My unforgettable experience of Abernyte church

PROBABLY few of the readers of this article will have heard of Abernyte, one of a string of parishes overlooking the Tay estuary, on the south-facing slope of the Braes of Gowrie.

Four of these parishes are Abernyte, the united parishes of Inchture and Kinnaird, and Longforgan. Abernyte, one of the churches still in use, is in a ‘kirkton’ with no associated village, unlike Inchture and Longforgan. Why write about this apparently insignificant building and place? The answer lies in the deep impression it made on me on the only occasion that I visited it, in the 1990s. I will return to why I remember that visit so well later.

Though the parishes on the Braes of Gowrie are not well-known, the Carse (flat land) of Gowrie below them is of great significance for along this narrow corridor pass three vital routes linking west and central Scotland with the eastern seaboard. The oldest of these is the River Tay itself, navigable for sea-going vessels since prehistoric times, and also used by boats, including log-boats. Though in earlier times subject to flooding (and presumably marshy), the Carse provided a route for travellers on horseback or on foot, though probably they would often prefer to use the slopes above the Carse rather than the unchancy riverside. In due course the flat lands were drained and used for farming, and a turnpike road formed between Perth and Dundee. This is now essentially the route of the A85, the main road from the south and west to Dundee and Aberdeen. Finally, in 1847 a railway was opened between Dundee and Perth. Originally this was a branch line from the main line from Perth via Forfar to Aberdeen. When that route was closed to passengers in the 1960s the Dundee and Perth line became part of the main line from central Scotland to Aberdeen.

When In the fifth century AD St Ninian led a mission to the Southern Picts from Whithorn he must have traversed the Carse, probably on the Tay. At that time the estuary seems to have been a delta, with islands in the flood plain. The prefix ‘Inch’ means ‘island. ‘Inchture’ must have been on one such, and not far away is ‘Inchmartine House’ (almost certainly named after St Martin of Tours in western France, who seems to have sent Ninian on his mission). It is likely that Ninian set up a missionary base on ‘Inchmartin’. The prefix ‘Aber’ means ‘mouth of’, suggesting that at one time there was a stream (the ‘Nyte’) running from the hills to the north and entering the Tay at Inchture. The effect of Ninian’s mission is still visible in the many Pictish symbol stones in the area, one of which is the Rossie Stone (now in the mausoleum of the Kinnaird family on the Rossie estate). This has a Greek Cross head and is also carved with Pictish symbols, including a ‘Pictish Beast’ (see The Buildings of Scotland: Perth and Kinross), for me powerful evidence that the message that Ninian brought, of God’s love, Christ’s life, earthly death and resurrection and of the coming of the Holy Spirit, became positively integrated with earlier Pictish spirituality.

Now, this is my unforgettable experience of Abernyte church and its churchyard. I had a very powerful sense of the Holy Spirit being there in the lovely little church, and in the sunny, sloping graveyard and its tombstones, carved with emblems of the trades of parishioners – butchers, a miller, a wright (builder), a leather-worker, a weaver. This was, and remains in my mind, a place in which to remember not only the spiritual history of a rural parish, but also the ever-present love of God, the resurrected Christ, and the Holy Spirit, in us and of us.