 1695 the Scottish Parliament passed a law forbidding displaced Episcopal clergy from performing marriages or baptisms under pain of…
In 1689 King James VII was replaced as ruler of Scotland by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. Soon afterwards the Scottish Parliament (which had backed William and Mary) passed an act abolishing the authority of bishops. In 1690…
