Strathdon Parish Church, Strathdon

The Strathdon Parish Church, dated 1853 and designed by James Matthews, is a well-detailed Gothic style church situated on the edge of Bellabeg village. It forms a small group with the surrounding graveyard and former manse. The church has a cruciform plan, comprising a four-bay aisleless nave and transepts. A three-stage tower with a broach spire is located in the northeast re-entrant, accompanied by small polygonal stair towers. The building features reticulated tracery and deeply moulded doorpieces incorporating simple colonettes. The construction utilizes coursed, squared, and snecked rubble with contrasting dressings and long and short margins, accentuated by a deep base course and part cill courses. Architectural details include two- and three-stage angle and dividing buttresses, hoodmoulds, raked cills, stone mullions, and boarded timber doors with decorative ironwork. Large, three-light traceried windows, each topped with a Celtic cross finial, are incorporated into the east and west end gables. A polygonal stair tower is located on the outer left angle of the west gable. The north and south nave elevations also feature two-light traceried windows and transeptal gables, the southern gable having an additional polygonal stair tower.

The northeast tower is distinguished by full-height, three-stage buttresses flanking the first stage, containing a dated doorway. The second stage has a trefoil-headed lancet window, while the third stage features a simple-traceried two-light window. Above this, a trefoil-detailed arcaded corbel, surmounted by a mutuled cornice and weathervaned spire, completes the tower. The spire itself has a circular window on each elevation and lucarnes above. The windows are fitted with leaded diamond-pattern glazing with coloured margins, and the roof is covered with graded grey slates. Other external features include ashlar-coped stepped skews and mitre skewputts.

Inside, the church boasts a fine galleried interior and a hammerbeam roof. A chancel arch is present, along with fixed timber pews and a collection of monuments, primarily white marble on black ground, commemorating the Forbes family. Galleries are located in the west and south transepts, with enclosed bases that were probably later infilled. The north gallery is supported by two simple iron columns with arcaded timber fronts. A polygonal pulpit with decorative ironwork balusters is also present. Notable are carved wood heraldic panels from an earlier church, representing the Elphinstone of Bellabeg and Forbes of Skellater families, dated 1597, 1636, and 1686. A stone narthex, also from an earlier church erected in 1737 by Charles Anderson of KANDOCRAIG, contains a memento mori carved in high relief.