The parish history of Cruden goes back for over a thousand years. 
The present Saint James's was opened in 1843 and was the first commission of the architect William Hay (1818-1888). Its tall, pinnacled tower and spire can be seen for miles around. The church is on Chapel Hill in the countryside a mile and a half from the village of Cruden Bay.
The baptismal font, a striking feature inside the church, dates from 1012 and came from the chantry chapel built by a Scottish King and a Danish Prince after a battle on the beach at Cruden Bay, which marked the end of Viking involvement on the north-east coast of Scotland.
The present church replaced a previous one, which was built on the same site in 1765. Before then, during the years of persecution of the Episcopal Church after the Battle of Culloden, the congregation met among the sand-dunes on the beach.
|
 The Church in Ellon can trace its history and clergy back for over 800 years. At the Revolution in 1689 the Episcopal Church was disestablished and the Presbyterian Church became the Church of Scotland. However, the Reverend Walter Stewart continued as Episcopalian priest at the Parish Church of Ellon until his death in 1711.
A meeting house was then built close by the Parish Church but after the 1745 Jacobite Rising, in which Ellon's Episcopalians took part, this was burned down by Hanoverian soldiers. Churches were then opened in outlying districts at Bearnie, Tillydesk, Udny, Kinharrachie and Chapelhall, but these closed when a new Church was built in Ellon in 1816. This was succeeded by the present Church in 1871.
|
|
Read more...
|
On Saint Adamnan’s day, Sepember 23rd, each year a group of people walk from Newburgh and meet another group who set out from Collieston. The meeting point is a roofless, medieval church close to the beach and on the edge of Forvie Moor.
Once there was a village here but now the only sound is that of the wind, the sea on a rough day, and sometimes a helicopter passing overhead, going to or from the oil installations far out to sea.The village disappeared hundreds of years ago when the Sands of Forvie overwhelmed it during a great winter storm.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Nearly a thousand years ago. It’s a long time but in the summer of 1012 there was great killing in Cruden. The Vikings had established a settlement on Hacklaw, the hill closest to the beach. King Sweyn Haraldsson of Denmark sent his 17 year old son Canute to reinforce the settlement and, if possible, to defeat the Scots army.Canute did not succeed. King Malcolm 11 of Scotland brought his army to Cruden and the battle began. It was fought on the flatlands below Hacklaw, where the golf course now is, but as the day went on the fighting spread inland and relics of the battle have been found over a four mile swathe of countryside.The date on which the battle was fought is not known, only the year. It would though have been in summer. The fighting season was fitted in between the sowing of the crops and the bringing home of the harvest.The prayers for the dead and the remembrance of the battle takes place in Saint James’s Church, Cruden Bay, on the Sunday closest to Saint Olaf’s Day, which is on July 29th.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
April 13th, 2005, marked the 310th anniversary of the death of Bishop James Drummond. He was the priest at Aucherarder and Muthill before becoming Bishop of Brechin in 1684 - consecrated on Christmas Day in the Chapel of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.When the Revolution came to Scotland in 1689, and Presbyterians replaced Episcopalians as the Church of Scotland, he conducted his last service in the diocese of Brechin on April 14th 1689 and came to Cruden Bay. For the final six years of his life he lived at Slains Castle with the Earl and Countess of Erroll.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
|
