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Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 566560
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/566560
Strathbrock St Nicholas, Ecclesmachan Road, from 12th century
A vision of old Scotland on its ancient hilltop graveyard gazing south towards the Pentlands. The original plan was simplicity itself; square tower at the western end (two-storey now capped by a bellcote), long rectangular nave and originally square chancel (now extended). The plan, like so many Scottish kirks, is very Swedish. Of the original 12th-century church, there survive the nave walls, and beautiful south door, with its shafts, scalloped capitals and roll mouldings. Barrel-vaulted aisle of the Shairps of Houstoun, c.1620, but only a forestair, 1644, survives of the Buchan Loft.
The north aisle, 1878, is by Wardrop & Reid, who also rebuilt the upper stage of the tower and added the belfry. The 1503 bell is from an earlier church. The ground storey of the tower is the burial place of the Earls of Buchan, a wall tablet commemorating Thomas, Lord Erskine, Lord Chancellor of England, and the Hon. Henry Erskine, Lord Advocate of Scotland 1783 and 1806. Stained glass, 1922, by P MacGregor Chalmers and, 1962, by William Wilson.
Tombstones include a table-top Adam & Eve with a tree loaded with apples, and a bronze monument, 1866, by Sir John Steell to Lt-Col. John Drysdale. Manse, late 17th century, uphill from the kirk, was built as Uphall House for Katherine, Dowager Lady Cardross. Later over-scaled two-storey hexagonal bay, and much more diminutive Victorian window bay.
Taken from "West Lothian: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Stuart Eydmann, Richard Jaques and Charles McKean, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
