Fig. 933.—St. Duthus’ Church. Plan.
In the Treasurer’s Accounts for 1504 there are entries which seem to point to all three churches as being then still in existence. These entries show that on 23rd October of that year the king made an offering of 14s. “in Sanct Duchois Chapell quhair he was borne” (no doubt meaning the place where the saint was born, or the old church on the links); also, “in Sanct Duchois Chapell in the Kirk-yard of Tayne” (referring, probably, to the second, or original, parish church); and also, “in Sanct Duchoils Kirk” (which may be the College Kirk as distinguished from the Parish Church).
The Collegiate Church stands in a pleasant situation overlooking the sea, on the raised beach to the north of the town, and is surrounded by a burying-ground.
St. Duthus’ was an ancient and favourite place of pilgrimage, and the old church having been consumed, this new one would, after its erection, be doubtless the celebrated shrine to which James IV. and V. made their pilgrimages.
The former king is believed to have gone there every season for at least twenty years, as part of the penance he performed in connection with his father’s death. He visited St. Duthus’ in 1513, before his last fatal expedition, which closed with the Battle of Flodden. In 1527 James V. made the pilgrimage of St. Duthus’ barefoot, a memento of which event is preserved in the name of the “King’s Causeway,” by which a road near the town is known.
The Collegiate Church ([Fig. 933]) is 70 feet long by 22 feet 6 inches wide internally. It contains four bays, distinguished externally by buttresses of good form ([Fig. 934]). Each bay contains one window, those of the south or sheltered side being large and filled with tracery; while those in the north wall, which is exposed to the sea, are small plain lancets, with hood moulding. The windows in the east and west walls are large and filled with tracery, having five and four lights respectively, divided by mullions. The tracery of the east window, which has been renewed, is of geometric form, while that of the west window consists of simple intersecting mullions. The tracery of the south side windows is of similar design. The west gable contains two niches, one on each side of the arch of the window. The statue of a bishop (possibly St. Duthus) still exists in the north niche. There is a doorway in the westmost bay on each side. They are similar and of good design. A small benitier projects from the wall on the outside close to the north door. The south door has had a large porch, the mark of the water table being still visible.
The interior contains a triple sedilia and a piscina in the south wall of good pointed and trefoiled pattern, and there is a small ambry in the north wall.
In Neal’s Ecclesiological Notes the church is termed an example of middle pointed architecture, although its date, as generally happens in the North, is considerably later than any work of that period in England.
From the Reformation till 1815 this edifice was used as the parish church. A new church being then erected, the old one was abandoned and suffered neglect. When Mr. Neal visited it in 1848, he found it in the following condition[189]:—“It has been fitted up as a place of Presbyterian worship; galleries, gaudily painted, run round it; pews of every size and shape and colour pollute it; but it is now deserted. The smell of decaying wood, the exhalations from the vaults, the dampness, the rottenness, the horrible filth, the green mould, the decaying baize, the deserted appearance of the whole render this a shocking place.”
This disgraceful condition of the church attracted public attention,