Publication Account
Date 1977
Event ID 1018431
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018431
Inverurie parish church, along with others, was granted to Lindores Abbey by Earl David of Huntingdon at the end of the twelfth century, a grant mentioned in a papal bull of 1195 (Davidson, 1878, 25). Until 1775 the parish church stood in the northwest corner of the churchyard down by the Bass. There is little indication what material the building was constructed of, although an early seventeenth century entry in the burgh records refers to the townsmen bringing thatch to the church (Davidson, 1878, 197). From 1660 Kirk Session references to the dilapidated condition of the structure increase, with a bulwark being constructed at the end of the century to help save the fabric from the ravages of the flooding Don (Black, 1942, no page no.). A new parish church was not built in the High Street until 1775, with that building being replaced by the present South (now St. Andrew's) Parish Church in 1842. Although early this century portions of the foundations of the pre-1775 church were uncovered by gravedigging (Ritchie, 1911, 343), the only above-ground indication of the church site is a slight platform, described by the Ordnance Survey as too amphorous for survey, which might represent the church or be associated with later graves (Ordnance Survey Record Cards, Reference NJ 72 SE 15).
Information from ‘Historic Inverurie: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1977).