Parton Old Parish Kirk

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, with only parts of the walls left upstanding. A gable of the bell turret bears the date 1636. The church of Parton was dedicated to St Inan, and was known as Kilennan. St Inan was a confessor in the 9thc.

It has been used as a burial plot in later times. James Clerk Maxwell is buried here. Prominent mathematical physicist James Clerk Maxwell lived at the nearby Glenlair House. He was famous for developing formulae governing electricity and magnetism as well as the Maxwell distribution in the kinetic theory of gases. Considered one of the greatest scientific geniuses, he is commemorated by a monument beside the war memorial in front of the modern church.