Archaeology Notes

Event ID 683360

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/683360

NO12SW 41.00 11942 23546

NO12SW 41.01 NO 119 235 Perth, St John's Church, Graveyard

For related excavations in South Saint John's Place (NO 1195 2351), see NO12SW 232.

(NO 1194 2353) St John's Church. This building originally called the Kirk of the Holy Cross of St. John the Baptist, Tradition states that as early as the beginning of the fifth century there was a church here of this name. It is the opinion of some archaelogists that the present fabric is not older than the latter part of the 14th century, or early part of the 15th century but there is a good reason to believe that part of the present church dates from the 12th or 13th century. Before the Reformation it was one church but it is now divided into three churches by means of partition walls viz. East, Middle and West churches.

Name Book 1860.

A watching brief on a service trench c0.5m from the NE corner of St John's Kirk revealed two stone slabs at a depth of 0.70m below the pavement. The slabs may be a foundation for the buttress against the kirk: the buttress is situated centrally over the slabs.

Sponsor:SDD HBM, SUAT.

D R Perry 1989.

Awaiting DES 2000 entry (2000/064).

NO 119 235 A watching brief was maintained between May and October 2003 on environmental improvements around St John's Kirk, with an excavation in the angle of the S transept and choir where the medieval graveyard soil lay immediately under the ground surface. Some 22 articulated burials, including several children, were recovered in whole or in part, as well as a vast quantity of disarticulated human bones. A chamfered course around the choir and Halkerston's Tower was recorded, as well as the foundations of porches at the existing doors into the S and N choir aisles, and at a former door into the S side of the nave. The sites of a former post-medieval door near the E end of the S choir aisle and of the former medieval revestry or sacristy on the N side of the choir were observed. Former (?buttress) foundations were found at the base of Halkerston's Tower and the NW corner of the nave. Several masons' marks on stonework below the ground were recorded. The foundations of a 19th-century enclosure wall around the kirk were located.

Archive to be deposited in the NMRS.

Sponsor: Perth and Kinross Council.

D Perry 2003