Unearthing a medieval mystery: The search for Saline’s ‘lost’ church

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 402

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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.

As for who we are, Saline & District Heritage Society was founded in 2011 by the late John Crane and local church members, as part of celebrations of the bicentenary of the present parish church. We have come a long way since then, though, and seem to be getting busier than ever, with an active online presence, a summer museum, tours of our old graveyard, and winter speaker events (see ‘Odd Socs’, CA 377, and ‘Further information’ on p.49). We are always keen to pursue projects, and our latest work was inspired by John Crane’s long-held wish to relocate Saline’s lost medieval church. This initiative, known as the John Crane Dig of 2022, has proven to be our most exciting project to-date.

Exploring the evidence

Last year’s excavation built on work that Edinburgh Archaeological Field Society (EAFS) had undertaken on our behalf almost a decade earlier. In 2013, geophysical survey within the old graveyard attempted to locate the medieval church. While its results were ambiguous, it did detect an anomaly in the south-east corner of the graveyard that merited further investigation. This sparked an EAFS excavation in 2015, opening a small trench over the anomaly and revealing the footings of a wall of unknown date, along with a piece of later medieval pottery, specifically Scottish East Coast White Gritty Ware. The church itself remained elusive – but six years later we would have another chance to find it.

This came thanks to a kind donation, in 2021, from Marie Crane, John’s widow, to enable an excavation to happen in his memory. We decided to try again to locate the ‘lost church’, this time engaging archaeologist John Gooder to lead a community dig with the help of local volunteers. The problem was: where to dig? There were various theories – had the church actually stood within the graveyard, nearby on the brae, or on higher ground to the east? Fortunately, we did have some clues – in particular, a sunken area of ground in the east of the graveyard that coincided exactly with a rectangular structure shown on the Plan of the Glebe at Saline, a parish map dating to 1822. The shape and location of this feature gave rise to the idea that it could be the foundation of the demolished church’s bell-tower. Tellingly, a comprehensive study of the gravestones and their distribution (Sacred Ground: the Old Saline Cemetery by Jean Coker, 2017) showed a large area devoid of any pre-1811 graves to the immediate east of the anomaly. This was probably not a coincidence, we thought – and in late July 2022 our happy band of volunteers set to work with spades and shovels to cut the turf and start digging.