Kirk of Fortingall - Perth & Kinross, Scotland - Presbyterian Churches on Waymarking.com

The tiny village of Fortingall at the foot of Glen Lyon in highland Perthshire was long regarded as a Christian site, its ancient yew tree, regarded as being over 5,000 years old attracted many Christians to the area with an early monastery being established after the visit of Adomnán, the Abbot of Iona from 679 to 704AD. This can be confirmed by the hand bell inside the present church which dates from the 600s. There are also graves supposedly dating from that period in the churchyard, along with various Pictish stones on display in the church.

By the 1100s the monastery had been replaced by a parish church, Fortingall then being one of the largest parishes in Scotland, also covering Glen Lyon and Rannoch. The first wooden church was replaced by a medieval stone building which had a belfry added in 1768 with a bell cast in 1765 by Johannes Sprelt of Rotterdam. This bell is now on display inside the church, with the belfry also on display, now in the churchyard.

In 1850 the rectangular church was turned into a T-plan with the addition of a transept, but by the end of the century the church was starting to fall into disrepair and the Laird, Sir Donald Currie commissioned his architects, William Dunn and Robert Watson to build a new church on the foundations of the old building.

Built from 1900-02 to great expense and opened on September 23rd 1902, the church is a white-harled art & crafts style building with crowstepped gables and a slate roof. Where the nave meets the narrower chancel, a bellcote in the style of its predecessor houses a bell cast by Felix van Aerschodt of Belgium. The yew tree stands next to the west gable surrounded by a wall built between 1785 and 1842 to preserve its once vast trunk which was once 56 feet in girth.

The church is within the denomination of the Church of Scotland and lies just north of the minor road that heads towards Glen Lyon on the east side of the village.