1. The beginning and the Middle Ages

Christianity in Scotland started during the Roman occupation grew with Saint Ninian in 400CE. In the 5thcentury Saint Columba established a monastery on Iona. 

The Celtic church grew independent of Rome spreading from Ireland until it accepted Roman practices in the mid-7th century.

It is not known when Forgue Kirk was first built or the parish first established. Surviving stones indicate that the Kirk may have been a Romanesque style building of about 1050 CE like the church at Leuchars in Fife or St Mary’s Auchindoir and like these buildings would have had many alterations over the centuries until it was demolished in 1819.   

When the Old Kirk was demolished the minister, Rev. Allardyce, set aside one section of window arch with a carved ‘M’ and one section of window mullion with a mason carving of a saint – possibly St Christopher. These relics were in the garden in the Old Manse. Another window or door jamb  was re-used as a gate stop and now lies beside the Victorian iron west-end gate. All these stones are of Turriff red sandstone which was commonly used in the area from earliest times until about 1850 before the use of Granite  as a building stone .

Queen Margaret (1045-1093), the Hungarian/English new Queen of Scots found much to reform in the church of Scotland when she married King Malcolm lll, Malcolm Canmore, about 1070.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the popes reinforced their power to appoint bishops throughout Europe . The seat of the bishop of the diocese of Aberdeen was removed there from Old Deer  in 1132. Rome insisted on a single set of church rules throughout Europe. Queen Margaret found the church of Scotland out of touch with practice in the rest of Christian Europe. Clergy were often married, sons succeeded fathers in parish churches, confession and Communion were rarely celebrated and sabbaths were ignored. These faults were searched out by the Queen and corrected under Anglo-French influence from Archbishop Lanfranc. 

Saint Margaret’s (as she became in 1257) reforms provoked resentment in her day but her work was of lasting importance. She and her royal sons began the work of organising a system of parishes covering the entire country, with a Kirk at the heart of each.

The first written mention of the parish church at Forgue is in 1257. The church is dedicated to Saint Margaret. Whether the reference is to Saint Margaret of Scotland is not known. It is possible that the church took advantage of her canonisation to displace an old-fashioned Pictish dedicatee. 

Forgue throughout 12th and 13th centuries was dependent for its income on the abbey of Arbroath. The arrangement started sometime in the early part of the thirteenth century when monasteries controlled most of the income from Parishes. There is a Bull (a papal instruction) of Pope Alexander lV dated 1257 which confirmed an earlier grant of the Kirk income to Arbroath Abbey. Confirmation was needed because on the previous occasion the laird, Sir William of Frendraught, had forgotten to request the permission of the Bishop of Aberdeen to hold the income.

The income of Duncan, the Kirk minister in 1257, was protected but as soon as he died (in 1268) the monks appointed a Chaplain. Some of the income due to the Kirk was paid to him, but he lost the greater part of it. Forgue was now from that date the monks’ church, and they were permitted by a second papal bull to divert the rest of the revenue to Arbroath Abbey ‘for the purpose of hospitality’.

Dependence on distant Arbroath provided an inadequate income for the proper upkeep of the Kirk building. In 1535, the abbey of Arbroath and Sir James Crichton of Frendraught came to a financial arrangement. The abbey leased to the laird the annual income from the teinds, the sheaves which the local farmers were obliged annually to give to Arbroath as owners of Forgue church. In return, the laird paid the abbey £100 Scots. The abbey converted into ready cash income which the monks might have had trouble collecting, and the parish gained because the laird agreed to mend the church roof.

 The names of the men who served as Forgue parish priests, before 1560 are uncertain, a few names however survive. Duncan in 1257 has been mentioned. In 1371 the priest was called Christimus, and he may have been a University graduate. In 1535, William Christieson was described as “a perpetual vicar at the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Chancel at Forgue”.

In the sixteenth century there were still too few parish churches. Their buildings and furnishings might be dilapidated because repair income was siphoned off by monasteries. The 1535 financial arrangement between Arbroath Abbey and the Crichton’s of Frendraught at Forgue involved repair of the roof. By 1560 the control of parish finances by monasteries was a major cause of religious conflict.

