Desk Based Assessment

Date 1958

Event ID 687921

Category Recording

Type Desk Based Assessment

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/687921

NO33SE 23 35069 30150

(NO 3507 3015) St Peter's Church (NR) (In Ruins)

OS 6" map, Forfarshire, 2nd ed., (1926)

Invergowrie Church is a simple oblong ruin. The site is associated with the Celtic church, and is one of the churches believed to have been founded by St Boniface in Angus about the beginning of the 7th century. Between 1153 and 1165 the Church of St Peter, Invergowrie, was given to Scone by Malcolm IV; nothing remains of this early structure. The existing building is probably not earlier than the first half of the 16th century. Its walls are entire, although the gables are deteriorating. It measures internally 46' x 15'9". There are two doorways in the S wall, the one towards the W being round-arched; the other is lintelled. There are also two windows in this wall, one being round-arched and cusped; the other is lintelled, with a central mullion. There is a high window in the W gable, and a W doorway which probably dates from Presbyterian times. A stoup adjoins the W doorway in the interior S wall.

Allen and Anderson (1903) notes two Class III, 10th century, cross-slabs built into a window of the church. Although they appear in the scheduled monuments list of 1955, they were donated to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS) in 1947 (Accession nos: IB 251-2)

D MacGibbon and T Ross 1896-7; J R Allen and J Anderson 1903; Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1949; R B K Stevenson 1951.

Information from OS.