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The Unitary Authority of Aberdeenshire is located in the County of NE Scotland in North East Region of Scotland, it covers an administrative area of 6,313Km² and in 2001 was home to a population of 235,440 persons, that represents 4.65% of that of Scotland and 0.40% of the population of the entire United Kingdom.
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Alford |
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Oldmeldrum |
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Royal Deeside |
Strathdon |
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The words were written in 1807, before Byron (Byron: Life and Legend) had discovered the beauties of the Mediterranean coasts, but there is no reason to think that he ever lost his love and admiration for the county in which much of his childhood was spent, and all good Aberdonians (or good Britons for that matter) must swell with pride when they reflect on such a compliment from the true son of a south far south of the English Channel.
The grandeur of this north-eastern section of the mighty Grampians has been realised by minds less brilliant and impressionable, but more stable and well balanced that of Byron. Many world travellers have long regarded it as presenting some of the finest scenery in Europe; and was it for nothing that Queen Victoria, with her quick eye for the beauties of nature, bought the Balmoral estate in 1848 and five years later build the stately castle which has so long been the highland home of our Royal Family?
The River Don, rising north of Ben Avon, starts life under conditions less exciting but otherwise somewhat similar to those of its longer and more famous rival, but it leaves the mountain mass sooner and as it meets the coastal plain it loses much of its speed and force; civilisation seizes upon it and, except at occasional points, it is in one way or another made to supply power for various industrial enterprises and otherwise contribute to the necessities, as well as the pleasures, of human kind. Of the other rivers of Aberdeen, the Ythan and the Deverton (which it shares with Banff) are alone worthy of the name.
Of the mountain peaks, Ben Macdhui, known to all schoolboys as the second highest summit in our United Kingdom, must be awarded the palm, though other palms might well be distributed among some of its fellows, Cairn Toul, Braeriach, Ben Avon, the “Byronic” Loch na Garr, and the Buck of Cabrach, and a high word of praise is due to beautiful Ben-nachie which dominates the plain, north east and south, and on which sleepy sportsmen cast a dull eye when they travel by the early morning train from Aberdeen to Speyside and beyond.
Aberdeen can boast few lakes, or “lochs,” to use the proper idiom, and of those only three, Loch Muich, at the foot of Loch na Garr, Loch Callater and the Loch of Strathbeg, at the corner of the coast, are more than glorified pools.
The comparatively low-lying eastern half of Aberdeen has many charming well-wooded “bits” but, particularly in the northern sector, it is somewhat uninteresting, and it is only when the coastline is reached that nature in her wilder moods can be seen in the eternal battle between stretches of fine cliff and the unruly sea.
“The coast is generally very rocky,” writes John Gorton in his Topographical Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland (published in 1831), “and a part of it, lying to the south of Peterhead, is rendered peculiarly awful by the stupendous precipices, undermined by the remarkable caves on the coast called the Bullers or Boilers of Buchan, which form a large oval cavity of the depth of about one hundred feet, into which terrific pit boats are sometimes drawn and dashed to pieces.” Such are the main geographical features of the country.
The city of Aberdeen is one of the few places in the world which has managed to combine an old town, a new town, and a large population into an artistic and harmonious whole. All good Aberdonians put forwards high claims for it and all enlightened opinion will be slow to say them nay. For this city of granite is good to look upon: and by the variety of its attractions, its eminence as a seat of learning, and its historical and architectural interest, can easily dispose of most of its rivals of the same size and standing. It lies between the mouths of the Don and Dee, and contrary to appearances derives its name from the first of the two rivers. A hundred years ago the distinction between New Aberdeen and Old Aberdeen, or “Old Machar,” was a very real one; of the latter Gorton could say that “the aspect is extremely pleasant and agreeably diversified with gentleman’s seats, villas and plantations,” whereas the former, though a large handsome town with many “spacious” and “elegant” buildings, was essentially that vulgar institution, a port and commercial emporium.
