Browse Items (658 total)

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…

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.

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…

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…

Braehead Church was built in the 1870s. It originally housed a Free Church Congregation. Following the union of the United Free Church and the Church of Scotland in 1929, the church became known as St Monans Braehead. Church of Scotland services…

Braehead Church, 2023. (B. Rhodes)

Braehead church, 2023.

Boarhills Church was founded in the 1860s. The building was designed by George Rae. When the church was being constructed several stone cists were supposedly found – implying that the site may have had a religious purpose in the Early Middle Ages. In…

The Dominican order (or black friars) arrived in St Andrews during the fifteenth century. There are references to a Dominican place or house in St Andrews in the 1440s. This was then developed into a fully established friary at the start of the…

In 1802-03 a new parish church was constructed in Dysart and the congregation moved from St Serf’s in an event known locally as the year of the big flittin. Known as the Barony Church and capable of sitting 1600 people, it was located to the north of…

There has been a Baptist church on South Street since the early 1840s. When the original church opened it had seating for 250 people. The main space for worship was on the first floor and there were shops below. Around 1900 the church was remodelled…

Current use: Residential.

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 the early 1900s a revival moment swept through Fife and led to the formation Inverkeithing’s Baptist Church. A mission was first planted in the town in 1903, and following its success, particularly among quarry workers, a Church was founded in…

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 church was formed following a visit to the town by James Haldane in 1812, and meetings were held thereafter in the building known as the Tabernacle. In 1839 the congregation split into two sects (Baptists and Paedo-Baptists), who shared the…

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was a Burgher Chapel located on the north side of Balmullo, near what is now Smithy Lane. The Burghers arose from a split within the Secession Church in the 1740s (the Secession Church having…

During the eighteenth century there was an Anti-Burgher congregation in Balmullo. The Anti-Burghers were one of a number of Protestant dissenting groups in Fife at this time and arose from a split within the Secession Church in the 1740s (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 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…

Balchrysty and its surroundings on the eighteenth-century Roy Military Survey.

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…

Arthropleura tracks near St Andrews, a cast of them can be seen in MUSA, the Scores, St Andrews

The Anti-Burgher Congregation in Dysart was formed in 1747. In the early years they met in an old barn before constructing their own church in 1763 at a cost of £100. It was capable of sitting 795. It was located in Pathhead, which, although now in…

The parish church of Anstruther Wester is first documented in 1225 when it was under the patronage of the monks of Isle of May. Dedicated to St Nicholas, patron saint of seafarers, by the later middle ages, the church was a large and complex…

In 1641 Anstruther Easter was separated from Kilrenny and became the smallest parish by area in Scotland at the time. Construction of a church begun in 1634, and it was ready for use by 1641, with a steeple and bell added in 1644. In a tribute to the…

Anstruther /ˈænstrəðər/ (Locally Ainster /ˈɛnstər/ Scottish Gaelic: Ànsruthair) is a small coastal resort town in Fife, Scotland, situated on the north-shore of the Firth of Forth[7] and 9 mi (14 km) south-southeast of St Andrews. The town comprises…

All Saints’ Church originally served the St Andrews fishing community (which was traditionally focused around the east end of town). In 1903 a small iron mission church was established, and in 1907 a stone chancel was added. Following the First World…

A walking trail to see the geology of Aberdour.

Shortly after the Great Disruption in 1843, a Free Church congregation was founded in Aberdour. They opened a church, called St Colme’s, in 1845, close to the location of the old parish church. By 1848 it had a congregation of 318. In 1900 it became…

The location of the church so close to their country seat at Aberdour Castle had been a point of contention for the Douglas family for some time, and in 1790 they successfully closed St Fillan’s and opened a new church in Wester Aberdour. It was…

At Aberdour the country rock (carboniferous sandstone) has been intruded by younger magma. There are also good examples of faulting and cross bedding.

Aberdour (/ˌæbərˈdaʊər/ (About this soundlisten); Scots: Aiberdour,[2] Scottish Gaelic: Obar Dobhair) is a scenic and historic village on the south coast of Fife, Scotland. It is on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, looking south to the island…

St Monans and Abercrombie [Abircroy] on J. Blaeu’s map of Eastern Fife, 1654.

The former parish church of Abercrombie is first recorded around 1160. During the Middle Ages both Dunfermline Abbey and Culross Abbey had rights regarding Abercrombie, and the parish church was at times a focus for disputes between the two…

St Monans and Abercrombie [Abircroy] on J. Blaeu’s map of Eastern Fife, 1654. (National Library of Scotland)

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…

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…

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…

By the tenth century St Andrews had become one of the most important churches in the kingdom of the Scots. In 965 the brother of the King of Tara died while on pilgrimage to St Andrews. This incident is the earliest evidence for St Andrews as a place…

St Andrews was an important religious centre from an early date. There seems to have already been a monastery here in 747 when the death of the abbot Tuathalán was recorded. The spectacular stone monument known as the St Andrews sarcophagus probably…

In the late 1960s the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland agreed that women could be ordained as ministers on the same terms as men. The first woman to serve as a Church of Scotland minister in Fife was Mary Morrison, who began her ministry at…

Since the sixteenth century there had been no cardinals resident in Scotland. However, in 1969 Gordon Gray, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, was made a cardinal by Pope Paul VI.

The Second Vatican Council (held in the Vatican in Rome) sought to modernise Roman Catholicism. It agreed major changes to Roman Catholic worship. One of the most notable alterations was ending the use of Latin for ordinary services. The interiors of…

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Presbyterian opposition to Christmas reduced. In 1958 Christmas became a public holiday in Scotland. Increasingly Fife’s Church of Scotland congregations held special services for Christmas Day.