Brechin Cathedral

Brechin Cathedral stands in the Angus town of the same name, and its most striking feature is not the church but the slender round tower rising close beside it. Built around the year 1000, the tower is one of only two of its kind in Scotland — the other survives at Abernethy in Perthshire — and belongs to a form far more common in Ireland. Some 86 feet high and barely 16 feet across, it carries a hexagonal stone spire added in the 14th century, and its raised doorway is carved with a Crucifixion flanked by ecclesiastical figures. The cathedral itself was founded in the 13th century and served the medieval Diocese of Brechin, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, until the Reformation of the 16th century. Built in the pointed Gothic style, it retains a western gable with a flamboyant window, a massive square tower and much of its nave, while a restoration in 1902 undid clumsier work carried out in 1806. Two carved stones of the 11th century survive here: the Brechin hogback, mingling Celtic and Scandinavian motifs in the Ringerike style, and St Mary’s Stone, showing the Virgin and Child. The building held its final service as a church in November 2021.