Kirkton, Farnaway Church And Graveyard

NH64NW 8 6055 4520.

(NH 6055 4520) Church (GT) (Ruin){NAT}

OS 6" map, Inverness, 2nd ed., (1906)

Farnua & Wardlaw (NH 54) were united into one parish of Kirkhill in 1618. The church of Farnua stood at Kirkton, Bunchrew; where are still the remains of the churchyard with several old stones.

ISSFC 1885, 1893, 1898; T Wallace 1911.

At Kirkton, near Bunchrew, are the remains of the chuuch and churchyard of Farnaway or Fearnaie being now represented only by an enclosure about 20 yards square - of which the north wall is part of the old church; the church once measured 20 yards long by 18 feet wide. The graveyard was once four or five times larger and many skeletons have been discovered in the field north of the road (NH64NW 13) for cup-marked stones in graveyard wall)

W Jolly 1882.

The probable surviving remains of this church is a short stretch of rubble wall 7.2m long and 1.0m thick (as opposed to the graveyard walls thickness of 0.4m). It is featureless, and is 2.0m high above the graveyard's present level, but 3.0m high externally. The graveyard wall is not old, and a datestone, bearing the date 1811, in the east jamb of the southern entrance, may well be the date of its erection. The earliest grave-slab found amid undergrowth, was dated 1742.

Contrary to Jolly (W Jolly 1882), the existing fragment of church wall is on the east side of the graveyard - not the north - and therefore is probably the east gable of the church.

Visited by OS (J L D) 28 March 1962.