In a sense, the distinction still persists, for though the “gentlemen’s seats, villas, and plantations are no longer the distinguishing feature of Old Aberdeen, it retains its delightful old-fashioned, unhurried, academic, and peaceful air, in contrast to its busy and bustling neighbour. Its architectural “lion” is the Cathedral of St Machar, whose very name recalls the dim and distant period of early Scottish Christianity. Legend runs that the ecclesiastical history of Aberdeen dates, at any rate, from the sixth century. Of that first church nothing remains, and indeed, the present building is but a fragment of the great cathedral which was an object of universal veneration by the early part of the sixteenth century. In that and the next century it suffered severely from the reforming and iconoclastic zeal of the time, with the result that St Machar, as we see it to-day, has only a nave and the great western towers to recall its former glories, and the interior of the church is solid and impressive rather than beautiful. But it still enjoys the unique distinction of being the only granite cathedral in the world. Another “lion” of Old Aberdeen is King’s College, which is now part of academic record and distinction, King’s College is known far and wide for its chapel, a somewhat curious fact in view of the even greater renown of the chapel at King’s college at Cambridge. The Aberdeen example is half a century later than the founding of the English college, dating as it does from 1500, when the University had barely started its career. Its tower, surmounted by a super-structure ending in a crown, is the only survivor of three. The stalls and screen are particularly fine examples of what is rather rare in Scotland, mediaeval wood-carving.
New Aberdeen, the true “City of Granite,” can rightly boast of the variety and magnificence of its modern buildings, and to those who look upon the architectural output of the nineteenth century as poor in taste and quality, it will administer a well deserved rebuke. The Municipal Buildings, unlike the pompous and pretentious eyesores in which the municipal activities of so many towns are concentrated, is a splendid pile crowned by a lofty tower reminiscent in some ways of the towers of Nuremberg and other older cities of Southern Germany. Marischal College, the other limb of what is now Aberdeen University, is an enlargement and improvement of older buildings, and in its present state may well claim a high place among the products of modern British architecture. But the same exacting standard may be observed among the private buildings of the city, whether banks, hotels, offices, or shops, and one has a feeling that Aberdeen is a city built by men possessed of a strong sense of civic pride and animated by desire to make and keep that city worthy of its great traditions. But the architectural interest of Aberdeen is not exclusively modern; the old Bridge of Dee, so striking an example of the art of combining utility with good lines, dates from the first half of the sixteenth century.
Perhaps its greatest claim to historic fame is as the scene of one of the most striking victories of the brilliant Montrose. The ghost of the great Covenanter who abjured the cause and, as the most royal of Royalists, all but won Scotland for Charles I, must haunt the county of Aberdeen, and the city itself has good reason to remember him in both places. Between 1637 and 1644 he captured the town on four occasions, on two of which it was sacked by troops who were drunk with religious and political fanaticism.
Grim and great must have been the rejoicing of the good citizens when Montrose was captured and executed in May 1650, and one of the dead man’s hands adorned the Tollbooth for six weeks – until the future Charles II visited Aberdeen in the following July. The Tower of this old Tollbooth still exists as part, though a very inconspicuous part, of the Municipal Buildings which have already been referred to.
Another grim relic preserved in these buildings is the knife of the “Aberdeen Maiden,” a be-heading machine used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The peaceful and civilised Aberdonian may not care to think that the instrument of execution named after his native city was one day to inspire the invention of the guillotine which gave the French Reign of Terror half its horror, but such is un-doubtedly the fact, as every reader of Georges Lenotre’s La Guillotine pendant la Revolution well knows.
More pleasant memorials of a Aberdeen of earlier days are the City Cross and St Nicholas’ Church, now known as the East and West Churches. The cross is one of the most remarkable examples of a “one man show” to be found in Great Britain; both the structural and decorative work was carried out by a certain John Montgomery, who completed his task in 1686, and adorned his monument with clever and remarkably faithful portraits in stone of the Kings of Scotland from James I to James VII. In such good company even the mean features of “the wisest fool in Christendom” assume a certain kingly dignity.
The East and West Churches are examples of rebuilding in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the East Church has relics of its predecessor in its transepts and its crypt known as St Mary’s Chapel. Perhaps no sacred building in Britain has passed through such vicissitudes as this chapel. To have served successively as a chapel, a prison, a shop, a soup kitchen, and then again a chapel, is a record in versatility which would be hard to parallel.
But to regard Aberdeen as in any sense a graveyard of the past is to do the city a gross injustice. It is essentially modern and progressive, and its appeal lies in its multifarious and abounding activities as a civic centre, as port, an industrious commercial emporium, and the headquarters of the granite and fishing industries.
