Just
off North Berwick High Street stands the rather quaint ruin of St Andrew’s
Kirk. This church was built in the 17th
Century and opened on 5 June 1664. It
was built to replace St Andrew’s Old Kirk, which stood near to the sea and had
been so severely damaged by a storm that it had to be abandoned. The ruins of the Old Kirk lie near to the
Scottish Seabird Centre.
With
the arrival of the railway in North Berwick in 1850, the town’s population grew
substantially. By 1873 the congregation was
too large for St Andrew’s Kirk and in 1882 a new and larger church opened nearby.
On
3 June 1883, the last service was held in St Andrew’s Kirk and shortly after
this it was partly dismantled, with various fixtures and fittings being auctioned
off. However, it was decided by the
church authorities to ‘allow the walls of the church to stand in order to form
a picturesque ruin…’
I
placed the Skulferatu that accompanied me on today’s walk around North Berwick
in a gap in the wall at the church.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude
56.057800
Longitude
-2.718484