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Introduction
One of the most ancient, and also one of the most picturesque burial grounds in the North-East of Scotland is the ruined Kirkyard of St John the Evangelist, Gamrie, perched on the side of the cliffs, overlooking Gardenstown, Crovie and the Moray Firth. Not surprisingly, St John’s attracted the interest of Andrew Jervise, who devoted some pages to it in Volume 1 of his “Epitaphs and Inscriptions” (published 1875). And sundry members of ANESFHS1 were also tempted to try transcribing its inscriptions. But Jervise, as was his custom, recorded only a few of what he thought were the more important or more picturesque stones, and none of the earlier drafts at King Street seem to have covered more than a fraction of the inscriptions. Some time in the 1990s, this state of affairs came to the attention of the late Stuart Mitchell, who embarked on a project to complete the task. He produced a plan, reconciled the conflicting readings from the various drafts, and set about recording the remainder of the stones. Unfortunately, Stuart died before he could complete the task, but he did document his progress very carefully, so that when, in 2003, I decided to try and complete the job, there was a neat typescript and detailed lists of stones which had been fully transcribed, stones still needing some work, stones to be checked, and a small number of stones declared “unreadable”. In the late summer of 2003, a small group of us met at St John’s to make a start on tackling this backlog, and in the following months, made further individual visits. We even managed to prise some information from the “unreadables”, and found a couple of stones which had been missed. Unfortunately, events conspired to prevent this process being completed as quickly as it otherwise might, but the transcription is now as complete as it is ever likely to be. It will be clear from the foregoing that this transcription is the work of many individuals. I fear I do not know all their names, so I apologise in advance for anyone who is missed out, but the following have certainly contributed: Tricia Bell, Ron Brander, Ann Burgess, Elizabeth Gabriel, Ed Knipe, Sarah Martin, John O’Neill, Margaret Shand, Jean and Alex Wiseman. That said, any errors in the editing are entirely my fault. Gavin Bell 1
Comments
Gamrie St John Old Kirkyard, naming 798 individuals between 1547 and 1960
