Introduction

The parish of Lumphanan is well provided with burial grounds, because, apart from a modern cemetery (not included in this booklet) it has two kirkyards. The ancient parish kirkyard of St Finnan lies on a back road about half a mile southwest of the village, but like many other parishes, Lumphanan was involved in the “Disruption” of 1843, and a new “Free Kirk” was built in 1870 on a hillside overlooking the village from the north. Unusually for a Free Kirk, the area around it came to be used as a burial ground, and the two kirkyards have continued in use, in parallel. The second Minister of the Free Kirk congregation was the Rev. Thomas Stothert, and in “Aberdeenshire Epitaphs and Inscriptions” (1907) John A. Henderson tells us that “... it was largely through his munificence and zeal that the present church and manse were erected.” Unsurprisingly, then, the new Free Kirk came to be known as Stothert Kirk, and Rev. Thomas’s infant son Theodore is the earliest to be commemorated in its kirkyard (stone 71). For this publication, new plans have been produced for both St Finnan’s and Stothert, and all the inscriptions read afresh and reported in full. A few inscriptions at both St Finnan’s and Stothert were included in Henderson’s “Epitaphs”, and there was an earlier unpublished ANESFHS draft of St Finnan’s. In places, these have been used to supply details now eroded or obscured. The mapping, reading and checking was carried out in the summer and autumn of 2014, and I had the enthusiastic assistance of Allan Hepburn in this work. Gavin Bell