Fairgirth House, St Lawrence's Chapel

NX85NE 2 879 565

(NX 8794 5662) St. Lawrence's Chapel & Well (NR)

OS 25" map (1909)

St. Lawrence's Chapel and Well, Fairgirth. There is no trace of the chapel, its site according to RCAHMS being occupied by a small house used in connection with Fairgirth farm, although McKerlie says it stood in the garden to the front of the house.

The house, which contains no ecclesiastical features, measures 54'6" by 21'6" over walls 2'8" thick, with a 15' long modern addition at its E end. Two or three probably 18th. century headstones have been built into the garden wall, and human bones have been dug up in the farm-yard indicating the former existence of a cemetery. Neither the walls nor the dwelling house have any features that indicate a date earlier than the 17th century.

The site of St. Lawrence's Well is said to be within the farmyard to the N of the dwelling house. Formerly it was arched over, but now only a background of old loose stones remains, and no water is visible.

Name Book 1850; RCAHMS 1914, visited 1911; E McKerlie 1916.

At NX 8792 5651, in the garden of the former farmhouse described by the Ordnance Survey Name Book (ONB) are the amorphous remains of a small building which may be those of St. Lawrence's Chapel. According to the owner, Prof. P A Ledward, several dressed stones have been found here.

The house (NX 8790 5654) is apparently of three phases. The W end is an early 16th century. three-storey building with a turret stair in the NE corner. Prof. Ledward says it was added to in the 17th century and again in the late 18th - early 19th century.

There is no evidence of a burial ground and the headstones could not be located.

St. Lawrence's Well, at NX 8795 5656, supplies the farm with water and is now covered by a concrete slab.

Visited by OS (RD) 29 July 1969.