Old Parish Church, Liff

This is an 1839 Gothic church, designed by William MacKenzie of Perth, located in Liff. The building is rectangular in plan and includes a tower and spire at the east end. It is constructed of stugged pink and cream sandstone with ashlar dressings, most of which are droved, and has a slate roof. Architectural details include a base course, chamfered angles, and crowstepped gables. The windows are shallow-pointed with Y-tracery and chamfered margins; those on the east front have hoodmoulds, while doors and the first-floor tower window have mask corbel/label stops. Stepped, chamfered doorcases add to the design.

The eastern, or entrance, gable features a slightly projecting two-stage tower at its center, which contains a pair of panelled doors topped by an astragalled pointed fanlight with leaded diamond panes. Above the doors is a window, and the tower’s upper stage has louvred windows on all sides. The tower is crowned by a parapet of crowstepped pediments and finialled dies, rising to a pyramidal stone spire with flying buttresses at the corners and lucarnes on all sides. Flanking the tower on the main elevation are further sets of double doors with windows above.

The north and south elevations each have three large, symmetrically placed windows. The west elevation features two large windows and a round window above.

Inside, a vestibule contains a boarded dado and a pair of stone geometric staircases leading to a gallery. A profusely carved memorial stone from 1742, originally from Dargie churchyard and relocated in 1914, commemorates James Cocks of Locheye, his wife Isobel Doig, and their son William. A plaster cast of a circa 9th century stone depicting a horseman, discovered at Bullion Farm, Invergowrie in 1934 (the original is held by the Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh), is also present. Other memorials include one to Alexander Watt, who died in 1851, and an alms dish dated 1751. The interior retains original pitch pine pews, some of which can be converted to communion tables, along with a boarded dado. A horseshoe gallery is supported on timber columns, with fluted octagonal sections above the pews and a panelled front. An elongated bookrest at the east end displays shields representing the Gray family (lion rampart) and the Duncan family (an allegorical representation of the naval victory of Camperdown). Two stained glass windows in the west gable commemorate Rev John Wilson. The building houses a two-manual and pedal organ built by Alexander Young and Sons of Manchester in 1880, complete with an intact pump handle. A font and a second World War memorial are also present.

The churchyard contains mostly 19th and 20th century tombstones, along with a plain cross in the churchyard extension, built in 1933 using stone taken from the Scheduled Monument ‘Hurly Hawkin’ near Dalgetty. Rubble boundary walls with saddleback coping and cast-iron railings run along the east side. Two ashlar gatepiers, topped with shallow pyramidal caps, support a cast-iron gate.

To the north of the entrance tower stands an octagonal, pre-Reformation stone font, which is damaged.