Archaeology Notes
Event ID 714995
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Archaeology Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/714995
NT47SW 8 4027 7337.
(NT 4027 7337) Tranent parish church was erected in 1800 and altered in 1954 (G Hay 1957) on the foundations of apparently a late 15th century church with transepts and a central tower. The remains of the priest's door, and the lower courses of pre-Reformation walling are in the S wall and W gable, while there are two pre-Reformation buttresses at the W end of the N wall. The pre-Reformation church was granted to Holyrood Abbey c.1150.
The ruined mortuary aisle of the Cadells of Cockenzie which projects from the N wall, has a 2-light window, now built up, which may be of 16th century date.
RCAHMS 1924, visited 1920
As described.
Visited by OS (RD) 4 January 1972.
The Statistical Account of Tranent, published 1794, gives a detailed description of the earlier church:
"Ecclefiaftical State.- The church is a very ancient, incommodious, and unhealthy fabric. No account of its antiquity is any where to be found; but moft people fkilled in architecture have little hefitation in pronouncing it 500 or 600 years old. The outward form refembles 3 oblong buildings, placed fideways, the middle being confiderably longer at each end than the other two. The communication within is by arches of different forms and fizes. A fquare tower rifes from the centre of the whole, fupported by the fide walls of the middle building, and by two crofs arches. The roof is vaulted, and covered with ftone. The windows are few, and ill conftructed; and, in a dark and gloomy day, ferve only to make "darknefs vifible." Either the church has originally been funk below the furface of the ground, or the furrounding burying-ground has been much heightened by the immenfe number of bodies interred in it; for the accefs to the pulpit is by a defcent of 4 fteps from the church-yard."
