by Mary Cullen

Oliver Humphries is an architect, and John Hume a former chief inspector of historic buildings at Historic Scotland. In this little book (181pp) they invite us to look at Catholic churches of the Diocese of Aberdeen through the eyes of the architects who designed them and the times and places in which they were built. There is great variety: from the chapel disguised as a sheep cote to escape the attention of marauding English soldiers, which now lays claim to be the oldest post-Reformation Catholic Church in Scotland still in use (St Ninian’s, Tynet), to the first shared place of worship built for Catholic, Episcopal and Church of Scotland congregations in 1981 (Trinity Church, Westhill).

From the outside, the church of St Martin of Tours, the most northwesterly Catholic church on the Scottish mainland, looks like the bakery it once was; while the tower of the grand church of St Margaret, Huntly, built of Morayshire sandstone, was inspired by the architecture of Spain. Its benefactors were Carlos Gordon of Cadiz and John Gordon of Jerez, both members of the Gordons of Wardhouse, a prominent Catholic family from the Huntly area in the 19th century There are over 50 churches in the book, eleven of which are illustrated with photographs, architectural drawings and descriptions of their location and history, together with an entry on the ‘secret seminary’ at Scalan in Glenlivet. This section is followed by John Hume’s beautiful line drawings and historical notes on the diocese’s remaining churches, including Pluscarden Abbey and the Italian Chapel built by prisoners of war at Lang Holm in Orkney.

The churches are rich with local and ecclesiastical history. St Bean, who is commemorated in the church of Our Lady and St Bean, Marydale, was the founder of the bishopric of Mortlach in Banff in the eleventh century. His feast day is celebrated in the Diocese of Aberdeen on 26th October.

The Church of St Gregory, Preshome, built in 1788, five years before the repeal of the Penal Laws, was tucked away discreetly on the edge of the Enzie Braes. It was later developed to a design by Peter Paul Pugin and was gifted a painting of St Gregory the Great by the Italian painter Annibale Caracci (possibly a contemporary copy). To find this ‘gem of a church’ on a back road well away from the beaten track is ‘quite astonishing… Here, in the first folds of the Enzie Braes, safe from the world, sits the Church of St Gregory in a land where it feels that time has stopped’.

Attention is drawn to particular features which visitors to the churches might appreciate: the jewel like colours of the stained glass window in the west wall of St Columba’s, Banchory; the restored plasterwork in the same church, which won an award from the Worshipful Company of Plasterers; the ‘colour, light and serenity’ of the interior of St Lawrence, Dingwall. The language is often technical, however, and a glossary would have been helpful. Who knows what ‘squinces or pendentives at the re-entrant corners’ might be, for example (p86) or windows with ‘foiled tops and chamfered ingoes’ (p44)?

Despite this, and some repetition between sections, the book, as its title suggests, shines a light on the religious and political history of a beautiful part of Scotland, and reflects the faith and creativity of those who built many of its churches.