St Ninian's Church, Tynet is a historic Roman Catholic

clandestine church A clandestine church ( nl, schuilkerk), defined by historian Benjamin J. Kaplan as a "semi-clandestine church", is a house of worship used by religious minorities whose communal worship is tolerated by those of the majority faith on condition th ...

located at Tynet about 4 miles to the west of

Buckie Buckie ( gd, Bucaidh) is a burgh town (defined as such in 1888) on the Moray Firth coast of Scotland. Historically in Banffshire, Buckie was the largest town in the county until the administrative area was abolished in 1975. The town is the ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

in the Enzie region. Erected in 1755, it is the oldest surviving Roman Catholic church built in Scotland after the Reformation."Tynet, St Ninian's Church"
scotlandsplaces.gov.uk, The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland; accessed 9 May 2015."Tynet, St Ninian's Church"
britishlistedbuildings.co.uk; accessed 9 May 2015.

Architecture

St Ninian's looks like a long, low barn or like a row of simple cottages because it was a

designed to look anonymous at a time when Catholic worship was tolerated in Britain and many other Protestant lands on the condition that worship take place in out-of-the way churches so as not to offend Protestant sensibilities. St Ninian's is a superbly preserved example of a clandestine church.Kaplan, Benjamin J., ''Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe,'' Harvard University Press, 2007, Chapter 8, pp. 198. The church has a simple whitewashed interior with a foyer and a single large room. A possibly reused doorway with Corinthian columns leads from the foyer and baptistry to the church proper. The simple wooden pews and confessional are painted grey. A simple octagonal pulpit with a sounding board dates to 1787.

History

St Ninian's replaced a church located in St Ninian's burial ground, Chapelford, destroyed by soldiers in 1728. Before the construction of St Ninian's, services were held on an occasional basis, often at night in barns conducted by priests who travelled disguised as farmers. At the time the church was constructed, the building was an extremely modest private house owned by a "poor woman." Although the existence of a Roman Catholic congregation and the fact that they intended to construct a space in which to conduct communal worship was not a secret, in keeping with the conditions under which Catholic worship was tolerated in Scotland, Father Godsman purchased the house, on land owned by the Gordon family, and announced that he was "''making an'' ''additione'' (''sic'') ''as a cot'' ''for his sheep''." In its original form, the building was thatched and the windows were not glazed. Glass windows and a slate roof were added by Father George Matheson in 1779, as conditions eased for Roman Catholics in Scotland. Father Matheson added a ball finial on the building's west gable. The building was restored in 1951. St Ninian's is still a consecrated church, although it was supplanted as the leading church in the parish by St Gregory's, Preshome in 1788. The church is protected as a category A

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Ninians Church Tynet Roman Catholic churches in Scotland Churches completed in 1755 Churches in Moray Category A listed buildings in Moray Listed churches in Scotland