Field Visit
Date 23 August 1952
Event ID 1111423
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1111423
NS89NW 815 969 ‘Church’
Old Church and Graveyard, Logie.
Of the old parish church only a fragment now remains (Pl. 13 A). It stands on the right bank of the Logie Burn, close to the point where this must have been crossed by the old road described under No. 509 and some 350 yds. NW. of its successor (NS89NW 51). All that survives is a W. gable, 24 ft. 6 in. wide externally, and the W. part of the S. wall, extending to a length of 30 ft. 6 in.; the original length of the building seems to have been about 56 ft., and it had a N. aisle (1). The surviving part of the S. wall contains, about its centre, a square-headed door with a back-set and widely chamfered architrave, and above this a small round-headed window divided by a mullion into two lancet-shaped lights with glazing-grooves. To the E. there is a large round-headed window showing two similar lights but subdivided by a transom; the lower part of the E. light has been checked and hinged externally for a shutter. West of the door there is a small window, evidently not original as it is formed of heterogeneous materials including, as the window-sill, a stone bearing the date 1598 in raised letters on a sunk panel; this was found in 1874 ‘in the ruins near the old Session House, at the east end of the church’ (2), and had no doubt come from an earlier church. Close to the gable, and at an upper level, there is a gallery doorway with a back-set architrave, and checks for an external door; it must have been reached by an outside stair, now removed. On the SW. angle of the building there is a tabular sundial, bearing the date 1684, very probably the date of the building. The W. gable has plain skews and, on the S., a rolled skewput; it is topped by a square bell-cote with Classical pillars and a pyramidal top. A square-headed door, checked and hinged externally, has been broken through the centre of the gable, and high up in it there is a small round-headed window similar to the one in theS. wall. Reset above the door there is a panel with a moulded border bearing, above, an inscribed plaque and, below, a shield with helm and mantling and, for crest, a crowned heart. The shield is charged, for Douglas: three piles, in chief three mullets. The inscription reads THIS MANSE WAS BUILDED AT / THE EXPENSES OF THE HERITOURS / OF LOGIE AND OF MR A L DOUGLAS / MINISTER THERE ANNO D 1698 / I AND MY HOUSE WILL SERUE / THE LORD JOSHUA 24 V 15, and on a ribbon below appear the Greek words TA ANΩ (‘The things that are above’). A modern inscription states that this panel was removed from the old manse in 1804.
A church of Logie is first mentioned in a charter of Simeon, bishop of Dunblane, in which its possession is confirmed to the convent of North Berwick (3). This charter is dated by Cosmo Innes to about 1178 (4). Subsequent mentions of the church before the Reformation are given by Menzies Fergusson (5) ; but no authority can be found for his statement that a church was built between 1380 and 1420, and it may be simply an erroneous inference from the architectural characteristics of the existing remains. In 1596 Dame Margaret Hume, prioress of North Berwick, resigned the convent's surviving properties, including Logie Church, to the King for ‘the sustentatione of the minister serving the cure thairat and utheris godlie usis’ (6). The post Reformation history of the parish is also given by Menzies Fergusson (7). The supposed dedication to St. Serf appears to rest on no better foundation than that the miracle connected with this saint's ram is said to have been performed at Athren (Airthrey), which is in this parish (8).
RCAHMS 1963, visited 23 August 1952.
[see the original text for a description of the hog-backed stone and 13 gravestones, along with a note on almost 100 others]
(1) Fergusson, R. Menzies (Logie, A Parish History, i, 205 n), gives the internal dimensions as approximately 56 ft. by 21 ft., and states that the aisle was 19ft. square.
(2) Ibid., 11, n.
(3) Carte Monialium de Northberwic, Bannatyne Club, 6 (No. 5).
(4) Ibid., xxx.
(5) Op. cit., i, 11 ff.
(6) Carte Monialium de Northberwic, xv.
(7) Op. cit., i, 20 ff.
(8) Wyntoun, Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, ii, 40 (The Historians of Scotland, iii).
