John R Hume considers a country church in Fife with a colourful history.

SERIES

THE place-name ‘Dairsie’ is embedded in the history of the Church of Scotland and in Scotland.

The reason for the celebrity of this place is its connection with John Spottiswoode, who was Archbishop of St Andrews from 1610. Dairsie parish was a rural one, close to the town of St Andrews. It had a castle, built in the late 16th century, and a bridge over the river Eden, constructed in about 1530 for James Beaton, Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews.

The castle (reconstructed in 1994) became the residence of the pre-Reformation archbishops of St Andrews. Spottiswoode was the son of a clergyman, and was originally a committed Presbyterian. In 1600, however, he came under the influence of James VI, who, probably borrowing from the Danish Lutheran Church (he was married to Anne of Denmark) wanted to appoint bishops in the Church of Scotland, to represent the church in Parliament. Spottiswoode supported that move in 1600.

He accompanied James when he went to London in 1603 to assume the throne of the United Kingdom, and was made archbishop of Glasgow later that year. In 1610 James wished to introduce full Episcopal government into the Church of Scotland, and Spottiswoode, after being consecrated by three English bishops was appointed Archbishop of St Andrews. In that capacity he persecuted both Roman Catholics and Presbyterians who did not recognise James’s new regime in the Church. He supported both James and Charles I in their intention to introduce English worship practices into the Church of Scotland, and replaced the pre- Reformation parish church in Dairsie with a building intended to be used like an English village church.

It had a raised chancel with a screen between it and the congregation. Above the screen were the royal arms, as he wanted James to be Head of the Church in Scotland as in England. Externally the building was in an ‘imitation Gothic style’. There was considerable opposition to the ‘Anglicanisation’ of the Church of Scotland, which came to a head in 1638 with the signing of the National Covenant, and the General Assembly in that year abolished bishops.

By that time Spottiswoode had fled to England, bitterly disappointed by the failure of his project. He died in London in 1639. His church was adapted in the 1650s for Presbyterian worship. It was originally flat-roofed, but a pitched roof was installed in 1794, and remained in use until the 1950s. It still stands, but has been disused for many years.

After its central role in Church politics in the early 17th century the parish might have lapsed into rural calm, but in 1790 a new village was founded at Dairsie Muir, on either side of a new turnpike road between Cupar and St Andrews. It was intended to house hand-loom weavers, to work up yarn from two waterpowered flax-spinning mills nearby at Blebo. The coarse linen fabrics they wove were called as ‘Osnaburgs’ after cloth woven in the west-German town of Osnabruck, and the village was named ‘Osnaburgh’. It was also known as ‘Dairsiemuir’ and is now simply Dairsie.

In the mid-19th century hand-loom weaving was replaced by power loom factories. The village still consists largely of former weavers’ cottages. At the Disruption in 1843 the minister and a large majority of the congregation ‘came out’, and a Free church was constructed later in that year. It was renovated in 1876. In 1900 it became the United Free church for the parish, and in 1929 united with the 1621 church, becoming the present parish church.

Now united with St John’s Parish Church in Cupar, both churches remain in use for worship. It is a modest, indeed homely building, entirely appropriate for the area it serves and much valued.