Alness Parish Church, Alness is a Grade B listed building in the Highland local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 25 March 1971. Church.
Alness Parish Church, Alness
- WRENN ID
- half-chapel-bracken
- Grade
- B
- Local Planning Authority
- Highland
- Constituency
- Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross MP: Jamie Stone (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 25 March 1971
- Type
- Church
- OS grid reference
- NH 644 690
- Coordinates
- 57.691, -4.27493
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
Alness Parish Church is a church that is now roofless, with origins dating back to 1625 for the bellcote, 1672 for the lintel, and 1775 for the skew. The church has a T-plan layout from 1672, incorporating earlier work, and was renovated between 1775 and 1780. It features harled walls with ashlar margins.
The symmetrical south elevation includes paired ground and gallery windows in the outer bays, as well as a pair of long central windows in the middle bay. The bellcote has stumpy finials at the west apex, a ball finial at the east, and a thistle finial at the north. The north door has moulded and initialled jambs, which likely provided access to the former Novar aisle. There is also a later extension to the north gable with wide blocked doors, possibly used for stabling or as a carriage house for the Novar aisle. An external gallery stair leads to the east gable, and there is a burial enclosure featuring a Munro eagle dated 1671.
Inside, there is a semi-circular mural recess in the northeast internal wall, probably intended for a recumbent figure. The surrounding burial ground is enclosed with coped, rubble walls and contains notable tombs from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Local climate
Alness Parish Church, Alness sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,040 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 83% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 50% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 65 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 99% of listed buildings. Of these, 46 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.2°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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