Crail, Parish Church. View from north of Church and churchyard.

Description Crail, Parish Church. View from north of Church and churchyard.

Date c. 1885

Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 739342

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of F 1947

Scope and Content Nave and Tower, Crail Parish Church, Crail, Fife, from the north Crail Parish Church stands within a tree-lined churchyard on the north side of Marketgate at the eastern end of the town. It was built in the late 12th century as a simple Romanesque building consisting of nave and chancel, and was gradually altered and enlarged over the centuries. The Scottish photographer, Erskine Beveridge, photographed the church on a visit to Crail c.1885. The nave, rebuilt in the early 13th century when the south and north side aisles were added, was reconstructed in 1815 by Robert Balfour, who added a new roof sloping continuously to the raised wall-head of the north nave aisle. The west tower, built in the early 13th century, is divided by string-courses into six stages. The top belfry stage, with its corbelled parapet and squat octagonal stone spire, was added in the early 16th century. Projecting from the north side of the tower is an enclosed staircase with a stone lean-to roof which rises to the belfry. The quiet, secluded situation of the churchyard made it a target for body-snatchers in the early 19th century. At a time when the demand for fresh corpses for medical dissection was such that university departments were prepared to pay up to £10 per corpse, body-snatching became a lucrative trade. In 1826 a deadhouse or vault was erected in the churchyard where coffined bodies could lie safely before burial until decomposition was such that they were of no use for dissection. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/739342

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap