Browse Items (658 total)

The site of the pre-Reformation Methil Parish Church, now part of Methilmill Cemetery.

Overview of raised beach platforms at Kingcraig near Elie, Fife

The Rock and Spindle geological site

The Rock and Spindle is an ancient volcanic vent, and it has an excellent example of radial columnar jointing (it looks like spokes of a wheel) due to the way the magma cooled. The rock just to the north of the Rock and Spindle is believed to be a…

Overview of Kinkell Ness with Rock and Spindle

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…

This bay doesn’t actually have rubies, it’s named after the tiny red garnets in the sand which look a bit like rubies to the untrained eye. You might find some if you get down on your hands and knees sift through the sand.

The Salvation Army started a corps in St Andrews in 1893. After some difficulties in the early years, there was a continuous Salvation Army presence in St Andrews from 1934 until 2003. During the 1980s the Salvation Army acquired a former house on…

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…

Sampling the platform sections at Kingcraig point for OSL dating

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…

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…

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…

Current use: residential.

In 1690 Scotland officially became a Presbyterian country, rejecting episcopacy (or the government of the church by bishops). Some Scots did not accept the changes, forming the origins of the Scottish Episcopal Church. There have been Episcopalians…

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…

St Andrew’s Church was built to replace a smaller Episcopal church (also dedicated to St Andrew) which once stood on North Street. The foundations for the new church were laid in 1867, and the church was consecrated (in other words officially blessed…

St Andrews (Latin: S. Andrea(s); Scots: Saunt Aundraes; Scottish Gaelic: Cill Rìmhinn) is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, 10 miles (16 kilometres) southeast of Dundee and 30 miles (50 kilometres) northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a…

St Andrews Cathedral was once the most important church in Scotland. It was the base for the country’s senior bishopric and housed the relics of Jesus’s disciple Andrew (the nation’s patron saint). The origins of St Andrews Cathedral stretch back…

Geological field guide to St Andrews.

Carboniferous volcanic vent, Kinkell Ness has at its centre the Rock and Spindle

During the late Middle Ages a chapel dedicated to St Anna (the grandmother of Jesus) stood on the north side of North Street. St Anna’s Chapel was probably a chantry – an institution where one or more priests regularly prayed for the souls of the…

Anstruther Easter was part of the parish of Kilrenny until 1634, but by the later middle ages it was home to a growing fishing community. At some time in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, a chapel-at-ease was constructed to serve…

It is thought that a medieval chapel, possibly dedicated to St Bonach, once stood not far from the current site of Leuchars Parish Church. The chapel may have survived into the sixteenth century. In 1908 a number of long cist burials were unearthed…

Following the Great Disruption in 1843, the minister of Dysart, John Thomson, and a large part of the congregation joined the Free Church. Their first church was opened the following year (1844) on the corner of West Quality Street and Fitzroy…

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…

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…

The Isle of May was an important early Christian site which included a chapel and shrine from at least the ninth century, and probably earlier. The chapel, as well as a monastic site at Kilrenny and the Caiplie Caves are connected to two saints,…

The priory of May was founded by David I, sometime around the year 1140. It was dedicated to St Ethernan, and was affiliated to a mother house located at Reading in Berkshire. The monks were initially Cluniacs, followers of a reformed and stricter…

Early Christian hand-bell formerly kept and used in St Fillan’s Church, Struan (near Blair Atholl), Perthshire, and possibly associated with that place since the eighth century. It is made of wrought iron, coated in bronze. From the collection of…

St Fillan's Church, Aberdour, Fife, Scotland. View from the south.

St Fillan’s Roman Catholic Church in Newport-on-Tay is a rare surviving example of a so-called ‘tin tabernacle’ – in other words a church built out of corrugated iron. Tin churches were popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they…

The parish church of Aberdour first appears in the records in the twelfth century when it was the subject of a dispute between a local lord, William de Mortimer, and the Augustinian canons of Inchcolm. Substantial sections of the current building…

St Fort disused sand and gravel quarry on the Wormit esker.

Aerial view of St Fort sand and gravel quarry

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…

Following the Reformation the authorities in St Andrews (like many other Scottish towns) prosecuted Roman Catholics. This meant that for several centuries there was no official Catholic congregation in St Andrews. As religious toleration increased in…

St John’s was founded in 1752 following a split within the congregation of St Peter’s parish church over the choice of a minister by right of patronage. 127 parishioners left the Church of Scotland, acquired a yard with houses on the north side 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’.…

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…

St Leonard’s Chapel has a long and varied history. The Culdees may have had a pilgrim hospital on this site in the Early Middle Ages. In the 1140s the hospital and its property were given to the newly founded St Andrews Cathedral Priory. An…

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…