‘An outstanding ‘gothick’ church’

SERIES

ECHT is a parish in that part of Aberdeenshire known as Gordon, west of Aberdeen City. Its church and village are at the cross-roads formed by routes between Aberdeen and Ballater, and Banchory and Kintore.

The mediaeval parish belonged to the Abbey of Scone, granted to it by Thomas de Lundin in the 13th century. Its church was dedicated to St Finichen. The present church, described below, replaced the mediaeval one in 1806, but the ruins of the old church, in its graveyard, survived until 1966, when they were removed. The graveyard survives.

The present building was constructed between 1804 and 1806 for the third earl of Fife. It is in an early ‘Gothick’ style, comparable with the churches of Kildrummy and Skene, also in Aberdeenshire, which also have fine ‘basket-weave’ pointed windows, which have retained their original glazing. The architect may have been William Minto, who may also have designed the Kildrummy church. As originally constructed Echt had its pulpit in the centre of the south wall, surrounded by a horse-shoe gallery. This was the standard layout of the time, for churches designed for preaching.

In 1929, however, the pulpit was moved to the east end of the building, with a single west gallery bearing the arms of the Cowdray family, at that time the owners of the Dunecht estate. The architect for the re-ordering was William Kelly, who also installed a panelled timber ceiling, modelled on that of St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen. The furnishings also designed by Kelly, in ‘Arts and Crafts’ style, were carved in oak by Dunecht Estate workers. The organ, installed in 1930, came from the chapel of Dunecht House.

One cannot really understand this church without reference to Dunecht House and its associated estate. This is quintessentially an estate church, for an estate owned by a succession of very rich families. The house itself is described in The Buildings of Scotland: Aberdeenshire: South and Aberdeen as ‘This extraordinary house’. Dunecht House was originally built in 1820 for William Forbes, who could trace his family’s connection with Echt back to 1469.

After Forbes’s death, the house was sold to James Lindsay, 7th earl of Balcarres, who passed it on to his son Alexander. He in turn commissioned the architect William Smith to enlarge the building. Smith had just completed the rebuilding of Balmoral Castle for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Alexander Lindsay was a noted book collector, and in 1867 he commissioned the noted London architect GE Street to design a major extension incorporating a library and chapel. These works were, however, not completed until the early 1900s. By that time Lindsay had been recognised as the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, and had moved to Balcarres, in Fife.

Lindsay was succeeded in Dunecht by AC Pirie, a noted Aberdeenshire paper-maker. In 1909 the house and estate were sold to Sir Weetman Pearson, who had made a fortune as a railway contractor. In due course Pearson was ennobled as the first Viscount Cowdray.

He made further alterations to the house, which has been described as ‘almost unworldly’. It was the Cowdrays who commissioned the 1929–30 alterations to the church, possibly in memory of the First Viscount, died in 1927. There is a monument to him in the churchyard, designed by William Kelly, and probably installed at the same time as his alterations to the church.

The congregation of the Echt church was linked in 1965 with that of Midmar, a parish immediately to the west. Both churches remain in use for worship. Echt is an outstanding ‘Gothick’ church, and indeed is, in this author’s view, one of the most intriguing and attractive small parish churches of any period in the whole of Scotland.

This article appears in the July 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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