Old St Andrew’s Church Gullane

For over 1,000 years the location of Old St Andrew's Church, Gullane has been a site of worship. Historians believe a timber and wattle church was established there during the 9th century, when the town was known as Golyn. Fragments of a Saxon cross were found in the area, suggesting that it was an important site, perhaps for some Celtic missionary monks who had travelled to spread Christianity to the South East of Scotland.

The church that can be seen today was built in the mid-12th century as part of a period of intense church building across Scotland by King David I. The church was founded by the de Vaux family, Anglo-Norman knights who had been given the barony of Dirleton and Gullane. Thinking it would be helpful to securing their passage to heaven, they replaced the simple Saxon structure with a more elaborate stone building in the Romanesque style.

While the decoration was elaborate, the layout of the church was relatively simple, with a rectangular nave and small chancel, where the altar was located. One of the most striking features of the church was the chancel arch, and while it is now blocked up, the ornate chevron carvings are still visible around the arch itself.

William de Vaux granted the patronage and income from the church to the canons of Dryburgh Abbey in 1221, giving Gullane parish elevated status. The downside to this, however, was that most of its wealth was moved to help support the monastery. Several modifications were made during the 13th and 15th centuries to accommodate more worshippers, including a lateral aisle along the northern side of the nave. The Old St Andrew's became a Collegiate Church in 1446, when Sir Walter de Haliburton established a “college” of priests there. A Collegiate Church was a high-status institution during the medieval period and the priests were paid to sing masses for the souls of the Haliburton family.

The end of the life of the church came about during the late 16th and early 17th century when shifting sands in the form of “sand blows” began to inundate the church and churchyard. In 1600, sand was disrupting services by blowing into the nave, and by 1612 the situation had become untenable and Lord Erskine of Dirleton asked the Scottish Parliament to move the parish church to Dirleton. The Act of Parliament stated that the church was; "...sa incommodiouslie situat beside the sea sand that the same... is continewallie overblawin with sand, that nather the kirk servis... for the convening of the parichiners, nor yet the kirk yard for their burial."

The chancel arch and windows were blocked up and the nave roof was allowed to collapse or was removed leaving the building a ruin. The church remained quietly that way right up until today, although there were still occasional disturbances. During the 19th century the church became a target for the romantically named “Resurrectionists”, or less romantically “Body Snatchers”, who were seeking corpses for Edinburgh medical schools. This practice saw the local community resort to constructing “mort-safes”, which were large stone blocks with lifting eyes to be placed over graves. There are three of these rare stones left in the churchyard.

Restoration of the church took place in 2010 and saw the removal of ivy and consolidation of the structure to make it safe. It is a Category A listed building and scheduled monument.