St Mary's Church, Grandtully

St Mary’s Church is a long, low, rectangular, gabled building dating from around 1533, with extensions made in 1636. The church is constructed of limewashed rubble and has a single, off-centre rectangular opening with a boarded timber entrance door on its north-facing elevation, and small windows in both gables. The south elevation features a rectangular door with flanking window openings on the far left.

The window opening in the east gable has rounded window jambs and a lintel dating from around 1636, carved with the initials SWS and DAM, representing Sir William Stewart and Dame Agnes Moncrieff. The roof is covered with graded grey slates and raised skews, with projecting stones on each skew at the west end and a stone finial at the apex.

The interior, inspected in 2016, is unfurnished and divided into two sections by a stone wall. The west end has an exposed timber roof, while the east end features an elaborately painted, barrel vaulted, pine timber ceiling, also dating from around 1636. This ceiling contains 28 roundels of varying shapes and sizes, depicting saints, biblical scenes, and the achievements of the Stewart family, interspersed with floral, fruit, and angel motifs, arranged around a central panel depicting a resurrection scene. Small, open stone aumbries are set into the east and south walls, the latter featuring a timber door. The floor is concrete.

To the south of the church is a square churchyard, enclosed by a tall, rubble boundary wall to the west and south. A pair of square-plan, coped gatepiers support a metal gate at the northwest corner, near the church. The gravestones are predominantly 19th century, with some carvings and one obelisk. A stone dated 1784, for a James Thomson, features a carved angel head and a depiction of Abraham and Isaac.

A small, rectangular grassy area lies to the north of the church, bounded by a rubble wall with curved corners. A pair of square gatepiers with loose stone slabs as coping stones are positioned opposite the church’s entrance door, with metal gates between them and also at the west end of the boundary wall.