Auldcathie is today a little-known and almost remote remnant of an early medieval kirk, isolated in the middle of agricultural land. However, it was once the centre of a now-vanished village, just to the North-west of Winchburgh. Click here for a location map provided by StreetMap.
Auldcathie Kirk
The placename Auldcathie, or Auld Cathie, is not, in fact, Scots for "Old Kathy"! Older spellings include Aldcathi or Al(d)cathie in 1323 and Auldecathy in 1471, and the kirk is mentioned in the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland (ii, 1039, p.215f) as belonging to a group including kirks at Linlithgow, Benyn (Binning) and Ochiltre (Ochiltree), although no evidence of a kirk at the latter location is visible today. According to the Rev. James Scott, writing in 1845: "Auldcathie, properly, Altcathaek, signifies in the Celtic [ie. Gàidhlig], rivulet of the defile 'or battle-burn'" - (The Statistical Account of Scotland 1845, Vol.2, p.91). "Auldcathie" clearly has Celtic roots, and would indeed be easily derived from Gàidhlig allt ("stream") and some form of cath ("battle") such as cathach ("warrior") or cathaich ("fight, struggle"). Of course, the cathie element, if it represents the old Celtic word for "battle", could just as easily be derived from Welsh cad as from Gàidhlig cath, but it is less certain how the auld element should be derived from a Brythonic root. If the derivation from Gàidhlig allt is the correct form, the question then arises as to where the stream referred to actually is? Today, Auldcathie Kirk sits close to the banks of the Union Canal, but that hardly solves the problem given that a Gàidhlig derivation would date the name to around the early first millennium. Nonetheless, today there is a pool just to the East of the kirk, immediately North of which is the name of Priestinch, being Scots for "Priest Island", with the inch element deriving from either Brythonic ynys or Goidelic innis. And running on the Auldcathie side of Priestinch is a short burn, which now runs into the canal, easily giving us the landscape origin of the Gàidhlig allt element. If the cathie element represents "battle", then we have "Battle Stream", or "Stream of the Battle", which is entirely plausible given the conjectured meanings for the nearby Cat Stane. Regardless, it is clear that this now ruined and isolated kirk has a lasting influence on the cultural history of its immediate locale, evidenced in placenames such as Priestinch, and possibly Lady Walk, which more-or-less traces a path between Mounthooly and Auldcathie.
Auldcathie Kirk is of a very simple rectangular plan with thick walls using irregular shaped natural stone which is suggestive of a pre-Norman style. In Lothian: A Historical Guide, Mark Collard describes it as pre-Reformation, claiming that "[s]ome 14th-century architectural fragments incorporated in the structure show it to have been rebuilt" (p.85), by which Collard may refer to the windows and entrance on the South wall. If this is so, and the Gàidhlig derivation of the placename is correct, then a date around the C10th might be possible.
Auldcathie Kirk from the South-west
Auldcathie Kirk from the South-east
Aside from its near-intact Eastern and Western walls, probably the most noticeable features of the kirk today are the hollow internal recesses on the Eastern wall, presumably behind the altar.
Recesses in the East wall
Western Wall
Auldcathie Kirk was once surrounded by a graveyard and a small village of the same name, both of which have now long gone, and attract little or no attention from either historians or archaeologists. However, the Lithlithgow historian, John Ferguson, wrote in 1905 that:
There has been preserved an excerpt from the great register of the Priory of St Andrews, unfortunately lost, which speaks of a charter being granted about the year 1198, by Prior William to one William Gifford and his heirs, of the Chapel of Auldcathie, the reddendo to be paid to the Church of Linlithgow being half a merk and sixteen pence.
- Rev. John Ferguson, Ecclesia Antiqua: or, The History of an Ancient Church (St Michael's, Linlithgow) (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1905), p.133.
Clearly, then, Auldcathie Kirk was already in existence by the end of the twelfth century in some form, and it seems likely that the current ruin dates from at least this period, if not before. Ferguson goes on to say that in 1335-1336, the rector was involved in some undisclosed intrigue against the king, which lead to the temporary forfeiture of Auldcathie's lands to the monarchy.
Auldcathie Kirk in 1905 (from Ferguson)
Henry Gough-Cooper of the Scottish Place-Name Society reports the following:
The parish of Auldcathy was held by William Gibson 8 June 1554 (Laing Charters, #619) but "Auldcathy neidis na reidare" in 1567 (Reg. Min., 6) and George Lundie, minister of Dalmeny, had oversight of the church in 1574 (Woodrow's Misc., 367). So it looks as if the parish disappeared at about this time.
- Gough-Cooper, e-mail to Sweeney-Turner, 14-07-2001.
So if no reader was needed in 1567 and the kirk begins to pass into the care of Dalmeny by 1574, perhaps the village of Auldcathie, as well as the kirk, starts to fall into decline at some point in the late C16th? One must also acknowledge that the Parish of Auldcathie continued to exist until 1618, at which point it was fully incorporated into the Parish of Dalmeny under the control of then Lord Binning, with, it seems, a John Gibbisone already having acted as joint minister of both parishes (James Scott in Statistical Account of Scotland 1845, Vol.2, p.104). However, there are many cases in which a parish and even a kirk continues to have ecclesiastical significance long after the settlement it once served has ceased to exist or declined in size.
Nonetheless, information received from ex-local resident Moira Meek shows that even as late as the 1901, births were being registered as taking place at Auldcathie, and her personal recollection is also that there was still a row of ruined cottages there, some 200 yards to the East of the kirk, as late as the 1940s. This suggests that the village itself survived into the early twentieth century, although one assumes that the ruined cottages were being levelled for farming reasons by, perhaps, the 1950s or 1960s, or that they succomed to the open cast mining which the area was also subject to.
thanks are due to Henry Gough-Cooper of the Scottish Place-Name Society for information on the early spellings of Auldcathie, and for his generous personal correspondence on placenames in general
thanks are also due to moira meek for sharing her personal knowledge of the village