Archaeology Notes

Event ID 668339

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/668339

NJ56NW 5 50732 66358

(NJ 5073 6635) Church (NAT)

(NJ 5058 6631) Collegiate Church (NR)

(Supposed Remains of)

OS 6" map, (1938)

See also NJ56NW 8.

A collegiate church of secular canons was founded in 1543 in Cullen Parish Church which dates from this period and is still in ecclesiastical use. The foundations of a building near Cullen House (NJ56NW 6.00) were believed to be part of this establishment.

Name Book 1866; D MacGibbon and T Ross 1896-7; D E Easson 1957.

The Church of St Mary's is still in use as a place of worship. The remains of a short stretch of rubble walling at NJ 5060 6630 protrude from an earthen bank at the rear of Cullen House (NJ56NW 6.00), but its identity could not be ascertained.

Visited by OS (WDJ) 15 September 1961.

The oldest part of the Church, known until the Reformation as St Mary's Church is the rectangular nave built prior to 1536, and containing a blocked Norman arch at the W and of the S wall. A church at Cullen is first mentioned in 1236, but whether any part of it is retained in the present fabric cannot be ascertained.

In 1536, St Mary's Aisle, the present S transept, was added. When the church became collegiate in 1543, the choir was extended in the E to accomodate the six alters of the prebendaries. In 1792 a N transept was added, and the church assumed its present cruciform shape (Cramond 1883) It is now known as Cullen Old Church and is still used, as is the graveyard. There is now no trace of the rubble wall behind Cullen House.

Visited by OS (NKB) 25 July 1967.

St Mary's, Cullen, is characteristic of the last phase of the medieval church in Scotland, which saw the foundation of many collegiate churches for the saying of masses for the souls of their benefactors. In 1536, a south aisle, endowed by Elena Hay, was added to a simple rectangular medieval church. In 1543, the church was raised to a collegiate church with endowment from, among others, Alexander Ogilvie of that ilk; the chancel was lengthened.

Ogilvie died in 1554 and his ornate tomb is in the chancel. It consists of a canopied recess containing an armour-clad effigy on top of a tomb-chest with weeping figures on its front. The crockets of the arch of the recess and the pinnacles above are all late Gothic in style. By contrast, the cherubs on the back wall of the recess and the medallion panels above are early Renaissance in inspiration. There is also a sacrament house (presented by Ogilvie) in the north wall.

The south wall of the chancel is occupied by a laird's loft of 1602, complete with armorial panels. It represents the continuing influence of the principal family (the Ogilvies, by then baronets) on the affairs and even the form of the kirk. On the north wall is a marble monument to one of the later Ogilvies, James, fourth earl of Findlater and Seafield, one of the architects of the Union of Parliaments in 1707.

The tombs which were misappropriated and their dates recut by the second earl of Fife have now been returned to Cullen.

I A G Shepherd 1986.