St Mary's Collegiate Church, Cullen

The current building looks superficially like an ordinary eighteenth- or nineteenth-century parish church, but it actually has a much longer and more complex history. The first surviving record of the church is a successful petition of 1236 requesting that it be elevated from a chapel of the parish of Fordyce to a parish church. In 1327, Queen Elizabeth de Burgh, second wife of Robert the Bruce, died at Cullen Castle, a royal residence; her entrails were removed as part of the embalming process, and were buried in the church grounds, prior to her body being sent south to Dunfermline for interment. The King founded a chaplaincy at the church, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, patron saint of…

The interior has a cruciform layout, with a narrow nave, and aisles to north and south. A gallery runs above the west end of the nave, and curves round into the north aisle. There are wooden pews throughout, which were installed in the later 19th century. The walls would have been plastered originally, but this was removed in 1967 to allow repointing of the interior walls. The ceiling retains its original plasterwork with polygonal profiling. Against the south wall, the Seafield Loft, a substantial two-storey gallery, dominates the nave. Its panelled front bears heraldic designs and foliage; it is supported by Corinthian columns at either end, and accessed by a flight of stairs at its east…

and gable window]] Cullen Old Church, also known as Cullen Auld Kirk), sits within a high-walled churchyard, amongst many ornately carved tombs and memorial slabs. It is a simple, cross-plan church, rubble-built with sandstone and granite ashlar detailing for windows, corner stones and tracery. At the apex of the west gable there is an 18th-century bellcote, its south gable has four tall lancet windows, and there is a point-headed window, featuring intersecting tracery, in the gable at the east end of the nave. Rectangular heraldic plaques celebrate the Ogilvy and Gordon families, in honour of the founder of the college and his wife. John R. Hume, former Chief Inspector of Historic…