Burntisland Parish Church, East Leven Street, Burntisland

Burntisland Parish Church, East Leven Street, Burntisland

This is a Grade A church of major importance, built 1592-96 with a timber and lead steeple by John Roche in 1600. The building has been substantially altered and enhanced over four centuries: galleries were inserted between 1602 and 1630, a west porch was added by Andrew Alison in 1659, the tower was rebuilt in stone by Samuel Neilson in 1748, the wallhead was raised 1.2 metres and windows enlarged by David Vertue in 1822, and further alterations were made in 1679 and by Alexander Hope in 1789. Andrew Carnegie donated an organ in 1909, and a new west door and gates were designed by Hurd Rolland Partnership in 1992.

The building is a 2-storey, 3-bay structure of square plan with a piended roof. It is distinguished by a 2-stage centre tower and diagonal 4-stage battered buttresses with cushion finials. The walls are harled with ashlar buttresses and tower, dressed quoins, an eaves cornice, architraved doorcases, deeply chamfered arrises, voussoirs and stone mullions. The windows throughout are of 12-pane glazing in timber sash and case frames, and the roof is piended and slated.

The west elevation is symmetrical and serves as the main entrance. An advanced single-storey pitch-roofed porch features a flat coped curtain wall with a round-headed timber door and glazed fanlight with astragals of upturned anchor design. Below this is a dated stone (1532) also bearing an upturned anchor motif. The flanking bays have bipartite windows, and there are three commemorative stones on the wall to the right of centre and one to the left. The first floor has three regular bipartite windows.

The south elevation is of 3 bays with a part-glazed timber door at the centre, a commemorative stone with hoodmould to the right, and bipartite windows in the outer bays. A small single-storey lean-to with a timber door is attached at the outer left. Three bipartite windows appear at first floor level.

The east elevation features an ashlar balustrade to a stone forestair with corniced dies leading to the first-floor Sailors' loft entrance. Above the timber door is a cornice bearing the inscription "Gods providence is our inheritance June 6 1679" and an upturned anchor. Bipartite windows flank the centre at both ground and first-floor levels.

The north elevation is of 3 bays, each with bipartite windows at both ground and first-floor levels.

The centre tower rises in stages. The square base comprises four blank courses. The first stage has a small window at the centre of the west face beneath timbered pointed-arch openings to each face, with prominent quoins at each corner and blank coping. Banded obelisk pinnacles sit at each corner. The smaller octagonal second stage (belfry) alternates blank faces with timber-louvred circular openings with rusticated surrounds. A mutuled cornice gives way to an octagonal spire crowned with a gilded cockerel weathervane of 1600.

The interior is notable for its spatial arrangement and decorative richness. A central 1-bay square area is formed by round arches on square piers carrying the tower. Slightly ramped diagonal arches cross the surrounding aisles or ambulatory to sturdy pinnacled diagonal buttresses at the angles of the church. Galleries are carried on fluted columns with artisan Ionic capitals and segmentally arcaded fronts with dwarf Corinthian pilasters.

Box pews dated 1725 and 1742 remain in place. The Magistrates pew, formerly the Castle pew built for Sir Robert Melville in 1606, is canopied and diamond-panelled with 4-poster-like shafts at its angles, positioned around the base of the north-east pier of the tower. The panelling bears painted crests of Sir Robert Melville and Jean Hamilton, Lady Ross.

The Sailors' Guild (Prime Gilt) occupied the eastern half of the southern gallery. The gallery fronts feature decorative paintwork by Walter Phin executed in 1618, 1622 and again in 1627, 1632, 1711 and 1733, comprising four ships, compass, sailor and mottoes, and a naval battle for the Prime Gilt. Paired scales represent merchants and a wheatsheaf represents baxters. Later additions to this scheme were made in the 1930s, 1967, 1980s and more recently for the church's 400th birthday celebrations.

The interior fittings include a modern timber polygonal pulpit with a sounding board against a pier and an arcaded Communion table with Ionic pilasters.