{"id":2815,"date":"2016-07-13T21:38:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T20:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2815"},"modified":"2016-07-23T10:58:52","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T09:58:52","slug":"the-old-the-newer-and-the-newest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2815","title":{"rendered":"The old, the newer and the newest"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

I stood looking through the elegant Norman arch of the chancel in the old St Peter’s Church in Peterhead, down towards the boats in the harbour.\u00a0 I tried to picture what it must have been like for the Peterhead folk who worshipped here in days gone by.\u00a0 The arch and the chancel walls are all that remain of the 13th Century church.\u00a0 We know little of the pre-reformation church, other than that it belonged \u00a0to the Abbey of Deer.\u00a0 I like to think of these early Peterhead fisherman standing where I stood, looking\u00a0through this\u00a0eastward facing arch towards the sea, hearing the words of the Latin Mass intoned by the priest.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7134\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How different it would have been for the congregation in 1567 listening to the first post-reformation minister we know of, Rev Gilbert Chisholm, as he read the scriptures in English and preached to his congregation.\u00a0 In those turbulent days of the Reformation, Mr Chisholm was minister of Peterugie (as the Peterhead district was then known) but also of Deer, Foveran and St Fergus.\u00a0 Perhaps it was Archibald Reid who\u00a0was preaching\u00a0to the congregation.\u00a0 He was a Reader at the same time, perhaps the regular occupant of the St Peter’s Pulpit because of the wide\u00a0geographical\u00a0responsibility of Mr Chisholm.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5397\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A bell tower was added to the church in the mid 17th century.\u00a0 The bell would summon the congregation to worship in the little church which had stood there some 400 years.\u00a0 At this time the church in Scotland was in turmoil with the episcopal element in conflict for ascendency with the Presbyterians, and civil war ranged in all three Kingdoms of ~Scotland, England and Ireland.\u00a0 We know that ministers from Peterhead were strong proponents of the National Covenant, despite the pro-Episcopalian feeling of much of Aberdeenshire.\u00a0\u00a0Peterhead was certainly\u00a0caught up in the\u00a0church conflicts of the time, with one minister\u00a0deposed for holding a ‘conventicle’\u00a0while later, another resigned \u00a0to establish an Episcopal meeting in Peterhead.\u00a0\u00a0No doubt the fishermen and their wives who looked through the eastward facing arch would have been forming their own opinions about the church in Scotland.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5396\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But the tower had another use in the 19th Century – \u00a0a watch tower\u00a0for relatives of those recently buried in the kirkyard. They guarded the graves against ‘resurrectionists’. These might be medical students or professional grave robbers who raided graves to steal fresh corpses which were used for dissection in medical schools. Writing in\u00a0\u00a0A History of Peterhead<\/em>, \u00a0J T Findlay\u00a0 describes how,\u00a0\u00a0‘the relatives of the dead mounted guard over newly buried bodies, and many times at the dead of night has the frenzied clangour of the old bell awakened the inhabitants\u00a0 of the\u00a0town\u00a0to tell them that the grave openers were at their horrible work again.<\/i><\/p>\n

By this time in the 19th Century\u00a0the congregation had moved from the old mediaeval church.\u00a0 Indeed there is some indication that the old church had to be demolished except for the chancel walls and arch which are still standing, and of course the bell tower.<\/p>\n

Writing in the First\u00a0Statistical \u00a0Account of Scotland in 1777, Rev George Moir describes the problems he was facing in the old church: The established church here is more numerous than at any former period, if one can judge from the number of communicants, the regular progressive increase of the collections for the poor every Lord\u2019s Day and the numerous complaints for want of room in the church which is now far from being sufficient for those who wish to attend public worship there, and many are obliged to take seats elsewhere for want of room in the church.<\/em><\/p>\n

To solve the problem a new church was built on the Little Links in the Kirktown of Peterhead in the late 1700s.\u00a0 It was located where the houses now stand on Kirk Street, opposite the Gordon’s Memorial.\u00a0 No longer would the\u00a0worshippers look out over the sea\u00a0the sea through the arch.\u00a0 Dr Moir was very pleased with his new building: it is a elegant building 78 feet long and 38 feet broad over the walls, which are of a proper height to admit of the galleries being sufficiently raised. From the position of the pulpit and the arrangement of the seats, both in the galleries and on the ground-floor, it is the most convenient place of worship with which I am acquainted…….the pulpit being placed at an equal distance from the east and west end of the north wall and every person both seeing and hearing the minister. The whole expense of the building was only \u00a3520 sterling.<\/em><\/p>\n

The eyes of the congregation would be on the minister in the pulpit, then.\u00a0 No distractions!<\/p>\n

No trace this building remains.\u00a0 Clearly , despite what the good Dr Moir may have hoped, it was not fit for purpose, with indications that there may have been building problems, and the congregation moved to another building, the present\u00a0Muckle Kirk which was opened in 1806.\u00a0 I can just\u00a0immagine the excitement of the folk of Peterhead at their grand new building, with its imposing steeple.<\/p>\n

As for Dr Moir, he has the distinction of having served the people of Peterhead in three different church buildings during his ministry from 1763 till his death in 1818.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5424\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stood looking through the elegant Norman arch of the chancel in the old St Peter’s Church in Peterhead, down towards the boats in the harbour.\u00a0 I tried to picture what it must have been like for the Peterhead folk who worshipped here in days gone by.\u00a0 The arch and the chancel walls are all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2815"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2909,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2815\/revisions\/2909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}