Publication Info
Publication Details
Introduction
Considerable thanks are due to Sheila Spiers and her team for their preliminary reading of the stones in the late 1980s. Although their reading could neither be completed nor checked, it is an invaluable record of inscriptions that have since deteriorated due to flaking or incidental damage. I am also most grateful to fellow member Mrs Mary Law for her unstinted help in rereading the inscriptions in 1999. The grass in this old kirkyard used to be trimmed back to leave a neat gap around each gravestone and a gravel path ran from the gate to the west end of the kirk ruins where it turned sharply to lead into the long-vanished porch of the kirk. However, in the mid 1990s Banff & Buchan Council decided to simplify their maintenance operations by grassing over these gaps and the path. Unfortunately, this lost not only the ancient path but also some buried stones that had been partly exposed in the gaps – although two have since been rediscovered. The line of the path is shown on the kirkyard plan. A more significant consequence of the Council action is that the flat stones are now at significant risk of damage and accelerated wear due to carelessly wielded strimmers. There may well be many other buried stones in such an ancient kirkyard, but they could be located only from patch marks during a very long drought – or by modern geophysical techniques. Stuart Mitchell November 2000
Comments
Turriff Old Kirkyard, naming 1430 individuals between 1558 and 1997