In 1535, Sir James Crichton of Frendraught gave 24 marks annually for the support of the priest and the altar, fixed on rent payable from the lands of Bognie. The laird may have stipulated in return for the endowment that the repose of his soul and the souls of his family and descendants should forever be prayed for. Such gifts in exchange for prayers were a common practice in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth century.

 2. The Reformation

Before 1560 the nature of religious observance began to change ; the Reformers abolished saints and festivals. Religion became centred on preachers and the Bible and, less a matter of community observance. The laird’s gift of money in exchange for prayers to saints of 1535 fell foul of the Reformers’ rejection of masses for the dead and the worship of saints.

The Old Kirk changed from Roman Catholic observance to Presbyterianism in 1560. In August 1560 the Parliament of Scotland agreed to reform the religion of the country. The Reformed faith was defined by the Scots Confession written by John Knox. The Reformation required the founding of schools and poor Relief in every parish.

In the Forgue area the lairds who were Heritors of the Old Kirk until 1875 were mainly Episcopalians and, later, often Jacobite sympathisers. In Turriff churches were Presbyterian supporters.

The break-up of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland at the reformation in 1560 was followed by the creation of a complex number of branches of the Scottish church during the next 300 years. Roman Catholic observance continued throughout the period and was particularly strong around Huntly because of the  Catholic Gordon family .

In 1560 the priest at Forgue, adhered to Roman Catholicism, Alexander Home, may have stayed on voluntarily or in hope that the change to Presbyterianism would not be permanent. The first certain protestant in the parish church was Andrew Spens, a reader (a congregation member to conduct some Kirk functions) perhaps a former priest, who did not arrive until 1574. Not until 1590, a whole generation after 1560, was the first ordained minister, Rev John Philip, appointed – and he stayed a year before he moved to Rothiemay. Things stabilised with the ministry of Rev James Hay, who served the parish between 1608 and the mid to late 1620s.

The Scottish Reformation was carried through in Edinborough in 1560. Carrying through the Reformation in remote parishes often took more than a generation. Successive attempts by the Stuarts to impose Bishops on the emerging Presbyterian church in Scotland caused ministers to ignore political changes throughout the 1620-40s.

 3. The Second Reformation

The conflict between Presbyterianism and the Anglican Church came to a head in the 1630s, when James Vl’s son Charles l ignored his Scottish subjects. Like his father, he wanted an Episcopalian church throughout Britain, controlled by himself. He intended to bring Scottish worship ‘into line’ with England. 

In 1560 church lands had been taken by the Crown and distributed to Royal favourites. Charles had foolishly added to the number of his enemies by threatening to confiscate from the lairds the church lands they had acquired at the Reformation.

In 1637 Charles l and Archbishop Laud imposed Bishops and a new prayer book on Scotland. This was the background to religious revolt and the establishment of the National Covenant of 1638. Though it was Presbyterian in tone, many in Scotland who were not fanatically religious signed it. The Covenant was a broad manifesto, bringing together for a while many different concerns. At the same time, though the king had grievously mishandled things, he still had plenty of supporters in Aberdeenshire. What had been a national protest became a revolution, as differences in the Covenanting party surfaced and the extremists took over the leadership. A long conflict broke out, and areas like Turriff and Forgue suffered in the Bishops wars between 1639-1641.

Presbyterian Turriff skirmished with the royalist lairds round about. James Graham, marquess on Montrose was one of those who signed the National Covenant, and the next year he entered Turriff with an army of Covenanters. The King’s lieutenant in the north, the marquess of Huntly, a Roman Catholic, put in an appearance in the town but found his men outnumbered and withdrew to Forglen without fighting.

The fate of the Forgue Parish area was closely entwined with the troubles of the Crichtons of Frendraught. It all began when in 1630 Crichton of Frendraught killed Gordon of Rothiemay in a scuffle by the Deveron. He wounded the son of Leslie of Pitcaple in a second brawl. When the Gordon marquess of Huntly tried to restore peace, there was a third row. To keep Crichton out of further trouble, Huntly sensibly sent him home to Frendraught, accomplished by his own brother, Lord Aboyne. There followed an event which shocked Scotland. Aboyne and his servants perished in a midnight fire which devastated the castle. One of Pitcaple’s servants was found guilty and was hanged, but popular opinion blamed the Crichtons. Certainly, that was the view held by the Gordons, who proceeded to ravage Frendraught house and mains, terrifying the tenants.

