A lochside parish

THE parish of Portmoak embraces the south-eastern end of Loch Leven, in the Perth and Kinross council area.

The villages of Kinnesswood and Scotlandwell are on an east-west road, with the parish church between them on its southern edge. It looks out over Loch Leven, with its two islands: on the west, Castle Island, with its ruined castle. Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned here in 1567-68 until she was liberated by a local lad.

To the east, and, part of Portmoak Parish, is St Serf’s Island, with on it the remains of an Augustinian priory founded in about 1150 by David I, King of Scots. This replaced a settlement probably made in the late 4th century when the Kingdom of the Southern Picts was converted to Christianity by a team from Whithorn led by St Ninian. St Serf was probably part of that team, and became bishop of the area round Portmoak. Above Kinnesswood is Bishop’s Hill, probably also linked to St Serf. He and his successors until the 12th century would have used their island base to serve a network of ‘parishes’ in the country round. This was a pattern of church organisation developed in what is now western France when that area was converted to Christianity by St Hilary and St Martin in the 4th century. Martin probably trained Ninian in that method of establishing a Church in a rural area.

In the 12th century David I replaced the bishopric based on the island by a new Roman Catholic diocese of St Andrews, with an Augustinian priory on the Island, connected with St Andrews Cathedral. It is its ruins that survive there. A parish church was built to the south of the present one, probably on the site of an earlier building or graveyard. It was replaced in 1659 by a church on the present site. In that church Ebenezer Erskine was minister from 1703 to 1731.

Erskine served as a young man as tutor and chaplain to the Earl of Rothes. Erskine was in 1703 inducted to the parish of Portmoak. It is said that at first he ‘struggled with unbelief’, but was then ‘brought to an understanding of the ‘true Grace of God’ and became a notable preacher. In the early 1720s Erskine became involved in the ‘Marrow Controversy’ which brought him into conflict with the General Assembly. The Marrow of Modern Divinity was published in 1645 and republished in 1718. As far as I can understand its essential message was that a believer’s reasons to obey God were love and gratitude, rather than the then conventional belief in the Church of Scotland that obedience to God was to be obtained by fear of His wrath.

In 1731 Erskine was called to a newlycreated Third Charge of Stirling. While he was there he had a disagreement with his presbytery over the role of landowners and town councils in appointing ministers. This began the process which led to the first Secession, a breakaway from the Church of Scotland which had immense implications.

In 1831-32 the present parish church, designed by Andrew Cumming, was built beside the main road through the parish. Its belfry is that of the 1659 church. Internally it is very little altered and has a fine canopied pulpit on the south wall, between two tall arched windows. There is a semi-octagonal gallery. On the east wall is the Portmoak Stone, a 10th or 11thcentury cross slab with interlace carving, found on the site of the pre-1659 building. In the foreground of my drawing is the Michael Bruce Memorial erected in 1842 in memory of a notable local poet.

The church is part of a united parish with nearby Orwell. ¤