Fig. 731.—Cockpen Church. Plan.
The ruins of the ancient parish church of Cockpen stand in a burial ground about one mile south from the modern parish church, which is situated about a mile from Dalhousie Railway Station. The walls of the old church are in tolerable preservation, but they have been so much altered, probably soon after the Reformation, so as to render them suitable for Presbyterian worship, that the original features are almost obliterated. The structure ([Fig. 731]) is a simple oblong, 65 feet 6 inches in length by 15 feet 2 inches in width. There are some remains of narrow lancet windows at the east end, but they have been much altered, one of them being widened to form an outside doorway to a gallery. The side windows have been similarly altered and new square-headed windows inserted, so that almost all trace of the original features is lost. The ruins are also so completely covered with a dense growth of ivy that the details of the architecture cannot be properly investigated. Some burial vaults have been thrown out from the side walls, probably in the sixteenth century. From the scanty materials available it may be inferred that the original church was a structure of the thirteenth century.
PENCAITLAND CHURCH, Haddingtonshire.
Fig. 732.—Pencaitland Church. Plan.
This structure, which is still in use as the parish church, lies in the valley of the Tyne, about four miles south from Tranent. It consists ([Fig. 732]) of a long narrow building measuring about 83 feet in length by about 23 feet in width over the walls, with a western tower, not quite square in plan. On the north side of the chancel there is a chapel of first pointed work, and adjoining it on the west a seventeenth century aisle. Taking the chapel on the north side first as being architecturally the most important, it measures in the inside about 22 feet 8 inches long by about 10 feet wide. On the north side ([Fig. 733]) it is divided into two bays, and had originally shallow buttresses of 18 inch projection, terminating with a gabled top. The buttresses have been enlarged at a later date. Between the buttresses there were large pointed windows, probably once filled with tracery, but which is now destroyed. There is another wide window in the east end, which has met with the same treatment. In the west end there is a high window of two lights, with a pierced opening in the apex under the arch. The mouldings round the windows consist of thin reed-like beads, separated by deep narrow hollows. The labels round the outside terminate as shown in [Fig. 734]. Over the buttresses there is a set-off on the wall (see [Fig. 733]), and above this one deep course of masonry, carrying a corbel course of small size, decorated with human and animals’ heads. The top course and set-off are closed in at each end with a large skew stone, on which there is wrought the original start of the sloping gable at a slightly lower level