state of the Free Church in Strathkinness was told ‘the numbers attending

(the Free Church) were higher for the afternoon services, because the Estab-

lished Church did not have afternoon services, so many went to the Free

Church then’.

Another change was that concerning Fast Days, which had always been

an important part of the religious observances of the reformed churches in

Scotland. (The first Secessionist Church had kept Wednesday as the Fast

Day). The Thursday before the Communion Sabbath had been set aside as

a day for fasting and preparing for the coming communion, and there was no

school on Fast Days. In 1881 it was decided to have only one service of wor-

ship on the Fast Day, and after ascertaining ‘as far as they could the views of

the congregation’ in 1889 ‘after mature thought and deliberation’ the Kirk

Session decided that Fast Days be discontinued and that a preliminary service

be held immediately preceding the half-yearly communion. The Free Church

in Strathkinness had, two years earlier, in line with the other Free Churches

in the Presbytery, discontinued their keeping of Fast Days, and had instead a

preparatory service on the Friday evening preceding the Communion Sabbath.

In 1886 it was reported that the church was needing essential repairs and

in 1887 a bazaar to raise funds for these repairs was held in the Town Hall

in St. Andrews and the sum of £180.19.9, a considerable sum in 1887, was

raised. The repairs and alterations carried out in 1888 are not recorded,

although they must have been fairly substantial as the Trustees decided not

to add to the insurance (1400 in 1864) ‘not withstanding the improvements

that had been effected’. One of the alterations made at this time was pro-

bably the replacement of the north and south windows in the church.

When Mr. Tait died in 1890 he had been minister for fourteen years.

During the first two or three years of his successor, the Rev. J. Rolland McNab,

more changes were made in church practices; communion tokens were re-

placed by communion cards, and the dates of communion Sundays were

changed from the third Sunday of June and December to the first Sunday of

May and November. The practice of the Free Church was to hold four com-

munions during the year, although not always at the same time each year, with

the winter communion being fixed for the Sunday nearest the full moon so

that the Friday evening preparatory service could be held when the light was

apt to be good.

The Trustees, finding that church funds were low, ‘as the expenditure did

exceed the annual income by several pounds, and also there being a debt of

about eight pounds lying upon the Trustees’, proposed that seat rents, which

had originally been set at a rate to cover the ordinary expenses of the church,

38