United Reformed Church (formerly Congregational Church)

United Reformed Church (formerly Congregational Church)

On the east side of Clinton Street stands Newburgh’s United Reformed Church. This building has a complicated denominational history. In the early 1840s over a hundred people who disagreed with the congregation at the former Burgher Church on Clinton Street banded together to create a Relief Church congregation which worshipped in the town hall. They subsequently joined the United Presbyterian Church, and around 1850 built what is now the United Reform Church. As a result for much of the mid-nineteenth century there were two United Presbyterian churches on Clinton Street (the other being the former Burgher Church on the west side of the street). In the 1870s it was suggested that the two congregations should merge together. However, the members of what is now the United Reform Church objected to this plan, and determined ‘to try their fortunes elsewhere’. As a result they left the United Presbyterians in favour of the Evangelical Union, which by the 1890s had become part of the Congregational Church. In 2000 the Congregational Union of Scotland joined the United Reformed Church, meaning that the affiliation of the church on Clinton Street changed once again. The building is still a place of worship with regular Sunday services.

sacredlandscapesoffife

Bess Rhodes

Site

250

24/11/2022

Robert Small, History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church From 1733 to 1900 (1904), vol. 1, pp. 198-200. Newburgh United Reformed Church Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Newburgh-United-Reformed-Church-1641537442558861/ [Accessed 18 November 2021]. 1855 Ordnance Survey Map of Fife, sheet 4. Available at: https://maps.nls.uk/view/74426821 [Accessed 18 November 2021]. 1912 Ordnance Survey Map of Fifeshire, sheet VI.NW. Available at: https://maps.nls.uk/view/75530875 [Accessed 18 November 2021]. Information Panels in the Laing Museum, Newburgh [Visited August 2021].

cm x cm x cm

current,56.34954277486197,-3.2465095285262136;

United Reformed Church (formerly Congregational Church)

TEXT

Building

527

1

Congregational Union,United Presbyterian

true