Collessie

Collessie is a village and parish of Fife, Scotland.

The village or hamlet is set on a small hillock centred on a historic church. Due to rerouting of roads, it now lies north of the main road, the A91. Though a railway embankment was constructed through the middle of the village in the 19th century, it retains much of its original character, and has a number of traditional 17th-18th century houses. In recent years some of the older houses have been re-roofed in traditional thatch. Collessie in fact probably now has more thatched houses than any other village in the county of Fife.

The civil parish had a population of 1,921 in 2011.

The church was consecrated by the Bishop of St. Andrews in July 1243. It is mentioned in charters of both 1252 and 1262, and so was complete by those dates.

Prior to the Reformation, the church was in the ownership of the Abbot of Lindores and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

In 1742 and 1743 Rev Hugh Blair was the minister of Collessie.

The church was remodelled in 1838-39 by R & R Dickson to a T-plan form with a pinnacled western tower, and has remained virtually unchanged since that date. The pulpit is in a central position at the head of the T, as in several Scottish churches such as Currie on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The pews date from 1911 when they were adjusted to a less upright stance to improve comfort. The font dates from 1928.

The Collessie war memorial is in the east transept. The communion table was brought from Cowlairs Church and was their war memorial.

The churchyard has been used since at least the 12th century. It was extended both in 1840 and 1871. It was taken over by the local County Council in 1929.

Perhaps the most striking single feature of the kirkyard is ‘the Melville Tomb’. The mausoleum of the local lairdly family of Melville of Halhill, the tomb was restored from an extremely ruinous condition in 2004. It was erected in 1609 to house the remains of Christian Boswell, the wife of the courtier, diplomat and memoirist Sir James Melville (1536-1617) of Halhill. She was a Boswell of Balmuto, an estate north of Burntisland. Balmuto Castle, much altered, is still inhabited; in 1722, it passed from the line of Boswell of Balmuto into the possession of their kinsfolk the Boswells of Auchinleck, the family of Samuel Johnson’s biographer James Boswell (1740–95).

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