A tale of three churches for St Andrew's Day 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 in Scotland

Hello Readmates

Today is 30th of November 2022 and that is St Andrew's Day here in Scotland.

Saint Andrew is the Patron Saint of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 which as you may well know where I am from.

FunFact...Saint Andrew's Day is celebrated as the national day of Independence in Barbados.

And so I thought that it would be rather fitting to share my walk from last Friday around Kirkcaldy in the Scottish Kingdom of Fife.

This going to be a tale of three churches from my walk!

However this walk post is not about why Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, I will post about that later.

My Friday actually started with a COVID booster injection and as a wee treat, we headed off to have a cooked breakfast in a nearby pub.

For those in the UK they might recognise the crockery as being from Wetherspoons and you would be right!

Sufficiently fed and coffeed and having shopped right before we ate, it was time for the walk home and as it was such a gorgeous sunny day, I suggested a different route home, as I always wanted to see this church.

You can see the gorgeous blue autumnal sky, hard to believe that is nearly December, although most of the trees have shed their leaves..

As a reference we had come up this street.

Now going back to the church, this is the first church in my tale of three churches, and I think you will see in the new couple of pictures why it reminds me of a castle like structure and as I know the wonderful @lhes loves castles even though she has not seen one, think of this as my first post towards showing castles...

The street we just climbed walked up is called Kirk Wynd, with Kirk being the Scots word for Church, so any prizes for guessing what the church is called?

Did I hear you say Old Kirk ... I did? Woohoo you got it right!

You might be able to see some fencing down at the bottom of the oicture, that is because there has been work going on with revoating the tower for much of the year. Indeed it was only recently that all the scaffolding was taken down, unfortunately access is still restriced and so were my pictures :(

It didn't help that I had not brought my camera, as well we had no intention of going on a photographic walk!

Of course as soon as access is restored, then I shall be back with my 📷!

So we shall move on from the Old Kirk with one more picture of the tower where it really looks castlesque.

They did have a picturesque graveyard, but it is easier to access the graveyard in church 3 as you shall see later on!

Across the road a hundred yards away is the second church and in it's grounds are

some Hydrangeas hanging on for dear life ..

Yes there was a bizarre little metal playground and yes of course I stood on the metal beam that is fluffing narrow by the way and yes the chains move and Yes I nearly fell on my arse 🤣 and was suitably scolded!

The structure is pretty large, and I am a sucker for spires!

The church is called St Bryce Kirk, see we say Kirk again!

Apparently their food is pretty good, but as it is only open from Monday to Thursday I have never had the chance to go there, maybe in 2023, we shall see!

Funfact...St Brycedale Church was opened on Thursday 17 March 1881, and since then, there have been only eight ministers serving in St Brycedale. How impressive is that, 8 ministers in 140 years!! The reason that is now St Bryce Kirk is that in November 2000, the congregations of St Brycedale Church and Kirkcaldy Parish Church united to become St Bryce Kirk.

source St. Bryce Kirk.

The Kirk is on a corner plot, so that is the front of the Kirk on St Brycedale Ave and where it took its original name from.

There was a walk up to the third and final church on the walk home, which took us under the railway track.

We turned onto Abbotshall Road and there was Abbotshall Church

It is a bit of a hotchpotch of buildings with bits and pieces from the last few centuries...

I did mention earlier about the graveyard.

They have many fascinating graves and war graves too. Do you see the discolouring of the closest tombstone?

We shall finish the walk with a sad piece of history and with a reminder that Life is Short, so make the most of it and enjoy it...

Marjorie Fleming (also spelt Marjory; 15 January 1803 – 19 December 1811) was a Scottish child writer and poet. She gained appreciation from Robert Louis Stevenson, Leslie Stephen, and possibly Walter Scott.

Marjorie spent most of her sixth, seventh and eighth years in Edinburgh under the tutelage of a cousin, Isabella Keith, who was about 17.

Marjorie is best remembered for a diary that she kept for the last 18 months of her life. Diary keeping by children was encouraged in the United Kingdom throughout the 19th century. (A notable published example from a generation later is that of the English girl Emily Pepys.)

The manuscripts of her writings are now kept in the National Library of Scotland. However, for fifty years after her death they remained unpublished. The first account of her, with long extracts from the journals, was given by a London journalist, H. B. Farnie, in the Fife Herald, and then reprinted as a booklet entitled Pet Marjorie: a Story of Child Life Fifty Years Ago.

She really was a remarkable child and passed away at the age of 8. Her story is quite fascinating and the above excerpts are sourced from wikipedia

Pictures are all mine!
@tengolotodo November 30th 2022

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND DO IT OFTEN

Haste Ye Back!