Stichill, Parish Church, Graveyard

A religious building has stood on the site of Stichill Parish Church since the fourteenth century. Within the burial-ground surrounding the church, there are indications of these earlier structures; the east wall of the burial-ground contains stonework that may be a partial foundation from an earlier building, and a memorial is mounted on a section of wall that may also be a remnant of an older structure.

Elsewhere in the burial-ground, there is a large Celtic cross dedicated to a former minister and a number of gravestones dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A burial enclosure owned by the Pringles of Stichill stands at the eastern end of the church.

Text prepared by RCAHMS as part of the Accessing Scotland's Past project

NT73NW 4.01 Centred NT 7114 3830

Parish Church, Stichill.The church and the burial-enclosure at its E end are both modern, but the E wall of the latter rests upon an old foundation which may be that of a former church. A pier of masonry, conjectured to be part of the wall, stands a short distance to the SE.

The pier of masonry just mentioned forms a support for a mural monument of early 18th-century type. This monument has Ionic pilasters and a moulded entablature framing a panel from which the inscription has entirely disappeared. Only two other monuments in the churchyard fall to be recorded, both small headstones. One, which takes the form of a miniature mural monument, is inscribed in the tympanum MEMENTO MORI and below HERE LYES JAMES LAMB / TENNANT IN RUNN/INGBURN DIED JUNE / 23 1705 AGED 76 YEARS / AS ALSO ALISONE HOG/ART HIS SPOUSE DIED / MARCH 30 1686 AGE / 64 YEARS. On the back are the initials I L and A H followed by a verse:

NEAR TO THIS STANE A COUPLE LIES

THEY LIVE ABOVE & NO MORE DIES

THE POOR TUO PARENTS KIND HATH LOST

THEY TO RELIEVE THEM SPARED NO COST

THEY READY WERE TO HELP DISTRESD

WHICH TO THE (?BASE) DUST EXPREST

THEY ON THE WATERS CAST THEIR BREAD

THEY AFTERWARD IT FOUND INDEED

THE MERCY PROMISED TO SUCH IS NOU

BESTOUED THEM TO ENRICH

& NOU THEYR GONE TO HEAVENS GLOR

AND DO THE HOLY GOD ADORE

THE LAMB IS WORTHY OF ALL PRAISE

FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN OUR SOULS HATH (RAISE)

WHO HATH REDEEMED US BY HIS BLOOD

AND MADE US KINGS AND PREISTS TO GOD.

AMEN ALLELLUIA

The other is inscribed HEIR LYETH / WILLIAM WOOD/

WHO DEPAIRTED / THIS LIFE THE (?I)o / OF APR (I)L

16(?(77). On the back is a skull with cross-bones,

and the motto MEMENTO MORI above.

RCAHMS,visited 20 October 1937, 24 November 1951.

RCAHMS confirmed. The pier of masonry mentioned is at NT 7113 3827.

The parish church is still in use.

Visited by OS(WDJ) 29 June 1966.