In 1638 Forgue Kirk and the Manse were burnt down by Covenanter soldiers. It was soon rebuilt by the heritors. 

The rebuilt Kirk probably included most of the Medieval stone fabric. It included a new ‘Laird’s Pew’ for the Crichton’s of painted wood. A fragment of this survives in the Kirk having been reused, in the pigeon loft of the Manse steading. A wooden bench made from the roof timber of the rebuilt Kirk sands in the lobby.

The wars of religion in the Aberdeen  area inevitable drew  Montrose into this local feuding . In his covenanting period, he tried vainly to get Huntly to end the conflict . In the 1640s when he later re-appeared in Strathbogie for King Charles, the Crichtons opposed him. The Frendraught estate was ravaged in retaliation. Finally, when Montrose made his last desperate throw in 1650, Crichton of Frendraught  chose to join him. He was in time only to offer Montrose his horse as the royalist army was conclusively routed at the battle of Carbisdale in 1650. Montrose himself was later captured and taken to Edinburgh to be executed.

In 1644, the minister of Forgue Rev. Alexander Garden became professor of Divinity at Aberdeen University, as the devastation of the area by the rival armies was at its height.

The Forgue elders could have afforded an assistant, if they or their minister had really wanted one. The parish was not poor. A visitation in 1642 found the fabric in good order, doors and pulpits green in colour, windows well-glassed. The laird of Frendraught was remarkably generous. He had rebuilt the church after its burning in 1638. He had given – besides the communion plate and cups – a pulpit cloth and a communion Table. Inverkeithny received cups as Forgue did, and also Aberchirder, and they were worth £80 – a very large sum at that time.

 4. The Return of the Bishops

In Forgue, Rev Alexander Garden (minister 1644-74) though ordained in days of Presbyterian supremacy, readily submitted to the bishop. He was succeeded in the parish by his son George. The ministers of Inverkeithny in 1660, Robert Irvine and his new assistant, Richard Maitland also conformed.

The Maitland family are an example of what are called ‘Levitical’ families in the Church of Scotland. These are generations of ministers who occupy the same parish one after another, as if the radical switches from Presbyterian to bishops which affected the church nationally never happened. Richard Maitland’s son John was to succeed him in Inverkeithny. John became minister of Forgue. David was an episcopal minister in a meeting house in Forgue.

Successive ministers of Forgue from 1628 till almost the end of the century maintained a connection with King’s College. Alexander Garden, the minister whose manse was destroyed by Montrose had a bursary for four years, funded jointly by the presbyteries of Strathbogie and Elgin, to study theology in Aberdeen. Care was taken to find parishes – like Forgue or Inverkeithny – for the brighter pupils in the divinity class. After a while in the parish they returned to Aberdeen, well set for an academic career.

5. Jacobite and Episcopalian 

Just how powerless those in control of the Church nationally might be when they wanted to make local changes is borne out by events in Forgue and Inverkeithny.

Rev Patrick Harvey, who succeeded Rev George Garden in 1680 died in 1704. There was a short vacancy until John Maitland, son of the minister of Inverkeithny was called from Insch in 1707. Though he was inducted by the presbytery, Maitland was at heart an Episcopalian. He solved his conscience under Queen Anne much as George Garden did. Anne was a Stuart, not the one he thought should be on the throne, but just about acceptable. Her successor in 1714, the Hanoverian George I, the ‘wee, wee German lairdie’, was not. Maitland refused to pray for him and was deposed by the General Assembly in 1715.

So great was the support for episcopacy in Forgue parish that it was impossible for the representatives of the presbytery to gain access to the Kirk or even the Kirkyard to carry out the sentence. Support was found at all levels of society. The laird’s wife got hold of the keys of the Kirk and refused to allow the presbytery to arrange a temporary preacher to fill the vacancy.

