Kirk o' Field Parish Church stands at the corner of Brown Street and the Pleasance, part of a group of buildings which symbolise the church's involvement in the three areas of Christian life, service and worship. The church was opened in 1912, but Christian work began on this site in 1890, when the Rev. Professor A.H. Charteris, one of the great visionaries of the Church of Scotland in the latter years of the 19th century, was responsible for the establishment of Deaconess House (now known as the St Ninian's Centre) as living accommodation for the recently-founded Deaconess Institution of the Church of Scotland. To enable the deaconesses to carry out their Christian service as nurses the Deaconess Hospital was built next door and opened in 1894: it now serves as offices for the Lothian Health Board. The original Mission Building where the deaconesses lived included a small hall where services were held, but so many people were soon attending worship here that bigger accommodation was needed. The adjacent corner site was purchased, and the church was opened on 24 May 1912, under the name of Charteris Memorial Church. Churches, however, have more to do with people than with buildings, and the congregation of Kirk o' Field has a history which stretches back far earlier than 1912. The present congregation incorporates nine earlier congregations and one mission station (to make no mention of several other congregations previously in the parish which have now disappeared but which did not formally become incorporated into Kirk o' Field). Kirk o' Field's history actually begins in 1747, when in one of the many disputes that have affected the church in Scotland the Secession Synod split into two groups known as Burghers and Antiburghers. Edinburgh's first Antiburgher congregation, Bristo, later moved to Nicolson Street and became Nicolson Street Parish Church, whose building is now a community centre.
After the Reformation, the area of Edinburgh in which Kirk o' Field is situated was in the parish of St Cuthbert's, which covered much of the area outside the old city walls. As the South Side became more populous, new buildings called Chapels of Ease were erected to save people the inconvenience of walking the long distance to St Cuthbert's for worship. In 1756 one such building was opened in Buccleuch Street which in 1834 became Buccleuch Parish Church. The first half of the 19th century saw a great increase in the number of congregations and church buildings, partly as a result of continuing splits in the various denominations and partly to meet the needs of an increasing population. A new denomination, the Relief Church, had appeared in 1761, and three congregations were established in quick succession in the South Side: Roxburgh Place in 1803, Roxburgh Terrace in 1825 and Arthur Street also in 1825 (the last two uniting in 1842 and later becoming Pleasance Parish Church). The Antiburghers quarrelled amongst themselves and formed the Old Light Antiburghers and the New Light Antiburghers: the former began a congregation in Davie Street in 1806. In 1843 there occurred the major division in the Church of Scotland known as the Disruption, which led to the formation of the Free Church: Newington Free Church was one of the first Free Churches to be opened in Edinburgh. Finally, under the Church Extension Scheme of the Church of Scotland, St Paul's Parish Church was opened in St Leonard's Street in 1836.
In 1875 New College, the Free Church of Scotland's training college for ministers, began mission work in the Pleasance, and New College Settlement is yet another strand in the history of Kirk o' Field; it was eventually absorbed into Pleasance Parish Church. By the mid-20th century, there was less need for so many churches and congregations, and a series of unions created what is now Kirk o' Field. By 1942 the congregations that had started life as Roxburgh Place Relief, Davie Street Antiburghers, St Paul's Parish Church and Newington Free Church had all come together to become St Paul's Newington. In 1953 the Charteris Memorial and Pleasance congregations became Charteris Pleasance, and further unions with Buccleuch and Nicolson Street in 1969 and with St Paul's Newington in 1984 formed the one remaining congregation in the South Side, Kirk o' Field.