Photos-Poems-Haiku

How can you not take a picture of this wee church situated in deepest Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Built in 1881 some 0.6km south-east of Dalswinton hamlet, the church is one of the few remaining examples of ‘tin’ churches that were popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The owner of the Dalswinton Estate at… Continue reading Dalswinton Barony Church

Machrie Moor Standing Stones. (Isle of Arran) Following the shadow of a standing stone, we came to three others, and so it went on across Mochrie Moor. Circle upon circle, stone beside stone. We looked to the hills, we looked to the Firth, tried to find answers in each cleft and tide. Finding none, we… Continue reading Machrie Moor Standing Stones (Isle of Arran)

This old parish church was built in 1592 on the site of a Medieval chapel, next to Kirkland Motte which is Anglo-Norman and dates to around 1150. Two fragments of the earlier chapel are built into the churchyard wall. An earlier window lintel is incorporated into the church. The church is now a roofless ruin,… Continue reading Parton Old Parish Kirk

A wee rather plain looking Kirk tucked away in the pleasant village of Balmaclellan in Dumfries and Galloway. However, it is packed with a quite extraordinary amount of history! The Kirk was built in 1753, with the north aisle added in 1833 by William McCandlish. The churchyard is much older than the present church, with… Continue reading Balmaclellan Church. (Crimea, Covenanters and Witches!)

Sandyhills The sea has gone from Sandyhills. I’m walking over sand, that is as wrinkled as old skin. Before me, the remnants of stake nets, stitch the sky to the horizon line, where waves wait and whisper of time and relentless tides. Derek Ross

A Class A building no less. This magnificent Church looks more like a Cathedral than a Church. These days, the Church is inter-denominational. Crichton Memorial Church was completed in 1897 for the Crichton Royal Hospital, a model psychiatric hospital, the gift of Elizabeth Crichton of Friar’s Carse, widow of an East India merchant. The cathedral-style… Continue reading Crichton Memorial Church, Dumfries, Scotland

A big Kirk in the wee village of Kirkton, near Dumfries, Scotland. Kirkton is very close to where I live, so is a pleasant cycle run away.   The Parish name  of Kirkmahoe commemorates St Kentigern, the patron saint of Glasgow. Mo Choe is the Gaelic equivalent of Mungo, the Cumbric hypocoristic form of Kentigern.… Continue reading Kirkmahoe Parish Kirk, Kirkton

Caerlaverock Parish takes its name from the nearby Caerlaverock Castle (Castle of the Larks). It may look a bit “utilitarian” but the setting ensures that it has a charm of its own. This is not the first church on this site, seemingly. The current church is                  … Continue reading Caerlaverock Parish Church

Wall There’s a world to be glimpsed through the gaps in this wall, a field, gorse, a distant hill, a slight sea, a rocky shore, and there, above it all, a sky-full of blue and cloud. Here is a boundary, but only in name, it is temporary. All walls fall, in the end. A north… Continue reading Wall

Tinwald Kirk This kirk was built in the 1780s on the site of a medieval predecessor. The north side has the burial enclosure of the Charteris family of Amisfield. The kirkyard is a Commonwealth Grave site.        There is also an interesting covenanter tombstone to one John Corbet who, unusually, died of natural… Continue reading Tinwald Kirk