After Aberdeen, the other towns of the county take a very minor place; Peterhead and Fraserburgh, with a combined population barely one-seventh of that of Aberdeen, owe such importance as they possess to the existence of the lowly but useful herring, for without herring fishery, which concentrates upon them, they would probably lead a perfectly genteel but obscure existence. Peterhead will for ever be associated with the great family of the Keiths, and must for ever bear the reproach that the most famous member of that family earned his renown on foreign soil and in the service of a Prussian king! For it was Field-Marshal Keith, most faithful and tenacious of Jacobites, who was compelled to flee the country after the ’15, and after serving in various foreign armies caught the discerning eye of Frederick the Great and helped, perhaps more than any other, to make that monarch’s military reputation. And now his statue, a present to Peterhead from King William I of Prussia in 1868, reminds every visitor to the town of the loss Britain suffered by the natural but ill-advised attempts of the exiled Stuarts to recover their crown.
Between Peterhead and the mouth of the Ythan is some of the best cliff scenery in the county, the Cruden Bay “boom” showing well enough that the possibilities of this region are fully realised. And not only the golfing fraternity will be rewarded by a visit to this noble coast, Buchan Ness itself Scotland’s “farthest east,” is a low promontory with a lighthouse much like any other low promontory with any other lighthouse, but between this point and Cruden the land and sea, each in its wildest and most primitive mood, meet in a long line of high and rugged cliffs, sometimes cut into fantastic shapes as at Dunbuy rock and the far famed “Buller of Buchan.” The latter is a curious and very remarkable formation, a vast crater communicating with the sea only by a narrow channel under a natural archway. The sides of this crater are almost perpendicular and very high, but even their 200 feet does not prevent them being overtopped by whirling sheets of spray in rough weather, when gigantic waves thunder into the channel like an express into a tunnel. For those who like Nature in her dramatic moments, the Bullers of Buchan will always be a favourite spot. But, indeed, there is a touch of theatricality about much of the scenery on this coast. What finer décor de theatre could be imagined than Slains Castle, the home of the Earls of Erroll, perched on a lofty crag hanging sheer above the sea. The touch of drama becomes a touch of tragedy when one gets farther south to Forvie sands, an innocent-looking stretch of tufted sandhills under which lies the Scottish Pompeii---without corpses. The destroyer of the Parish of Forvie was not ashes and lava, but sand and the immediate agency was a succession of tremendous gales. Centuries have passed since the catastrophe, but the fragmentary relics of Forvie Church still remain as its only visible witness.
Between Peterhead and Fraserburgh the coast is not so interesting as that further south, and Fraserburgh itself is only Peterhead over again, but with more herrings and rather fewer people. Its original name was “Faithlie,” but the town as we know it now was the creation of Sir Alender Fraser, the head of the great local family, and in his honour it took his name.
All this part of the district of Buchan, as the north-eastern corner of the county is called, is very bleak, being exposed on two sides to the full fury of the North Sea gales. But as soon as a little shelter is reached inland, the well-known courage and industry of the Aberdonians have converted a wild waste into smiling fields and pastures. The story of the long battle against natural disadvantages – a vigorous climate and poor soil – is one of the romances of agriculture, but for the outcome of it is that the county is now of the greatest national importance, both for its horse-breeding and cattle-rearing and its crops of oats and potatoes.
Buchan itself is remarkably flat with the exceptions of four or five patches of hill, of which the best known is Mormond Hill, whose white horse, cut in the southern flank, reminds the traveller of the far more famous “White Horse” of Westbury in Wiltshire.
