The Old Church of St John is a ruined church, incorporating a finely carved sacrament house and situated within a historic burial ground in Kirktown of Deskford in Moray, Scotland. The church, along with the remains of the Tower of Deskford which was formerly attached to it, is a scheduled monument; the burial grounds and enclosing wall, excluding the other structures, are designated as a Category A listed building.
St John's church was first mentioned in documents from 1541, which record its reconstruction,[1] and which describe is as a chapel, probably built for the Ogilvy family.[2] It is first described as a church in 1545, and the sacrament house was added in 1551.[1] Situated within the parish of Fordyce, the church was owned by the canons of Aberdeen Cathedral.[2] It remained in use until 1872, when a new parish church was built. The old kirk, now redundant, had its roof removed, its walls consolidated with cement, and it was allowed to fall into disrepair.[3]
The remains of the church survive as a long, narrow[1] and roofless rectangular structure, with openings where the doorways would originally have been.[2] It is roughly 20 metres long, and 8 metres wide, with walls around a metre in thickness.[3] The walls survive to their full height, but the level of the ground has been raised by between 0.6 - 0.9 metres, probably around 1872 when the roof was removed.[3]
Little remains of the Tower of Deskford. Originally attached to north wall of the church, in the 1790s the tower was three stories high; all that remains today is the vaulted ground floor, and the part that abutted the church has been removed, also probably when the roof was removed.[3]
The 1551 sacrament house, described as 'gorgeous' by Charles McKean[5] and 'particularly fine' by Richard Fawcett,[2] is seen as the most significant surviving feature of the church.[3] Roughly 2.5 metres high and 1 metre wide, it features fine vine-scrolling and carvings, as well as a number of inscriptions in Latin which reference the Ogilvy family (who went on to become the Earls of Seafield), and the Gordons.[3][2]
The burial grounds contain a number of 17th and 18th Century memorials, including that of Walter Ogilvy, a former minister of the parish, who died in 1658.[3] The grounds are enclosed by a coped rubble wall, and accessed from the north via a pair of simple cast iron spear-head gates, flanked by squared ashlar piers.[4]
1 2 3 4 5 Walker, David W.; Woodworth, Matthew (2015). The Buildings of Scotland - Aberdeenshire: North and Moray. New Haven: Yale University Press. p.678. ISBN9780300204285.
↑ McKean, Charles (1987). The District of Moray. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. p.136. ISBN1873190484.
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