Publication Account

Date 1982

Event ID 1018221

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018221

The first reference to the parish church of St.John's occurs in an 1128 grant of the church to the Benedictines of Dunfermline (ESC, 1905). The church was in direct line with the castle and communicated with it through the channels of Kirkgate and Castle Gavel. It was placed well back from the hubbub of the market place and harbour. Bishop David de Bernham of St. Andrews consecrated the church in 1242 and it is presumed that by this date the choir at least had been completed (Simpson, 1958, 13).

Nothing today remains above ground of that thirteenth-century consecrated structure. In 1440 the monks at Dunfermline and the town council agreed to the rebuilding of the choir and porch of the parish church. By 1448 it is assumed that the choir was completed and a new nave was thrown up by the end of the century. The attractive steeple was completed by 1511. The waning of the middle ages saw Perth parish church in its finest hour: the reforming zealots would leave the structure largely intact, but .strip the interior of its many fine altars and images.

For the needs of reformed worship its bulk and shape were unsuitable, and it is clear that the church soon fell into a ruinous state (Simpson, 1958, 25). In 1585 the Kirk Session decried the church's deplorable condition, but it was not until 1598 that the town began to repair the church in earnest. By the end of the century, not only had work been completed, but the church itself had been divided into three places of worship; the East (choir), West (nave), and Middle (transepts and crossing) Parishes. The church structure remained in that condition until the massive restoration work of the mid-1920s.

Information from ‘Historic Perth: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1982).