Building record MAB41500 - BANCHORY-TERNAN OLD CHURCH AND GRAVEYARD

Site of church / chapel, with surviving graveyard and mausoleum.

Site of church / chapel, with surviving graveyard and mausoleum. There are no visible remains of the 'Cross-church' which is said to have within the site. The 1st edition OS map shows the graveyard with the a site of a chapel annotated, which itself may have replaced an earlier chapel. A burial-aisle erected in 1775 for the Douglasses of Tilquhillie (or Tilquilly) stands in the middle of the graveyard and incorporates an Early Medieval cross slab in re-use as a lintel at the southeast angle. The slab has the inscribed outline of two crosses set above each other. The upper is a Latin cross with rounded armpits and splayed shaft, and the lower is a smaller cross also with rounded armpits. North of the burial aisle is a circular watch-house (NO79NW0016). A watching brief was carried out by Rathmell Archaeology in August 2025 during the emergency replacement of a fallen section of the graveyard boundary wall separating the old and new cemeteries in the northwestern corner. A trench was dug below the fallen wall, after removal of the historic fabric, to level the foundation trench before the pouring of a new foundation. The works were minor and concentrated on the western end of the trench. Three headstones were also reset in concrete. The boundary wall was recorded as a stone wall with a height of 2 m comprising a below-surface stone boulder foundation of 0.3 m depth, a main body with a height of 1.56 m, and an uppermost course comprising a triangular coping stone with a height of 0.2 m. The wall has a thickness of 0.45m, with the main body faced with granite stone. The topsoil layer had inclusions of modern pottery, modern waste, fragmentary disarticulated human remains, and metallic coffin furniture. The modern waste was likely introduced by recent littering, and the modern pottery was probably waste from the houses which were located to the north in the now active new cemetery. The state of the human remains suggested earlier burials were disturbed during excavations of later burial lairs through the 19th century. The human remains were redeposited in an ossuary to the southeast of the wall.

JERVISE, A, 1879, EPITAPHS & INSCRIPTIONS,VOL 2 (Bibliographic reference). SAB889.

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COWAN, IB, 1967, THE PARISHES OF MED SCOT (Bibliographic reference). SAB242.

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RATHMELL ARCHAEOLOGY, 2025, BANCHORY GRAVEYARD WALL, ABERDEENSHIRE: ARCHAEOLOGICAL MITIGATION DATA STRUCTURE REPORT, Watching Brief (Bibliographic reference). SAB3219.

RATHMELL ARCHAEOLOGY, 2025, BANCHORY GRAVEYARD WALL, ABERDEENSHIRE: ARCHAEOLOGICAL MITIGATION WRITTEN SCHEME OF INVESTIGATION, WSI (Bibliographic reference). SAB3220.

Apr 13 1987 , 8/27/23, 8/27/23 (Ground Photograph). SAB15882.

RCAHMS, n.d., N KINC LIST, No216 (Bibliographic reference). SAB1509.

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Author unknown, n.d., NSA, XI, 348 (Bibliographic reference). SAB1269.

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Record last edited

Oct 21 2025 12:33PM