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Crail, Marketgate, Crail Parish Church, Churchyard

Burial Ground (Period Unassigned), Churchyard (Period Unassigned)

Site Name Crail, Marketgate, Crail Parish Church, Churchyard

Classification Burial Ground (Period Unassigned), Churchyard (Period Unassigned)

Canmore ID 99054

Site Number NO60NW 2.01

NGR NO 61366 07986

NGR Description Centred NO 61366 07986

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/99054

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

Administrative Areas

  • Council Fife
  • Parish Crail
  • Former Region Fife
  • Former District North East Fife
  • Former County Fife

Activities

Field Visit (13 June 1927)

MURAL MONUMENTS.

The churchyard contains an unusually large number of mural monuments of architectural merit, several of which have been restored. They are all fully described in The Churchyard Memorials of Crail, by Erskine Beveridge, LL.D., Edinburgh, 1893, pp. 64-257. The following are of special interest:

(1) The monument to James Lumsden of Airdrie [SC 1111080], who died in 1598, is the earliest and most noteworthy in the churchyard. It is interesting to find that, here, at the end of the 16th century, the little capitals of the shafts have been copied from early 13th-century models. In the upper part is an heraldic panel with helm and mantling. The crest is a hawk perching on a salmon. The supporters are a lion and a boar. The shield bears: Within a bordure a chevron between a wolf's head couped and a buckle in chief and an escallop in base. Above the crest is the motto, BE VAR IN TYM, and below the shield is the date (re-cut) 1598.On each side of the achievement is a panel. The dexter panel bears in monogram ‘James Lumsden’ and the sinister one the words ‘of Airdrie’. Each monogram is surmounted in small lettering by the words which it contains. The central frieze bears a Latin inscription, now almost illegible, that on the dexter an anagram, while on the sinister panel a Latin inscription records the death of James Lumsden of Airdrie on 23 August 1598, at the age of 43. On one return of the frieze is sculptured a male head, bald and with moustache and beard, apparently a portrait of the deceased. On the return opposite is a skull. On the east side of the frieze is another monogram, I.L.O.A.I.L., for ‘James Lumsden of Airdrie’, the initials being repeated for symmetry. On two panels in the lower part of the monument is an ‘Address to the Soul’ very much weatherworn.

(2) The monument of William Bruce of Symbister (SC 1111081), who died in 1630, is unusual in form, and has probably been designed from a French engraving. In a niche, flanked by pilasters enriched with trophies of arms on one side, and with a series of funeral emblems on the other, is a life-sized effigy, clad in plate armour, but wanting the head and arms. Above the dexter pilaster the frieze is inscribed, WILLIAM / BRVCE . OF / SYNBASTER (Symbister, Whalsey, Shetland Isles), and above the sinister pilaster is an anagram of the inscription, LOVE . CRIST / Y(E) . LAMBE. B(EW)AR . OF . SIN. In the pediment is a cartouche, but the armorial is now illegible. Lying in the niche is part of a finial bearing a cartouche with the initial W on the dexter side, the other initial being missing. The cartouche bears: A saltire and chief, the latter charged with amullet in the dexter point, for Bruce of Symbister.

RCAHMS 1933, visited 13 June 1927.

Photographic Survey (July 1960)

Photographic survey by the Scottish National Buildings Record in July 1960.

Photographic Survey (1986)

Recording of gravestones in the churchyard of Crail Parish Church by Mrs Betty Willsher in 1986.

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