Of historical relics, mainly of the earliest period, this region is particularly rich. There are stone circles in plenty to mystify the antiquarians and earth-houses (called “Picts Houses”), to give an idea of what life was like in very primitive times. But to all who are interested in the beginnings of Christianity in Britain, Buchan will mainly appeal as the District of Deer, its ancient Abbey which has suffered as much from vandalism during the last half-century as during the whole of its previous existence, and the still earlier church (perhaps the first Christian Church established in Aberdeen), founded by St Columba, of which nothing remains. A glimpse of the great missionary’s activities in this county is given in the famous eleventh-century manuscript known as “The Book of Deer,” which was casually discovered in the University Library at Cambridge in 1860. We read that “Column-Cille [Columba] and Drostan, the son of Cosreg, his disciple, came from Hy [Iona], as God had shewn them, to Aberdour” [on the north coast of Aberdeen]: that “Bede, a Pict, was then high-steward of Buchan, and gave them that town in freedom for evermore”; that “they came after that to another town and it was pleasing to Colum-Cille for that it was full of God’s grace; and he asked of the high-steward, Bede, that he would give it to him, but he gave it not; and behold a son of took an illness, and he was all but dead, and the high-steward went to entreat the holy men that they would make a prayer for his son that health might come to him; and he gave in offering to them from Cloch-in-Tiprat to Cloch-Pette-Mie-Garnait; and they made the prayer and health came to him.” Thus did the great work of spreading Christianity among the heathen Picts advance.
But it is not the ecclesiastic remains of Aberdeenshire, picturesque and interesting as they are, which really tell the story of the county’s history. As an early seat of civilisation and commercial prosperity, the coastal plain was always an object of envy and covetousness to the fierce and rude Highland folk inhabiting the mountain fastnesses on the west. The unhappy possibilities of a sudden marauding raid made it essential that the peaceful dwellers in the lowlands should have some refuge at hand where safety could be ensured until the peril was past. Hence the existence of an extraordinary number of castles with which the county is studded, and which give Aberdeen so much of its beauty and interest. In the north and centre of the county the finest examples are to be found at Inverugie, a picturesque ruin in the valley of the Ugie, close to Peterhead; Cairnbulg, near Fraserburgh, once a mighty stronghold and restored in late years; Huntly castle, close to the quiet little town of the name; Gight, on the north bank of the Ythan, and memorable as having once had Byron's mother for its chatelaine and being sold to pay her husband’s debts; and above all Fyvie Castle, in splendid seat of Lord Leith of Fyvie. This is one of the finest castellated mansions in Scotland, with its architectural work of successive centuries and its great towers, the “Preston,” the “Meldrum,” the “Gordon,” and the “Seton,” named respectively after the owners of the castle at the time they were built.
But in historic interest even Fyvie must yield pride of place to Kildrummy Castle in the Don valley, the huge, noble ruin which even in decay remains a fine monument of military architecture as known in the thirteenth century. As a great royal fortress and depot, it was a strategic point of the highest importance. Edward I besieged it during his campaign of 1306 and 1307 in the county, and if history is to be believed its resistance was overcome not by the force of his arms but by treachery and guile.
Hard by are the ruins of Glenbucket and Towie Castles, of which the latter was the scene of a peculiarly dastardly piece of sixteenth-century savagery when in 1571 Adam Gordon, incensed at the refusal of the wife of Alexander Forbes to surrender the place, burnt the town with all its occupants.
At this point the higher reaches of the Don, the river is on an east-west course to the north of the great watershed which separates it from the valley of the Dee and lies in the heart of the mountainous western half of Aberdeenshire. The contrast between this rugged region and the flat, well-cultivated districts of Buchan and Formatine, or even the foothill district farther north, is violent in the extreme, and as the scenery is some of the finest in the British Isle, and the district is more familiar to visitors than any other part of the county, it deserves special consideration.
The Dee valley is a deep ravine cut by the river in a mountain mass comprising many of the highest and grandest peaks in the country. As a foaming torrent, the river emerges from the slopes of Braeriach and Ben Muichdhui, rushes south between that mighty monarch of the solitudes and Cairn Toul, and then strikes eastward, the change of direction being marked by the appearance of wooded banks at the well-known “Linn of Dee,” where the water pours through a deep and very narrow gully which Queen Victoria bridged soon after she made Balmoral her highland home.
The next stretch of the river is to Braemar, an exceedingly beautiful section which picks up tributaries on both sides, Lui Water and Quich Water on the left and Ey Water and Clunie Water on the right. As the river twists and winds over its gravely bed between tree-clad banks and wrapped in the silence of the might hills, it presents a picture which appeals to even the most prosaic nature. Braemar itself, or Castleton of Braemar, to use its proper name, is on Clunie Water just above it meeting-place with the Dee. It has no particular attraction in itself, but helps to accommodate some of the thousands of visitors who swarm in the Dee valley in summer and autumn. Among the noteworthy buildings of the vicinity are Mar Castle, perhaps the most military in appearance of Scottish residences, and Invercauld House, which incorporates architectural work dating from the fifteenth century onwards.
