Church Overview

Situated in a beautiful rural location, overlooking the River Livet, surrounded by farmland and hills, this elegant Gothic Revival church was designed by the architect John Gall of Aberdeen and built 1827-29 by the parish priest Fr James Gordon and local contractor Mr Paterson from Enzie. The church replaced a simple “mass-house”, situated a few miles upstream at Kandykyle, that had been in use by the local Catholic congregation for many years.

Built with a handsome pinnacled west front, its lofty rib-vaulted interior and narrow side aisles are lit by large traceried windows. The vaulting is held aloft by timber panelled cast-iron columns, with decorative plaster capitals and matching corbels in the walls of the aisles. Following Fr Gordon’s death in 1842, Bishop James Kyle, possibly with the assistance of architect priest Fr Walter Lovi, instructed the building be reordered reducing the size of the chancel, with the area behind  converted to a presbytery in 1844, and then, in 1862 when a house for the priest was built next door, this space was repurposed as a school that was in use until 1904.

Marble tablets were placed on either side of the shallow chancel after World War One, commemorating the local fallen of the parish and Flight Commander John G.S.C. Smith-Grant of Minmore who died on active service in May 1918. In 1937, the old wooden altar withing the shallow chancel was replaced with a new one.

The church closed in 2012, due to rising repair concerns and safety concerns about the building. Its fine Conacher & Co pipe organ, with its decorative pipes, that sat in the west gallery was dismantled in 2017, transported to Lebanon and reassembled for use in the chapel of the Johann Ludwig Schneller School. The Church of the Incarnation was then marketed for sale the following year.

Having languished for many years on Scotland’s Buildings at Risk Register, a local family have since purchased the building and have embarked upon a restoration and repair project, intending to transform the historic church into a venue for weddings, concerts, theatre, art exhib­i­tions and edu­ca­tional work­shops.

The adjacent graveyard remains open and in the care of the local authority. Among other interesting 19th and 20th century memorials, many made of which are of finely inscribed local slate, is the family vault of George Smith, the founder of the Glenlivet Distillery.

Church closed in 2012.

Disclaimer

The information about churches in Scotland’s Churches Scheme has been provided by the congregations or taken from the Historic Scotland list and published sources, in particular, the Buildings of Scotland volumes and the RIAS Illustrated Architectural Guides. To contact this specific church please complete the Contact this Church form above. The information is not authoritative; please contact Scotland’s Churches Trust to let us know of any errors or omissions.