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Field Visit
Date 1 June 1927
Event ID 1098608
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1098608
Parish Church.
The church of Dairsie was built by Archbishop Spottiswood in 1621 and still serves the parish. It is a simple oblong building, lying north-east and south-west, with a belfry turret rising from the southern angle; under the eastern end is a burial vault, now used as a heating chamber. The masonry is ashlar. Although erected at such a late date, the building, which measures 77 ½ feet by 31 feet over walls 3 feet 9 inches thick, is treated in the Gothic manner. The walls are divided into bays by simple buttresses, and in each bay is an arched window infilled with a "plate" form of tracery. The principal entrance, a Renaissance door-piece dated 1621, is at the western end. Above it is a panel-space containing a scrolled cartouche with a shield flanked by bunches of fruit and bearing: On a chevron three oak trees eradicated, a boar's head couped, for Spottiswood; below the shield are the initials I.S. in metal, and a text, also in metal, IEHOVAH . DILEXI . DE /COREM . DOMVS . TVÆ ("Jehovah, I have loved the beauty of thy house"). There is a second doorway in the south wall. The sill-course of the windows returns as a string round the walls and buttresses, breaking upward round the doorways. The roof has been renewed. Originally it was a flat lead roof within a little parapet, now missing, and provision has been made in each bay for the escape of roof-water through outlets in the form of grotesque masks. The belfry is borne on corbelling ingeniously planned to suit the piers below. The turret, which is octagonal and surmounted by a stone spire rising within a balustraded coronal, contains a newel-stair projecting within the building. The oak door at the entrance to the stair is original. Internally the church has been modernised.
TOMBSTONE. Against the external south wall lies the tombstone of DAVID RUSSEL IN DAIRSIE, who died in 1648. It measures 5 feet 10 inches by 3 feet 5 inches and contains a circular panel bearing: A chevron between three tadpoles, for Russell. Cf. Cast. and Dom. Arch., v, p. 153.
RCAHMS 1933, visited 1 June 1927.
