Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/489

 Picts, and as the founder of the church of Fordoun, in honour of Palladius, became to some extent identified with him. Be that as it may, the name of Palladius has been handed down from the fifth century in connection with a religious establishment in the place. A chapel, a well, and an annual fair are named after him. The small chapel which now bears the name of the Saint is a modern restoration. It is a plain oblong structure (Fig. 1414), 39 feet by 18 feet internally. The walls are low, and there is a pointed gable at each end (Fig. 1415). The east wall has a recess, which probably contained a monument, and the west wall a round-headed entrance doorway. There are three small square-headed windows in the south wall and a doorway in the north wall.

The east end is probably the oldest part. There is a burial-vault beneath it. An ambry with round head near the north door, and a plain pointed piscina at the south side of the eastern recess, are the only ancient appurtenances.

A chapel here is frequently mentioned in the records of the Priory of St. Andrews. It is not called a church till 1244.

The Friars' Glen, which runs north-westward from Fordoun, was, in the fifteenth century, in the possession of the Carmelite Friars of Aberdeen.

OLD GIRTHON CHURCH,.

A roofless ruin (Fig. 1416), about two miles south of Gatehouse, with walls fairly entire. It measures internally about 71 feet long by about 20 feet wide, and is lighted by windows in the south wall, and two high narrow windows in the east end, over which, in the apex, there is a shallow niche. There is only one small high window in the north wall.

—Old Girthon Church. Plan.

The entrance door is in the south wall, not far from the centre of the church. In each end of the church there is a doorway, but these are probably modern. In the south wall, near the east end in the usual position of the piscina, there is what Mr. Coles calls an ambry, roughly