Archaeology Notes

Event ID 710638

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/710638

NT06SW 1 01769 63091.

(NT 0177 6309) Church (NR) (rems of)

OS 6" map (1967).

The parish of West Calder was disjoined from Calder-Comitis and erected in 1647. It was disjoined from the Presbytery of Linlithgow and annexed to that of Edinburgh in May 1884.

H Scott et al, 1915-61.

Old West Calder Church is a ruinous oblong building, dated 1643 on its W end. It has round-leaved windows and doorways, also buttresses. The walls are of coursed rubble. In the interior is a grass-grown floor. West Calder was disjoined from Midcalder in 1646, this church serving the parish until 1880, when it was replaced by the present one. The roof was removed soon afterwards.

SDD List 1964; W Learmonth 1885.

Calder-Comitis (St Andrews, Linlithgow). The ancient parish of Calder-Comitis is now composed of Mid-Calder and West Calder, neither of which had any seperate identity before the Reformation although the church does appear as that of West Calder during the 12th century. The designation of Earl's Calder arose from tht of its possessors who were Earls of Fife and one of whom Duncan granted the church of Huchtercaledouir to Dunfermline (1154x59). This was confirmed by Ela, his countess, who may have been the original heiress of the barony, and by Robert, Bishop of ST Andrews (1163x78). Nevertheless the annexation appears to have been ineffective, the church remaining a free parsonage within the lay patronage of earls of Fife until the 14th century. It then passed from the Douglasses, who were holding the barony from the earls, to the family of Sandilands, with whom it remained in spite of an unsuccessful attempt to unite the church to the proposed collegiate church of Linlithgow in 1430.

I B Cowan 1967.

The remains of the church are as described.

Visited by OS (JLD) 21 February 1953 and (JP) 13 March 1974.

West Calder, Old Parish Church. Built in 1643, three years before West Calder became a seperate parish from that of Midcalder, it became ruinous after its abandonment in 1880. Long and plain, the round-headed windows now filled in. Two small windows on the N side are obscured by a later turnpike stair that must have served a gallery or more likely a pulpit. Square bellcote with a ball finial on the W gable. The walls were buttressed in the mid 18th century.

C McWilliam 1978.