Today, the small West Fife village of Saline (pronounced to rhyme with ‘Tallinn’) is home to a fine 19th-century parish church, which was built to replace a crumbling, much older, structure. Unfortunately, over time the exact location of its predecessor has become lost from memory – but Saline & District Heritage Society have set themselves the challenge of finding it.
The earliest evidence of a church in Saline can be found in Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld, which was written by Alexander Myln in 1515. There, Myln states that Saline’s church was one of three establishments annexed to the common fund of the canons of Dunkeld by Bishop Geoffrey (1236-1249), indicating that a church must have existed somewhere in the village before Geoffrey’s tenure. We know that Saline’s revenues continued to be held by Dunkeld until the Scottish Reformation (c.1560), and the church would most likely have remained poor, being small and plain in appearance.
These monetary difficulties continued until at least the early 17th century, as was typical for small parish churches after the Reformation, and while we know there were some minor works carried out at Saline, including a new loft in 1704, by the late 18th century the minister saw cause to complain about the church’s ruinous condition. This eventually led to the new (current) church being built in 1810, with its predecessor being demolished and its stone sold off at public auction. At Devonside, a local farm, we can see a relic of these events: a stone lintel, reputedly from the main door of the ‘old’ church, bearing the inscription ‘Glory of God only 1640.’ The old church’s graveyard survived, thanks to a condition of the auction ensuring that demolition work had to avoid damaging nearby burials, but the site of the church itself became forgotten. That is where we come in.
