Fogo Parish Church

Service every Sunday at 10.30 a.m.

Parish Minister: Rev. Dr. Dane Sherrard

Fogo Parish Church is a small church with a thousand years of history located in rural Berwickshire. The village of Fogo, in which the church sits, is accessed from the B6460 which runs from Paxton in the east to Greenlaw in the west. It is about three miles south of Duns and nine miles north of Coldstream.

Because of ministerial shortages in the Church of Scotland to which denomination Fogo Parish Church belongs, the congregations within the Presbytery of Duns have been joined together into parish groupings and unions. When the last round of such readjustment was undertaken in 2016 there was no readily identifiable home for the Fogo congregation. It was therefore put into Presbytery Guardianship and given a three-year period to see what future could be identified for it.

The tasks were twofold. First to see whether it was possible to build a viable congregation from what is a very small parish area and second to see if it was possible to take the building into local community ownership as it was considered surplus to requirements by the Presbytery and by the General Trustees of the Church of Scotland.

Two years ago the Presbytery of Duns agreed that a sustainable congregation had been  built up and that the building had been made appropriate for a twenty-first century congregation and congratulated the church on its achievement. Such was the success of the congregation that the General Trustees of the Church of Scotland no longer wished to dispose of the church building and the congregation and its building were now determined to be necessary for the future of the Church in the Borders. Dane Sherrard, who had been the interim moderator, was appointed as non-stipendiary parish minister with the unanimous agreement of the congregation.

The congregation is now enjoying being (as one member put it) a ‘proper congregation’. This web-site records some of the adventures of the church family of Fogo.