East Neuk churches

John R Hume reflects on the history of some of the churches around Anstruther.

WHEN I was a child it was common for people living in Glasgow to take holidays on the shores of the Firth of Forth in Fife, where the weather was sunnier than on the Clyde, and there were good sandy beaches.

My first Fife holiday was in 1946, and was a two-centred one, a week each in Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy. As was common at the time we stayed in a room in a family house.

I have very clear memories of both places, and of entering Fife via the Kincardine Bridge, and of seeing for the first time pantiled-roofed houses in the village of Kincardine-on-Forth. Later I came to know the East Neuk burghs, from Crail to Elie, initially through the Rev William F Grieve (minister of Camphill Queen’s Park Church), whose son Roy was a schoolfriend. I loved the fishing harbours, and still do, though fishing is much reduced from those days.

In my professional life I was much engaged with the Scottish Fisheries Museum at St Ayle’s, on the harbour-front at Anstruther Easter. ‘Easter’ for there are two Anstruthers, Easter and Wester, separated by the Dreel Burn. Each of them had a parish church (united in 1970), though both were ‘chapels of ease’ of the parish of Kilrenny, to the east, where there is still a church, though the place was eventually eclipsed in importance by the Anstruthers (as was Crail).

The best way to appreciate Anstruther Easter is to walk along the west breakwater to the little harbour light at its end. Looking north one can see the brightly coloured houses, shops – and fish restaurants – lining the water-front. Above these is the spired top of the tower of the subject of this article. The church dedicated to St Adrian, was built in 1634, only 74 years after the Reformation, and though the interior has been much altered, externally it is has changed little, though the upper part of the tower was added in 1644 (probably so that it could act as a sea-mark, to guide vessels into the then much smaller harbour). It is one of the best-preserved early 17th-century churches in Scotland.

As a ‘chapel of ease’ its construction would have been paid for by the people of the burgh, rather than by the ‘heritors’ (landowners) of the parish. It would have at first been used for episcopal worship, for the rejection of episcopacy by the Church of Scotland was still four years away. When the church was built a new manse was constructed, to the west of the church – the manse of Kilrenny – in the style of the time, with a spiral stair to the first floor. It was later extended and served as the manse (one of the oldest in Scotland) until a few years ago. I remember visiting it on behalf of the General Trustees before it was given up as a manse, and it was certainly not the most convenient of houses. It is now privately owned.

The church at Cellardyke, to the east of Anstruther Easter, dates from 1882, when this eastern suburb was an important fishing port. The linked charge of Crail has a much longer history. The oldest part dates back to 1160, constructed following David I’s Romanisation of the Church in Scotland earlier in the 12th century. It had a complex history thereafter, taking its present form in 1963, when it was remodelled by Judith Campbell. Its graveyard contains some fine monuments. According to Glen Pride’s book The Kingdom of Fife: an Illustrated Architectural Guide, the Marketgate, the street in which the church sits ‘was once one of the largest market places in Europe. ¤