The presbytery eventually took control by presenting a minister to the parish. The patron and the people were excluded. There was no other way an appointment of someone acceptable to the church authorities could be made. The patron was the husband of the lady who hid the keys, and the people were openly hostile.

The new minister was Alexander Forbes (minister 1716-1748). In choosing him, they then had to face an induction at which there was sure to be violence. When the day came, neither the soldiers who had been promised nor the sheriff who said he would come actually turned up. The presbytery members were chased ignominiously across the Forgue burn. The induction was adjourned to the more sympathetic atmosphere of Presbyterian Auchterless.

Even then, the disturbances did not come to an end. John Maitland refused to quit the Manse of Forgue for about a year. By the time he agreed to go, a chapel had been built at Pennyburn for him and for those who, like him, could not accept the return of presbytery. John Maitland’s brother James, the minister of Inverkeithny, was also in trouble and for the same reason. He was thrown out of Inverkeithny in 1715 for refusing to accept the authority of the General Assembly and the presbytery. Like his brother John, he hung on in the Manse, where he opened a meeting-house for worship by those who agreed with his attachment to the bishops. In 1721, however, he left and joined John at the chapel at Pennyburn, along with a third brother, David.

Although he had left Forgue well before the Revolution of 1688, the career of Rev George Garden, perhaps the most famous of all the ministers of Forgue, was distinguished. He was a son of Rev Alexander Garden and a grandson of another Rev George Garden. In 1677 he was ordained to his father’s charge at Forgue. In 1679, he was translated to St Machar’s in Aberdeen, and then in 1683 to St Nicholas. He was therefore taking full advantage of the family and college networks which characterized the Church in the north-east under the bishops.

Garden was among those opposed to the return of presbytery in 1688-89. He did not however choose to leave the Church of Scotland, and he was not pushed out until 1692, when he was suspended for refusing to pray for King William and Queen Mary. 

Dutch William was succeeded in 1701 by Anne, the daughter of James VII and II, who had fled to France in 1688. Anne was of course a Stuart, and so during her reign Garden, like Maitland his successor in Forgue, managed to be an Episcopalian without being a Jacobite. It was not an easy balancing act, and he soon gave it up. In 1715, after Anne’s death, he returned to the pulpit of St Nicholas, thanks to the Old Pretender, when Jacobite forces briefly occupied Aberdeen.

When the rebellion collapsed in 1715,  Garden fled to the continent. But by 1720, he was back, a candidate for the bishopric of Aberdeen. He died in 1733.

6. The calm before the storm

In the Forgue area, presbytery had got off to a faltering start after the Revolution of 1688. Its subsequent progress was silent, steady and successful. There was a similar continuity of Presbyterians at Forgue parish, though without the family relationships. Rev Alexander Forbes, whose turbulent induction had had to be removed to the Presbyterian security of Auchterless, remained minister of Forgue for forty-two years until 1768.

Local events were equally dramatic, though not in Inverkeithny, which sat tight in the Old Kirk. A few years later, the minister said that he thought the reason for this was that in practice the views of the congregation had for a long time been taken fully into account by the presbytery before they approved a patron’s nominee.

7. The new church of 1821

In the spring of 1818, the congregation advertised for tenders to rebuild the Old Kirk. Very little is known of the building to be demolished. The new building was to be sited two metres to the north of the old building . The Morison aisle survives as part of the old building standing in the Kirkyard. This siting may be because the new construction required space for building beside the Kirk Yard. There is a dozen or so memorials dating from the 18th century indicating that the old burial ground to the south of the Kirk was in continuous use since the earliest times. The new Kirk yard to the north side of the building was established in 1926. The new Kirk took several years to build, opening in 1821.

It was designed by Archibald Simpson (1790-1847). At this date Simpson was only just starting in architectural practice. Simpson trained in London under Robert Lugar and travelled in Italy in 1813.

In 1818-19 Simpson obtained two church commissions, one at Kintore where his uncle was minister. In Forgue the congregation and the Minister Rev. Alexander Allardyce advertised in the Aberdeen Gazette for tenders for the new building. The tenders to be sent to  Archibald Simpson at 15, Guestrow, Aberdeen which was  his family home.

