Page 27 - LOTN Autumn Issue 54 2023

FAITH AND CULTURE

The Celtic church in Scotland that a church existed here in 750,
and may have been one of the foundations of St Boniface.

(St Peter’s), Tyrie
This church was known as "The White Kirk of Buchan"
according to the Old Statistical Account of 1793, and
according to this source it was built in 1004, but there are no
records of its dedication to St Peter.

The present day church was built in 1800

What is evident is a vague oblong platform of the former
Still used for worship on Easter Sunday mornings
site. The church is said to have been here for centuries, perhaps
church until 1150, when a new feudal lord arrived. medieval, according to local people.
The building before me is strangely consistent with the plans
(St Peter’s), Inveravon of Nechtan - high walls and oblong in shape. W. Macfarlane,
Four early Pictish stones were found below the site of the 1908, understood it to be the oldest church in the diocese,
present church, dating from the 6th and 7th century, which built before the birth of John Knox in 1505, and "very short
would suggest a significant Pictish settlement here at the time and high-walled like a chappell".
Nechtan came to build his church. It has a Pictish stone with an eagle symbol.
The stones at Inveravon are incised with Pictish symbols.
These, together with the original building material from St Peter’s, Drumdelgie
Nechtan’s Peterkirk were repurposed in a new church in This site has proved to be the most elusive, with no signage,
1108 - the first one to be recorded in the church records, and centuries of civil improvements and evident neglect, not just
very probably not on the exact same site. Beside the existing as a church, but as a holy place where local families laid their
graveyard there is a mound, upon which the original church ancestors to rest.
might have stood. The remains of the church are to be found within a cultivated
field - a portion of a wall about nine feet high with the outline
(St Peter’s), Fyvie of the entire foundations and graveyard surrounded by a stone
The first reference to this church is in 1178, almost four dyke.
hundred years after the Peterkirk build, and with no recorded Willowherb, nettles and hogweed greet me, shoulder height,
history. and the graves of forgotten souls, known only to God, and for
the most part, overgrown with moss. There is no history of the
church from its beginnings to its abandonment in the 1500s,
but secret Masses were celebrated here after the reformation.
The immediate area suffered greatly at this time due to the
abundance of Catholic families.
Four priests are interred in the graveyard: Fr Gilbert Blakhall;
Fr Patrick Primrose; Fr George Adamson and Fr John Gordon.
Fr Blakhall was a scholar of the Scots College in Rome and head
of the Scots College in Paris in 1653. He came to Strathbogie
because of ties to local nobility. He was excommunicated in
1664. Fr Primrose was a Dominican priest and vicar-general
(the only person ever to hold this office), who died just after
release from Banff jail in 1670. A memorial was built in the
burial ground but was demolished in 1672. We know very
little about Fr Adamson, who was laid to rest in 1707. Lastly,
Fr Gordon, priest and active Jacobite, who died aged forty-
The Pictish stones at the site have been included in a rebuilt eight and was buried in the Peterkirk ground in 1761. Two of
wall, in the rough shape of a cross. his relatives are buried beside him.
There is reference to a Marian priory adjacent to the site of
the church in 1285, with a suggestion by W.D. Simpson in

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