Old Parish Church And Churchyard, Inveravon

Inveravon Parish Church is a simple rectangular parish church dating to 1806, incorporating medieval fabric in its south wall. It was remodelled by A Marshall Mackenzie of Aberdeen in 1876. The church stands within a burial ground situated on a secluded bluff above the south-eastern bank of the River Spey. The earliest recorded mention of a church on this site dates to 1108, when it was dedicated to St Peter, though Pictish sculpture evidence suggests even older origins.

The church is a simple rectangular building harled with tooled granite margins and dressings. The original 1806 work is supplemented by later 1876 dressings of tooled ashlar sandstone. The roofs are slated. A corniced birdcage bellcote with a ball finial sits on the west gable.

The south elevation has four symmetrical round-headed windows with Y-shaped timber tracery inserted in 1876. This wall incorporates masonry from the north wall of the earlier medieval church. The north elevation features three pointed-headed hoodmoulded windows and a gabled entrance porch in Gothic style, both added in 1876. A single-storey, two-bay Minister's room sits at the west gable, with a shouldered lintel to the doorway and simple bipartite lattice-pane glazing. The east gable has a round-headed window with lattice-pane glazed fanlight and a sexfoil window above, all from the 1876 remodelling.

The interior is plain with pine plank dado and pews. It originally featured a pulpit mid-way along the south wall and galleries at either end. The 1876 remodelling removed the western gallery, allowing the interior to be realigned with liturgical furniture moved to the west end. The coomb ceiling with scissor-braced roof and pendant finials dates to this remodelling. An east-end gallery remains from 1806. A carved backboard sits behind the communion table (1876), together with an organ (1876, case around 1911) and a pulpit from around 1901, which was moved from Wishart Memorial Church, Dundee.

The porch, which no longer provides access to the main church body, houses a collection of Pictish symbol stones dating to around the 6th–8th centuries AD. Three were discovered during construction of the present church in 1806, and a fourth was found in the burial ground in 1964. These were previously attached to the north wall of the church and moved to the porch in 2011 for display. The centremost stone is a large blue slate slab bearing three symbols: an eagle, a mirror case, and a mirror and comb. To its left is a slab of unmetamorphosed sandstone bearing the crescent and V-rod and a Pictish Beast. Above is a fragment of a Pictish symbol stone cut down and dressed as a wall stone in hard blue gneiss; only the head of the Pictish Beast symbol remains, facing right. To the right is a slab of hard gneiss bearing the crescent and V-rod, triple ring, and comb and mirror symbols.

The burial ground is defined by a coped rubble wall with a pair of simple square granite gatepiers with shaped caps and cast-iron gates. It contains 18th, 19th, and 20th-century tombstones, many of the earlier memorials carved in finely inscribed local slate. To the east of the church stands the Macpherson-Grant mausoleum, listed separately.