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Wamphray Church

Burial Ground (Medieval) - (20th Century), Church (19th Century) (1834), Church (Medieval), War Memorial(S) (20th Century)

Site Name Wamphray Church

Classification Burial Ground (Medieval) - (20th Century), Church (19th Century) (1834), Church (Medieval), War Memorial(S) (20th Century)

Alternative Name(s) Wamphray Parish Church And Churchyard; Wamphray, Old Parish Church; War Memorial Plaques

Canmore ID 66905

Site Number NY19NW 16

NGR NY 13070 96462

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/66905

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Dumfries And Galloway
  • Parish Wamphray
  • Former Region Dumfries And Galloway
  • Former District Annandale And Eskdale
  • Former County Dumfries-shire

Archaeology Notes

The church was dedicated to St Cuthbert.

H Scott 1915-61

Wamphray (Glasgow, Annandale). An independent parsonage, the patronage of which was granted by John of Corrie to Roger de Kirkpatrick in 1357, the church continued to be unappropriated, lying within the presentation of the lords of the barony, who from 1549 onwards were the Johnstones of Wamphray.

I B Cowan 1967.

Activities

Construction (1834)

NY19NW 16 13070 96462

NMRS REFERENCE:

Architect: Mr McGowan, 1834.

(Undated) information in NMRS.

Field Visit (31 March 1972)

Located above church door at NY 1305 9646.

Visited by OS (R D) 31 March 1972

Field Visit (31 August 1978)

No change to previous field report.

Visited by OS (M J F) 31 August 1978.

Field Visit (April 1990)

NY19NW 16.1 1305 9646

Nothing is visible of the old parish church of Wamphray, which stood in the burial-ground on probably much the same site as the present church (built in 1834). Within the burial-ground there are a number of 18th-century gravestones, and several very fine 19th-century funerary monuments, including the burial-enclosure of Dr John Rogerson (1741-1823), first physician to the emperor of Russia.

Incorporated as a lintel over the W door to the church there is a fragment of an Anglo-Scandinavian cross-shaft. Its provenance is unknown, but it is said to have come from the site of a chapel at Barneygill (NY19NW 9). The front of the slab is divided into two panels by a cable moulding. The left panel is filled with a symmetrical knot formed by the interlacing of four plant scrolls, and that on the right by a backward-biting quadruped. The reverse of the slab is largely obscured, but, from a hand-hole cut through the plaster strapwork to the rear of the lintel, some detail can be tentatively made out. This side of the slab also appears to have been divided into two frames, and within each there is a quadruped of like form to that on the front, with minor variations in knotwork in the treatment of the limbs. The exposed side of the slab bears three interlace loops with long glides and is severely weathered.

Visited by RCAHMS (IMS, PC), April 1990.

Reference (1996)

Wamphray Parish Church (situated in an isolated graveyard). Neat rubble-built rectangle, by Eilliam McGowan, 1834. Round-arched windows with intersecting tracery in their top sashes. At the W gable, a slender tower carrying a birdcage bellcote, its stepped roof finished with a ball finial. Above the tower door is a re-used weathered stone, perhaps of the 11th cent., divided by a rope moulding into two unequal panels, the left carved with a circular pattern of foliage and the right with a spiralling dragon. At the ball-finialled E gable, a vestry added in 1859, designed in the same style as the church but given a steep-pitched attic in 1928.

Headstones: in the graveyard S of the church, John Burges (died 1742), the aedicular front carved with a man standing on a skull; an angel's head (the soul) in the pediment. SW of the church, James McLean (died 1774), aedicular again, with an angel's head at the top, a coat of arms in the middle, and a skull and bone at its bottom. To its N, Margaret Holladay (died 1740), carved with the full-length figure of a woman holding bones.

J Gifford 1996.

Reference (1997)

Listed as Wamphray, church, burial-ground and Anglian cross-shaft.

RCAHMS 1997; NMRS, SAS MS/101 (rubbing).

Project (February 2014 - July 2014)

A data upgrade project to record war memorials.

Note (15 March 2024)

A church and burial ground is depicted on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (1861).

Information from HES (D Watson) 15 March 2024

References

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