Burntisland

Substantial remains of the original parish church, built in the late 12th century, survive in a churchyard to the north of the old town. The town became so well established that a new Burntisland Parish Church, known as St Columba’s, was built in 1592. This was the first new parish church built in Scotland after the Reformation. It is a unique shape, square with a central tower upheld on pillars, and lined all round with galleries, to allow the greatest number of people to be reached by the minister’s words during the service. The church contains one of the country’s finest collections of 17th- and early 18th-century woodwork and paintings. In 1601, King James VI chose the town as an alternative site for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. This was when a new translation of the Bible was first discussed, a project which James brought to fruition a decade later in the King James Bible. The town was part of the lands of Dunfermline belonging to Anne of Denmark. In April 1615 there was a riot against one of her legal officers by a crowd of over a hundred women who took his letters and threw stones at him. The rioters were “of the bangster Amasone kind” led by the wife of the Baillie of Burntisland according to the Chancellor Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline, who supposed the women were acting by the insigation of the townsmen including the minister Mr William Watson. Burntisland developed as a seaport, being second only to Leith in the Firth of Forth, and shipbuilding became an important industry in the town. In 1622 a leaking Spanish ship entered the harbour and promptly sank. The crew said they were whalers, and they had whaling equipment, but the town baillies were suspicious and imprisoned the officers in the tolbooth and put the rest under house arrest under suspicion of piracy. The lawyer Thomas Hamilton arranged their release, arguing they had committed no crime and there was peace with Spain at the time. In 1633 a barge, the Blessing of Burntisland, carrying Charles I and his entourage’s baggage from Burntisland to Leith sank with the loss of Charles’ treasure.