St Athernase Church is a Romanesque church located in

Leuchars Leuchars (pronounced or ; "rushes") is a town and parish near the north-east coast of Fife in Scotland. The civil parish has a population of 5,754 (in 2011) Census of Scotland 2011, Table KS101SC – Usually Resident Population, publ. by Nati ...

Fife Fife ( , ; ; ) is a council areas of Scotland, council area and lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area in Scotland. A peninsula, it is bordered by the Firth of Tay to the north, the North Sea to the east, the Firth of Forth to the s ...

, Scotland. It is a Category A

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

and remains in use as a

Church of Scotland The Church of Scotland (CoS; ; ) is a Presbyterian denomination of Christianity that holds the status of the national church in Scotland. It is one of the country's largest, having 245,000 members in 2024 and 259,200 members in 2023. While mem ...

parish church. The

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

and half-round

apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...

date from the 12th century with the exterior featuring blind arcades with typical

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

arches. The church was granted by Ness son of William, Lord of Leuchars, to the canons of

St Andrews St Andrews (; ; , pronounced ʰʲɪʎˈrˠiː.ɪɲ is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, southeast of Dundee and northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews had a recorded population of 16,800 , making it Fife's fourth-largest settleme ...

in 1185. Around 1700 a belfry was added, and in 1858 restoration was carried out to the nave. The church is open to the public in summer, at other times by arrangement. Relics preserved inside include part of a 9th-century cross-slab found near the village (closely comparable to the large collection at

St Andrews Cathedral The Cathedral of St Andrew (often referred to as St Andrews Cathedral) is a ruined cathedral in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. It was built in 1158 and became the centre of the Medieval Catholic Church in Scotland as the seat of the Archdiocese o ...

), and three elaborate 16th century memorial stones of the Bruces of Earlshall, the local lairds. One of the latter shows a full length figure of a woman, naïve in execution, but valuable in documenting contemporary dress. The oft-mentioned dedication of the medieval church of Leuchars to St Athernase is actually an error. It arises from a nineteenth-century misreading of a list of church dedications in the Register of St Andrews Priory, a medieval manuscript now in the National Archives of Scotland. Folio 155v. has a list of churches dedicated, or re-dedicated, by bishop David de Bernham of St Andrews in the 1240s. The eighth church in this list is 'ecclesia sancti Johannis euangeliste et sancti Athernisci confessoris de ''Losceresch'' (the church of St John the evangelist and St Athernase the confessor). However the church of ''Losceresch'' is not the church of Leuchars, which in medieval sources is spelt ''Lochris, Locres'' etc., but the parish church of Lathrisk (now Kettle parish in Fife), whose early spellings are ''Losresc'' (1170s), ''Loseresch'', ''Losseresc'' (1227) and such like. Athernase is the patron saint not of Leuchars but of Lathrisk. The patron of Leuchars is not known for certain, but some medieval sources indicate a local cult of St Bonoc, a name unknown outside the parish of Leuchars, and a chapel of St Bonoc, complete with chaplain, is known to have existed. "Athernase" may be an anglicised form of the name ''Itharnán'', found also in

Kilrenny Kilrenny () is a village in Fife, Scotland. Part of the East Neuk, it lies immediately to the north of (but inland and separate from) Anstruther on the south Fife coast. The first element of the name is from the Scottish Gaelic ''cill'', mean ...

, and on the

Isle of May An isle is an island, land surrounded by water. The term is very common in British English. However, there is no clear agreement on what makes an island an isle or its difference, so they are considered synonyms. Isle may refer to: Geography * Is ...

, an Irish missionary who "died among the Picts" in 669 according to the ''Annals of Ulster''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leuchars, Saint Athernase Athernase Church of Scotland churches in Scotland Romanesque architecture in Scotland Category A listed buildings in Fife Listed churches in Scotland 1185 establishments in Scotland Saint Athernase Buildings and structures completed in 1185 Churches completed in the 1180s 12th-century church buildings in Scotland

See also

References