The Old Church

After church today the weather was so fine that we went for a drive to the Old Church at Newhills to take some photos. The conditions were marvellous. The present church at Newhills was built in 1830 but this church was built in the 17th century. As the minister in 1840 wrote:
' The parish of Newhills, in former times, was a part of the then extensive and incommodious parish of Saint Machar, or Old Machar, whose church is situated in Old Aberdeen. The distance betwixt the church and the remote confines towards the west was so great, that it was hardly possible for the people resident there to assemble at Saint Machar for worship, and for other religious purposes. This circumstance had excited, it appears, the notice and sympathy of a pious and humane individual, Mr George Davidson, of Pettens, a burgess of Aberdeen,?and who had amassed a considerable fortune, and risen entirely by his own industry. This man, having no family to provide for, and feeling that he could not better dispose of his property than by applying it "in better providing" (as he himself expressed it) for the spiritual wants of the people with whom he was connected, and in whose salvation he took a deep interest,?mortified for the endowment of a resident clergyman in this western part of Saint Machar the lands of "Keppelhills," consisting of nearly 700 Scotch acres, which he had previously purchased from the town of Aberdeen. He also caused a church to be built, upon these mortified lands, about five miles distant from Saint Machar; and all at his own expense, in the year 1663: