Lundie Parish Church

Lundie Parish Church is a building with a Romanesque core, largely rebuilt in 1846 and renovated in 1892 by Thomas Saunders Robertson. In 1789, Robert Mylne constructed a neo-classical mausoleum for the Duncan family, which has since been converted into a vestry; an apse was removed at this time. The church is built of coursed squared rubble, with random rubble at the west gable, and has a slate roof. The mausoleum is constructed of diagonally droved ashlar with polished panels and a domical roof of channelled ashlar.

The south elevation is symmetrical with six bays. A gabled porch, masking the main door, is located in the second bay from the left; it features a pointed window and a round-arched moulding above with a chevron pattern. A basket-arched door is situated to the right return. There are two windows to the right, followed by a door and a further window to the far right. The west gable is blank, with a buttress at its centre. The north elevation incorporates a basement with steps, a coped wall with iron railings and gate, and a chimneybreast which rises through the eaves to become a square, corniced stack. A narrow, round-headed window is on the left, with a blocked coal hole below, and a blocked window is furthest to the left. The east gable features an ashlar bellcote with a bell, a ball-finialled pyramidal roof, and a decorative weathercock.

The former Duncan mausoleum is square-plan, with a door featuring wide, corniced jambs in a round-headed panel on its left return. It has an inscribed, corniced lintel, fanlight, intrados, sunken panels to the north and east, a cornice near the wallhead, and an ashlar domical roof with a drum at the crown.

The interior has boarded walls and embrasures, a continuous timber hoodmould over the windows, a timber dentilled cornice, and a compartmentalised boarded ceiling. A fragment of a sacrament house is inset in the north wall. A narrow, round-headed (likely Norman) window is also visible in the north wall, with deeply splayed reveals. Other interior features include a wrought-iron memorial to John Robert Lester, minister 1953-77; a stained-glass memorial window to the Hunter family of Easter Keith, 1897; a war memorial on the north wall; a brass panel commemorating the church’s renovation in 1892 on the west wall; framed texts from the psalms and the Lord’s Prayer on plaques (by Stalker and Boyd, Dundee, 1892) flanking the door to the vestry at the east wall; a hexagonal, pilastered and panelled timber pulpit on a plinth; and a stone columnar font.

To the east of the former mausoleum lies the Duncan burial enclosure, containing tombs of the Duncan family and others, and enclosed by a low, coped wall with wrought-iron railings. The churchyard contains 18th, 19th and 20th century tombstones. The rubble churchyard wall stands approximately 2 metres high, is partly drystane, and is snecked on the south side. Two ashlar gatepiers, with mannered caps, stand to the east.