A ministerial base

John R Hume charts the long history of a West Lothian church.

ABERCORN is in West Lothian, near the south bank of the Firth of Forth and close to the Hopetoun Estate, with its superb classical mansion-house.

From the coast-line there are fine views of the three bridges over the Forth. It is worth looking over the Forth here and to realise its historical significance as a barrier to communication in earlier times.

It marked the northern limit of the significant influence of the Roman Empire in Scotland. Later it was the northern boundary of the Kingdom of Northumbria as established in the 7 thcentury. After the Synod of Whitby in 664 King Oswiou (or Oswy) of Northumbria made Roman Catholicism the official church of his kingdom. His successor Egfrid sought to take over the kingdom of the southern Picts, north of the Forth, both by military action and by appointing a Roman ‘bishop’ of the Picts, Trumwine.

Abercorn was chosen as the base for that bishopric, suggesting that there was a pre-existing religious settlement there...

Egfrid’s assault on Pictland was defeated at the battle of Nechtansmere in Angus in 685, where he was killed. His forces (including Bishop Trumwine) retreated to southern Northumbria. The Lothians were then reclaimed, until in the 12 thcentury David I made his kingdom part of the Roman Catholic Church, associating it with the English ‘feudal system’ brought over from France in 1066 by William the Conqueror.

David divided his kingdom into counties and parishes, for both civil and religious purposes. This involved the creation of what in due course became the county of Linlithgowshire, and the parish of Abercorn.

Parts of the present church at Abercorn survive from the twelfth century church built for David’s new parish, but it has been significantly altered over many years, and it has an unusually complex building history.

All that is recognisable from the twelfthcentury church is a blocked south door between two burial aisles, added after the church was largely rebuilt in 1579.

The western one is the Binns Aisle of 1618.

On the other side of the twelfth-century doorway is the Duddingston Aisle of 1603.

This abuts the former chancel of the original church which was refitted in 1709 as the Hopetoun Aisle, to designs by Sir William Bruce. He added to the north a burial vault on the ground floor, with a retiring ‘room’ above. The body of the church was reworked in 1893 by Peter Macgregor Chalmers, in the Norman style adding an aisle on the north side of the nave, with a Norman arcade, and restoring the chancel arch. He also turned the pews round to face the chancel, which is curiously, overlooked by the richlydecorated Hopetoun Loft. Below the loft is a room containing a collection of carved stones, including parts of an eighth-century cross, comparable with the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses. There are also two stones described in The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian except Edinburgh as hogback stones, though I am inclined to believe that one of these was the lid of a coffin-shrine. These stones are clearly identifiable as associated with the Church in Scotland as it existed for much of the first millennium AD, and emphatically not the Roman Church.

This Church’s origins lie in the words of Christ at the Last Supper, as recorded in St John’s Gospel, and endorsed by the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

On the basis of the Abercorn stones we can conclude with some certainty that Abercorn was a ministerial base for the ‘Church of the Incarnation’ (often wrongly called the ‘Celtic Church’).

So do visit Abercorn Church, in a neglected part of Scotland, and contemplate its direct link to the Incarnation of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

The carved stones feature on the CANMORE website of Historic Environment Scotland.