St Machar Cathedral (interior)
In 1560 the government ordered the destruction of the altars, images and other monuments of the old faith, and this cathedral suffered with the rest. It was despoiled of all its costly ornaments and the choir was demolished. The roof was stripped of its lead and the bells were carried off. All that remains to-day is the nave (now the parish church), a south porch, the western towers and fragments of the transept walls, which contain tombs of Bishop Lichtoun, Bishop Dunbar, and others. This is the only granite cathedral in the country, and, though dating from the Middle and late Pointed periods, has reminiscences of the Norman style in its short, massive cylindrical pillars and plain unadorned clerestory windows. Another feature is the great western window divided by six long shafts of stone. The finely carved pulpit now in the Chapel of King’s College is a relic of the wood-carvings destroyed in 1649. The whole is extremely plain but highly impressive and imposing. Its flat panelled oak ceiling decorated with heraldic shields of various European kings, Pope Leo X, and Scottish ecclesiastics and nobility (48 in all) is worthy of mention. This heraldic ceiling was restored in 1868-71.
King’s College, Aberdeen University
Of later date is King’s College Chapel, at no great distance from the Old Cathedral. It is a long, narrow but handsome building begun in 1500, shortly after the foundation of the University by Bishop Elphinstone. The chapel and its graceful tower are the oldest parts of the College buildings which had originally three towers.
East and West Churches, Aberdeen
The surviving one is a massive structure buttressed nearly to the top and bearing aloft a lantern of crossed rib arches, surmounted by a beautiful imperial crown with finial cross, somewhat resembling St Giles’s in Edinburgh. The difference is that King’s College has four ribs while St Giles’s has eight. The whole is of freestone from Morayshire. The entire building is a mixture of Scottish and French Gothic styles, and retains in the large western window the semi-circular arch, a peculiarity of Scottish Gothic throughout all periods. The canopied stalls and the screen of richly carved oak, Gothic in design and most beautifully handled, take a place among the finest pieces of mediaeval carved work existing in the British Empire. Their beauty and delicacy, according to Hill Burton, surpass all remains of a similar kind in Scotland. The chapel contains the tomb of Bishop Elphinstone. It was once highly ornamented, but meantime is covered with a plain marble slab. Its restoration is in prospect.
St Nicholas Church, Aberdeen (now the East and West Churches) contains in its transepts and groined crypt and in its wood-carving, interesting relics of twelfth, fifteenth and sixteenth century work. The nave was rebuilt in the Renaissance style of the time (1755).
Greyfriars Church, removed a few years ago to make way for the new front of Marischal College, was a pre-Reformation church, built by Alexander Galloway, Rector of Kinkell, early in the sixteenth century. Its chief features were its range of buttresses and a fine seven-light, traceried window.