Church Overview
Originally built as new home for the local United Presbyterian Church congregation, the foundation stone of the striking little Gothic kirk was laid in April 1861 and its first service held on Sun 8 December 1861. The total cost for the new church was £600 and it could seat 240 individuals.
Due to a shortage of funds its congregation could not afford to complete its spire and add an internal gallery until 1908, after it had become part of the United Free Church of Scotland and formed a union with the town’s South United Free Church congregation and the two congregations decided to move into this building, then called the North United Free Church. The firm of Wilsons & Walker of Aberdeen were employed to oversee the extensive refurbishment works, which saw the overall capacity of the church more than double to 500.
The local Church of Scotland Parish Church began as a small ‘chapel of ease’ belonging to Duffus Kirk in 1823 and a successor church was built on its site in 1902, designed by the architects Reid and Wittet of Elgin. After the denominational reconsiliation of the Church of Scotland with the United Free Church in 1929, the local United Free kirk was chosen to become the single place of worship for the Established Church in the town.
In 1968, Robert Dick of Verdun in Canada bequeathed £2000 to the church to provide a memorial to his parents who had been members of the kirk, the session commissioned stained glass artist Dom Ninian Sloan, a monk from of Pluscarden Abbey, to produce a pair of windows in his characteristic ‘‘dalles de verre’ style for the building, which were unveiled in June that year. The church also housed a bell salvaged from original Georgian ‘chapel of ease’, built by the Church of Scotland in 1823.
The church building held its final service in December 2023. Plans were submitted to the local authority in February 2025 to convert the church into a supermarket and concerns were raised in October that year by the local community council about access to its war memorials. The new Scotmid store opened in June 2026.
Final service held in Dec 2023. Church reopened as a supermarket in June 2026.
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Burghead Parish Church
Disclaimer
The information about churches in Scotland’s Churches Scheme has been provided by the congregations or taken from the Historic Scotland list and published sources, in particular, the Buildings of Scotland volumes and the RIAS Illustrated Architectural Guides. To contact this specific church please complete the Contact this Church form above. The information is not authoritative; please contact Scotland’s Churches Trust to let us know of any errors or omissions.