The design is very simple and is a traditional mixture of gothic pointed windows with a south elevation of maybe classical inspiration from Hawksmoore and Alberti. Internally it was a classical box with a completely traditional plan with galleries on three sides . 

8. The Victorian Period

In 1840 a dispute arose over the rights of Heritors – those landowners who built and paid for Kirk buildings – to appoint ministers. This dispute started in the neighbouring parish of Marnoch in 1841. Congregations wished to appoint ministers  and rejected Heritor’s rights. In 1843 about the third of the ministers of the established Church of Scotland left the church and set up the Free Church of Scotland.

The churches were re-united in 1929.

9. Repairing the Altars

By 1900, after a prolonged effort at Church Extension, there were 400 ministers of quoad sacraparishes, ( that is parishes created by the subdivision of the large old parishes ) the equivalent of the old chapel ministers. Ythan Wells was one of them and it was Rev John Abel, minister of Forgue, who was one of the moving spirits in creating the new parish. What the Old Kirk had done was to find a way to give seats in the General Assembly to ministers in the same position as those whose imminent ejection from it had brought about the creation of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843.

At Forgue, although the minister did  leave the Church of Scotland  in 1843, it must have been feared that at the next vacancy, the relative loss of manpower in the Church of Scotland would make it difficult to find a successor. The speed with which the old kirk recovered in this as in other ways is demonstrated by the fact that when James Cordiner died in 1849 the new minister, Rev. John Abel, was in place within months.

10. The Victorian Revolution

It was some of the Free Church seceder’s in the who first sang hymns and also reintroduced saying  the Lord’s Prayer. Some years later  the Church of Scotland followed. The Church of Scotland used paraphrases from the 1870’s, but for many years they were not approved formally. The first Old Kirk hymn collection, entitled The Scottish Hymnal, appeared in 1870, though hymns had been in use in parish churches a little before that. By the end of the 1890’s the main Presbyterian Churches all used the same Church Hymnary, and Metrical Psalter. Behind these authorized collections, we should not forget the legacy of the Moody and Sankey Evangelical campaign in 1874 which was built around hymn singing.

With hymns came pipe-organs. These was an organ in Aberdeen in 1857, and in Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh in 1860. An organ was installed in Forgue in 1872, one of the earliest in the north, the gift of Walter Scott, the owner of Glendronach distillery. 

During the ministry of Rev James Bremner (1871-1900) the Old Kirk underwent great changes. 

In the mid-century evangelical Christians were gaining influence. Congregations were choosing their own ministers. The control by Heritors, usually local landlords, was abolished in 1850.

In 1872 the Old Kirk was dramatically redecorated; the walls were coloured bright red and stencilled patterns were added all around the pews. Central heating was installed, the session house extended, and the new organ was installed above the pulpit.

11. The Rev Mantieth’s replanning of 1926

The Rev Mantieth was minister of Forgue from 1927 to 1955. In 1926 the congregation decided on a radical replanning of the Old Kirk.

The aim was to make worship less formal and to provide new seating in a more open plan. The church was fitted with new pews. The side galleries were removed, and a single west end gallery installed. The central pulpit and organ were removed and a new flexible arrangement of a dais with moveable pulpit, table and font was provided. The organ was dismantled and rebuilt in the south east corner of the church. All the Victorian decoration of 1873 was painted over with pale buff coloured walls.

In 1926 the kirk extended the kirkyard to the North by purchasing part of a field and building a retain wall. After 1855 kirkyards were managed by parochial Boards. After 1926 they were managed by county authorities.

This is how the old Kirk remains today.

12. Looking Forward

Years later, in 1953, the two ancient parishes of Forgue and Inverkeithny were united. Since the national union of 1929, Forgue had been called Forgue Old, and the 1953 union was known as Forgue-Inverkeithny. Forgue-Inverkeithny was linked with Ythan Wells-Auchaber in 1982. Finally, all four churches were made into a single charge named Auchaber United in 1992, and the following year they were formally linked with Auchterless.

Forgue church building was sold in 1998 to the Friends of Forgue Kirk, a charity created to preserve the building and the organ in the interest of the local community. Inverkeithny church building is in the care of a similar charity.