Church Overview

Formally opened on Sunday the 25th of May 1902 as a mission church to serve workers and their families on the nearby shale oil fields, Kingscavil Church was built by local architect William Malcolm Scott, in an Early English Gothic style, to accommodate 300 sitters.

Built as a satellite of St Michael’s Parish Church in Linlithgow, its circular apse was somewhat unusual for its time and Mrs Johnston Stewart of Chamfleurie, wife of the landowner who had gifted the land, presented a handsome communion table and a number of chairs to furnish it. The original stencilled, painted and gilded interior was the work of Arthur W Lyons “art decorator, Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh.”

The building replaced a tin tabernacle mission church that had been damaged in a storm. The oil shale fields temporarily closed shortly before the church opened, leading one local newspaper to headline an account of its opening as “A New Church and No Congregation”, before lambasting its cost to build and calling it a “veritable white elephant”. But, despite this rocky start and the many local and national trials that followed, it has remained a successful and busy congregation during the century and more that followed.

The striking square lantern hanging over the front door was commissioned as part of the Kirkhill Astronomical Pillar Project in 2012. when a group of local artists collaborated on an artistic re-imagining of the solar system as envisaged in the late 18th century by David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan. The lantern represents the planet Neptune.

After a series of successive local unions over the years, on 1st of February 2024 the congregation of Kingscavil united with neighbouring congregations to form the combined parish of Abercorn, Pardovan, Kingscavil and Winchburgh and the historic Abercorn Church was sold the following year to the Hopetoun Estate.

Services

Kingscavil Church, 1st and 3rd Sunday at 10.00am Winchburgh Church (Marquee) every Sunday 11.30am

Opening Arrangements

Open by arrangement