Historically Braemar is interesting for its associations with the attempt of the Old Pretender to recover his throne in 1715. It was from Invercauld that the Earl of Mar issued his summons to the Highland clans; he first raised the standard of rebellion in Braemar itself, and Braemar Castle, just east of the junction of the two rivers, was subsequently occupied for a long time as a barracks by the troops crushed the revolt.
The next sector, from Braemar to Ballater, might almost be called the “Royal” sector, for its chief feature is Balmoral Castle, situated in a beautiful semicircular bend about half-way between these two places. The castle itself, in the Scottish baronial style, is the outcome of the artistic tastes of the Prince Consort. If it has to some extent missed picturesqueness, it has to an even greater extent missed pretentiousness that besetting sin of nearly all public or semi-public buildings erected in the middle of the last century.
At Ballater civilisation begins again, for it is the terminus of a railway from Aberdeen which follows the line of the river except in one sector west of Banchory. But the Dee still retains its picturesque features and in or near its valley are many spots famous for their natural beauty or historical associations: Loch Kinnord, Burno’ the Vat, Aboyne and its castle, the romantic Glen Tanar, and Drum Castle; the latter incorporating one of the oldest and most characteristic peel towers in Scotland.
After the varied and manifold beauties of Deeside, the valley of the more sedate and workmanlike Don is somewhat tame, a distinction commemorated forcibly in a well-known rhyme. But at points such as Monymusk it is exceedingly beautiful and some of the finest castles and mansions in Scotland are on, or at no great distance from, its banks. Apart form Kildrummy, which has already been mentioned, there are the splendid piles of Craigievar, Castle Fraser, Cluny Castle, Castle Newe, and the ruin of Pitfinchie Castle, near Monymusk.
All this district in the very heart of the county of Aberdeen and dominated by the imposing and familiar Bennachie is rich in historical memories. Inverurie rose to fame as the result of a victory of Robert Bruce over one of Edward I’s Scottish supporters, and hard by is the battlefield of Harlaw, the site of a Homeric contest on July 24, 1411, for the result of which every good Aberdonian cannot feel sufficiently grateful. For had not Donald of the Isles and highland host been routed on that fateful day by the Earl of Mar and the forces of law and order, it is certainly doubtful whether the city of Aberdeen would have continued to hold high the torch of civilisation and progress in dark places and a dark age.
In the variety of its physical characteristics Banffshire has a good deal in common with Aberdeenshire of which it now forms part. The great mass of the Grampian Mountains provides a rugged apex to the old county inland boundaries, and the general elevation falls progressively as those boundaries approach the sea. The southern portion of Banff is composed of the northern slopes of the Cairngorm range in Aberdeenshire, and as might be expected the scenery is very similar and almost equal to the more famous scenery of the upper valley of the Dee. Cairngorm itself, over four thousand feet in height, is in the county, and the three fine and wild lochs of Avon, Builg, and Etchachan show Grampian scenery at its ruggedest and best.
Banff itself, the capital of the county, is on the coast, and in a very ancient town which has not so much achieved greatness as occasionally had greatness thrust upon it by its associations with the great. At one end of the scale one might mention King Edward I of England, who made Banff Castle his headquarters on two visit at the end of the thirteenth century; at the other there would be a place for Archbishop Sharp, who was born there on May 4, 1618. In his epitaph at St Andres, the archbishop is referred to as “a most pious prelate, a most prudent senator, and a most holy martyr,” but there are few Scots living or dead who would admit that there is little more than a grain of truth in it. The fact is that in his efforts to trim his sails to every wind that blew in the stormy seventeenth century the dexterous archbishop succeeded in arousing the hatred of all classes, and his brutal murder in 1679 was regarded by the Covenanters as nothing less than the work of the Lord.
But Banff Castle has vanished from human sight, together with almost everything else that proclaimed the great antiquity of the town, and the architectural lion of the place is now Duff House, the eighteenth century mansion which was presented to Banff and Macduff by the late Duke of Fife. It used to be also famous for its pictures.
