St. Ninian's Church, Tynet is a historic Roman Catholic church clandestine church located at Tynet about 4 miles to the west of Buckie

Buckie

Buckie is a burgh town on the Moray Firth coast of Scotland in Moray. Buckie was the largest town in Banffshire by some thousands of inhabitants before regionalisation in 1975 removed that political division from the map of Scotland...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 in the Enzie region. Erected in 1755, it is the oldest surviving Roman Catholic church built in Scotland after the Reformation.

Architecture

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

The church has a simple whitewashed interior with a foyer and a single large room. A 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, that was 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 traveled disguised as ordinary 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 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 Gordan 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 Catholicism in Scotland. Father Matheson also 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 Church, Preshome

St. Gregory's Church, Preshome

St. Gregory's Church, Preshome is a Roman Catholic Church at Preshome near Buckie in north-east Scotland. It is protected as a category A listed building....

 in 1788. The church is protected as a category A listed building.