Balmerino Old Parish Church, Balmerino

Balmerino Old Parish Church, Balmerino

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 abbey precinct ‘could not bear the noise of the psalms on Sunday’. The ‘Kirk of Balmerinoch’ is clearly marked on the early seventeenth-century map of Fife created by Robert Gordon (where it is shown in a similar position to the surviving burial ground). Around 1811 a new parish church was completed nearer to Bottomcraig and the church at Kirkton of Balmerino was abandoned. By the mid-nineteenth century the old parish church was marked on maps as ‘ruins’. The wider site continued in use as a graveyard – a function it still serves today.

sacredlandscapesoffife

1610?

Natalia Nikitin

Site

260

08/09/2023

02/16/2024 06:18:28 pm

James Fraser, ‘Map of the counties of Fife and Kinross’ (1846). NLS, EMS.b.1.34. Available at: https://maps.nls.uk/counties/rec/7232 Robert Gordon and Timothy Pont, ‘Fyffe Imperfect’ (c.1636-52). NLS, Adv.MS.70.2.10 (Gordon 54). S. Taylor and G. Markus, The Place-Names of Fife (2010), vol. 4, pp. 149-150. J. Thomson, ‘Parish of Balmerino’, New Statistical Account (1845), vol. 9, p. 593. W. Turnbull, ed., The Chartularies of Balmerino and Lindores (1841), p. 74.

cm x cm x cm

current,56.41204212084651,-3.0384895205497746;

Balmerino Old Parish Church, Balmerino

TEXT

Building

547

1810

Church of Scotland

Balmerino