Banff was also the scene of the tragic-comedy of the execution of James Macpherson, “the Banff Freebooter” in 1700. In November of that year he and some of his companions were found guilty...
“to be knaive, holden and repute, to be Egiptions and vagabonds and oppressors of his majesty’s free lieges in ane bangstrie manner.”Macpherson was condemned to suffer for the sins of the lot. The gallows was erected at the Cross of Banff on the 16th, and the crowd got more than their money’s worth, as it is said that the culprit, a famous violinist amongst other things, entertained them with an impassioned speech, the performance of an original composition (subsequently known as “Montgomery’s ‘rant’) on his instrument, and a dramatic interlude in which he offered the violin to anyone willing to say a kind work for him and getting no answer, threw it into the open grave which gaped at his feet.
The other towns on the coast are in the main engaged in the fishing industry and of little historical importance or renown. Portsoy is best known for a local product, “Portsoy marble,” a species of serpentine, beautifully coloured and of such fine texture that we are told it has been used for the manufacture of the most delicate objects, and even tea-cups.
Six miles west of Portsoy is the very ancient little town of Cullen, though relics of its great antiquity are somewhat scarce, as what was known as the “Old Town” was demolished when the great mansion of Cullen House was added to and improved.
The only other town in the county is Keith, but neither Keith nor the large village of Dufftown can claim to be either beautiful or particularly interesting. The latter, however, is almost at the junction of two pretty valleys, Glen Rinnes and Glen Fiddich, of which the latter, says an old book...
“contains many mixations of the sweet and the wild, the bold and the beautiful – many blendings of those features of landscape which invite the pencil and play upon the imagination.”The district of Mortlach (whose most ancient church is very poorly represented by the existing, viciously modernised building) is full of history. Here it is that Malcolm II won his great victory over the Danes in a battle which was signalised by a reversal of fortunes even more dramatic than that of Marengo. It is said that three of the Scottish generals were slain in the first onset, and Malcolm’s army was stricken with a panic which was fast involving the whole force in disorderly flight. The King struggled in vain to restore the battle, but the tide of retreat swept him back to the little chapel which was then on the site of the church of Mortlach. Here Malcolm invoked the aid of the saints to such good effect that he succeeded in rallying his beaten host and transforming defeat into the most brilliant of victories.
The ruin of Auchindune Castle is the relic of a fortress which was perhaps built by Robert Cochrane, the stonemason or architect who became the favourite of James III of Scotland. It was this unhappy man who was enticed by his enemies into Lauder church and hung over the Bridge of Lauder under the very eyes of the distracted King.
Balvenie Castle is not known to be associated with any incident as sinister, but the motto of the Stuarts, Earls of Atholl, above its gate shows that its owners lived in moving times:
FVRTH. FORTVIN. AND. FIL. THI. FATTRIS.
The vale of Glen Livet is noted on two remarkably contrasted grounds. It is the home of the celebrated distillery from which comes a famous and superlative brand of whisky. It is also the scene of James IV of Scotland’s great victory over the Earls of Huntly and Erroll, whose attempt at rebellion came to a well-merited end.
The wild but fine country in central and southern Banffshire is not so well known as it deserves to be, as it is rather off the beaten track. But all readers of Queen Victoria’s Highland Journals know how much it appealed to her (though she is not always altogether kind to places such as Tomintoul and Dufftown), and her very simple and unsophisticated accounts of her excursions from Balmoral into this region are a key to its character no less than to the mind of its royal visitor.
There are many spots in county which might truthfully be described as the back-end of nowhere, but perhaps no spot in Scotland can put forward a better claim to be the edge of the earth than Gamrie, close to the Aberdeenshire border. An old account tells us that the three great natural curiosities which are “not far from the House of Troup” are
All the coastline in this region is magnificent in its severity and desolation, and Troup Head, its monarch, has a character all its own. The little seaside villages of Gardenstown and Pennan seem an unwarranted intrusion of humanity into nature’s fastnesses, and the spirit of the locality, if there is one, must look far more tolerantly on the ancient church (so ancient as to have had its beginnings almost in the age of mythology), which seems to stand sentinel in the midst of its “lone Kirkyard,” waiting for the sound of the last Trump.