Episcopal Chapel, Bankhead Brae

Episcopal Chapel, Bankhead Brae

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 and worship. Leslie was removed from his position as minister at Crail parish church and instead set up a small Episcopal congregation. This new congregation built a chapel at Bankhead Brae, overlooking Crail Harbour. The Episcopal community was relatively sympathetic to the Jacobite cause, and when Crail was occupied by Jacobite forces during the winter of 1715 to 1716 they briefly held what the kirk session disapprovingly called ‘the English service’ in the parish church. The associations between Episcopalianism and Jacobitism would prove the undoing of the chapel at Bankhead. In 1745, during the turmoil of another Jacobite rising, supporters of Presbyterianism attacked the Bankhead Brae Episcopal chapel and tore it down.

sacredlandscapesoffife

1690

Bess Rhodes

Site

208

06/10/2021

09/26/2023 02:42:24 pm

(1) Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae: The Succession of Ministers in Scotland from the Reformation (1925), vol. 5, p. 193. (2) Anne Turner Simpson and Sylvia Stevenson, Historic Crail: The Archaeological Implications of Development (1981), p. 4. (3) Walter Wood, The East Neuk of Fife: Its History and Antiquities (1887), p. 421.

cm x cm x cm

current,56.25781531514981,-2.6287090744263457;

Episcopal Chapel, Bankhead Brae

TEXT

Building

442

1740

Episcopal

Crail