Publication Account

Date 1981

Event ID 1017816

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017816

The first mention of the parish church of Crail occurs in the reign of Malcolm IV (1153 x 1165) (Barrow, 1960, 282). It appears that at some point in his reign, Ada, Countess of Fife, granted to Haddington Priory, the church of Crail, the chapel of St. Ruffinus in the castle of Crail and other property, teinds, liberties, customs and so forth in the district (Barrow, 1960, 282). The church was consecrated by David de Bernham, Bishop of St.Andrews in 1243 and was dedicated in the first instance to St. Maelrubha of Applecross, and later to St.Mary (Anon, 1970, 5). St. Mary’s attained collegiate status in the first half of the sixteenth century, but after the Reformation in 1587 James VI granted to the bailies and community of the burgh for the maintenance of several municipal projects, the church, with its benefices and properties (Cowan and Easson, 1976, 217).

Through the centuries Crail parish church has undergone numerous alterations although it was evidently first laid out in the form of an unaisled nave and chancel and the masonry at what had been -the northern junction of the nave and chancel suggests a date in the second half of the twelfth century (RCAM, 1933, 57). In the first twenty years of the thirteenth century the church was rebuilt, the original nave being razed almost completely, and the reconstructed structure having both north and south side aisles and a western tower (RCAM, 1933, 58). The nave was re-roofed at a lower level in 1769, thus completely obscuring the old clerestory and the chancel was also reduced to half its original length and re-roofed (Anon, 1970, 6,7). Alterations to the church continued in the nineteenth and present centuries.

Information from ‘Historic Crail: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1981).