A landmark on the A9

WHEN I was a child, there were two books on architecture in our house; both from my father’s family.

One was on classical architecture, but to me the more interesting one was Sir John Stirling Maxwell’s Shrines and Homes of Scotland, published in 1937. Copiously illustrated with black and white photographs, it dealt largely with the ‘Ancient Monuments’ then in the care of the Ministry of Works – abbeys, castles and ruined churches. It also included a section on ‘Building after 1700’ about country houses, burgh buildings and a selection of 17th to early 19th century church buildings.

It was this book which I now realise set me off on what became a career in Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings.

One page of photographs in Sir John’s book in the section on ‘Buildings after 1700’ depicts three steepled church buildings in northern Scotland: the present parish church of Edderton (in Gothic Revival style); the severely-classical parish church of Bellie in Fochabers; and the parish church of Daviot, with its idiosyncratic tower and steeple,

As a child I never dreamed that I would ever see any of these churches, but in the mid-1970s I embarked on a study of the industrial archaeology of the Highlands, and saw (and photographed) all of them.

I was able thus to appreciate not only the quirkiness of Daviot, but also its relationship with its impressive landscape setting. It sits on a bluff above what is now the improved A9 from southern Scotland to Inverness. Driving northward along that road it is apparent that the builders of that church (and the heritors who paid for it) wanted it to be a landmark, an advertisement for the Church, much as the Kirk o’Shotts on the M8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Daviot Church, as shown in Sir John’s book, was originally built with exposed masonry. The body of the building has been harled white for many years, and it was restored in 1991 to the condition seen in my drawing. According to Sacred Highland and Islands (published by Saint Andrew Press in 2011) ‘The present church dates from 1826 and is situated beside a small hillock, locally as Cnoc an t-Sagairt, the ‘Priest’s Hillock’ …There has been a place of worship on the site since early times, long before its charter was granted in the 13th century’. This comment is for me compelling evidence that Daviot was a centre of the ‘Church of the Incarnation’ (the church formed in Jerusalem in the days following the Resurrection and the Day of Pentecost).

In the 6th century missionaries from Iona came to the Kingdom of the Northern Picts (the largely Gaelic– speaking northand west of Scotland , including Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles). The capital of Northern Pictland was at that time Inverness, so the probability that the Columban mission reached Daviot is very strong. When in the 12th century King David I introduced the English administrative system of shires (counties) and parishes into Scotland, the neighbouring parishes of Daviot and Dunlichity would have been created as part of the shire of Inverness. After the Reformation in 1560 this system of civil and religious administration was retained, but during the 17th century some sparselypopulated parishes were united, (including Daviot and Dunlichity), with one ordained minister and In this case two places of worship, for the two ‘kirktons’ were too far apart for a single place of worship.

The united parishes are of considerable size, and are entirely landlocked. Much of them is mountainous.

The parish is now linked with the neighbouring united parish of Moy, Dalarossie and Tomatin, to the east. It is well worth deviating from the A9 to examine this characterful church properly, and to see the stunning views from the churchyard.