Medieval Kirkmichael
Jim Mackay of the Kirkmichael Trust guides you around the medieval site of Kirkmichael, beautifully located beside Udale Bay.
A rather beautiful work in progress!
Kirkmichael is one of the most charming spots in the Black Isle, nestling in the peaceful agricultural landscape beside the RSPB reserve at Udale Bay. The first thing you notice as you enter the graveyard is the bank the path ascends. More than 500 years of burials has considerably raised the ground!
You’ll be drawn inside the restored building, passing through the big arched western doorway first. This is the former nave of the ancient church, converted about 1800 to a mausoleum for the Gun Munro of Poyntzfield family. The remarkable memorial by London sculptor Regnart is the perfect example of elegant Georgian sculpture, with its mourning bride, its urn, and its burning torches and carved snake eating its tail, both symbols of eternal life.
That’s the only Gun Munro memorial there, as the family never did fill their mausoleum, but the Kirkmichael Trust will! It is due to house, later in 2017, a unique set of ornate gravestones through the centuries. Many of these on display are pre-Reformation, complex cross and sword gravestones, rescued from nearby Cullicudden and Kirkmichael before erosion and grounds maintenance finished them off. They are of national significance, and you have to admire the tracery of interlinking patterns, symbology now mostly lost to us. Several of the crosses arise from stepped Calvary bases, representing the steps Christ took to his crucifixion on Calvary Hill, while others feature complex crosses at both ends. No two use the same pattern, and together they form a remarkable collection of medieval stones. Take a pew to relax while taking them in – and it is literally a pew, as the wooden surrounds of the seating came from the now-closed church which once replaced Kirkmichael. The centrepiece of the seats here and next door are “as new” ornate stones, based on ones too damaged to move from Cullicudden, but freshly carved to show just how these stones would have looked 700 years ago.
The Sword in the Stone?
Following the Reformation, such symbology became anathema, and it took a long time for an alternative symbology to develop. You can see a marvellous example of this: a stone heavily adorned with the protestant symbols of mortality. See if you can pick them all out: the skull and crossbones, the riband on which “Memento mori” (“Remember you will die”) was always written, the gravedigger’s tools – the one-sided spade to cut the turf and the shovel to throw out the earth, the hourglass to show you that your time was running out, and the coffin, to show that your time had indeed expired.
Back outside, you pass round to the eastern part of the building, the medieval chancel of the original church here back in the 1400s. Like many others it was converted to an estate mausoleum following the Reformation, and you can still see the stone arch of the original doorway between nave and chancel.
The chancel hosts a remarkable wall memorial. It is in remembrance of William Urquhart in Braelangwell who died in 1708, and is accompanied by several very graphically carved symbols of death, including a startlingly three-dimensional skeleton. You feel like you could put your hand inside it!
The chancel also contains the memorial to William Gordon, whose body was originally interred in Invergordon but, as his sister was pining away thinking of him being buried away from home, was later re-interred in this mausoleum by her husband, David Urquhart of Braelangwell, as a surprise present! An unpublished poem by early Scots novelist Henry Mackenzie adorns his memorial.
Outside in the ancient graveyard, see if you can spot the curious phenomenon of skulls carved with wigs. If you could afford a fancy gravestone, then you would want to be shown wearing a wig – even if you were dead.
Hair lies…
On the south wall, with Udale Bay not far away over the dyke, you pass by the ornate Grant of Ardoch mausoleum, with its prominent skull and crossbones over its entrance and its striking balustrade. The Grants held Ardoch (now Poyntzfield) in the 1600s, and their cheery epitaphs are good examples of the era: “Grieve not when friends and kinfolks die They gain by death eternitie” and “All flesh was born to die”. Land-owners loved to put up their family crests, and you can see here a wall memorial that shows: the three crowns of the Grants for William Grant of Ardoch, the three cushions of the Dunbars for Florence Dunbar, his first wife, and the stag’s head and star of the Mackenzies for Kate Mackenzie, his second wife.
Handy reminder that his is a place where the dead …live?
On the north side of the buildings is an unusual big cuboid of a mausoleum, erected by Sir Harry Munro of Foulis to commemorate his aunt, the devout Lady Ardoch. Her husband was Alexander Gordon of Ardoch, distinguished, but also notorious for duelling and smuggling. Famously, on returning home one night to find his wife with her associates deep in prayer, he rushed outside to kill himself – but was divinely converted on the spot.
Stories of a less devout nature are associated with the area around the original west gable of Kirkmichael, now just a raised hump to the west of the building. It was here that Hugh Miller, writer, geologist, collector of folk tales and, at this time, gravestone carver, spent a week. Some of his spookiest tales were written about Kirkmichael, including one where the devil on horseback is pursuing an elderly lady who has struck a pact with him. Both call out to a solitary traveller “Shall I reach Kirk-Michael by midnight?” Alas, the lady did not reach sanctuary, and the devil returns with her body dangling over his horse.
Combine a visit to Kirkmichael with some bird watching, for there is a hide just a short stroll down the road towards Chapelton Point. From here you can see migrant birds dipping in the water or finding a meal in the rich mud of Udale Bay. Across the bay is the picturesque, planned village of Jemimaville, and further down the coast is the ancient town of Cromarty, always worth exploring!
The Bonny Black Isle!
