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Field Visit
Date 22 August 1930
Event ID 1125224
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1125224
Cross Kirk and Burial-ground, Quendale. The mound which marks the site of this church lies 350 yds. E. of the house of Quendale and 300 yds. above high-water mark. Let into the top of it is a tombstone bearing a much weathered inscription, which can be partially restored as follows: WITHE[?IN] / [?SIDE] IS THE / [BJURIA[L] PLACE OF / ANE WORTHY GENT/LEMAN [LAWRENCE] / [STEWART]........ / ....... WHO / [?DEPAIRTED] FROM / TIME TO ETERNITY / THE 2[8] DAY OF JULY /1703 AND OF HIS / AGE THE 77 YEAR / CURACAROLI / [STEWARTI] FILII / EIUS NATU MAXIMI / NUNC DE BIGTOUN . . . The word ‘BIGTOUN’ is followed by three or possibly four lines which are illegible except for the word ‘PLACET’ which appears doubtfully in the second half of the first of them.
On the genealogy of the Stew arts of Bigton, see Grant's Zetland Family Histories (1). The date there given for Laurence Stewart's death does not tally with that on the stone, but Sir Francis Grant thinks that it was reported to him only orally. There seems to be no other documentary evidence extant. Hitherto the stone has been incorrectly supposed to be memorial to Robert Bruce of Sumburgh, the fourth of that name (2).
Today the nearest sand-hill is 250 yds. away. But about 1700 the church was ‘surrounded by banks of sand two or three yards distant from the walls’ (3). The constant shifting of these produced increasing inconvenience and ultimately led to the abandonment of the building circa 1790 (4). The stones were subsequently carried off by the proprietor of Quendale and used to build a steading (5).
RCAHMS 1946, visited 22 August 1930.
(1) pp. 320-2.
(2) PSAS, Xli (1906-7), p. 180 .
(3) Rev. James Kay, in the privately printed collection of papers entitled Description of ye Countrey of Zetland, p. 34. A copy of this is in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Sibbald (Description, p. 17), misunderstanding his informant, says that the church was ‘two or three paces distant from the Water’.
(4) See Mill's Diary, passim.
(5) Trans. of the Scottish Ecclesiological Society, iii, Pt. iii (1911-12), p. 281.
