After 1815 restoration

The Church Today
Looking east

Looking west towards the church organ

Following the damage caused in the battle of Dunkeld, in 1691 the Marquess of Atholl (whose splendid memorial is on the south wall of the chapter house), undertook repairs on the eastern limb. There were further repairs in 1762, which apparently included replacement of some of the tracery in the great windows of the eastern limb and the re­roofing of the tower. At the same time the Duke of Atholl erected a sumptuous pew for himself and his family, immediately in front of the pulpit.

Since some of the endowments of the Church had passed to the crown with the final abolition of the bishops in 1689, a contribution of £300 was made towards this operation by the government. This was one of the first cases of the state taking an interest in what would now be called an ancient monument, and began the process which was to culminate in the state taking over responsibility for the tower and ruined nave in 1925.

By the nineteenth century the cathedral was again in need of major repairs, and an extensive ‘restoration’ took place in 1814—15, to the designs of the architect Archibald Elliot. About £5,000 of the cost of this was borne by the fourth Duke of Atholl, whose splendid statue by John Ternouth is displayed in the chapter house, and the government contributed £996.18s.

Before this operation took place there had been drawn-out discussions about the responsibility for maintenance of the cathedral. These partly stemmed from the fact that, because the parishes of Dunkeld and Dowally had been united before the mid seventeenth century, Dunkeld itself was not technically a parish; the nominal role of the crown was also a factor. In order to resolve these difficulties, in 1811 an attempt was made by the crown formally to grant the cathedral to Dunkeld for use as a parish church. The duke objected to this, however, and in 1812 a new royal warrant was issued, which instead granted the choir of the cathedral to the duke and his heirs. (This was only changed by an arrangement in 1928, after the passing of the Church of Scotland Properties and Endowment Act of 1925.)

The operations of 1814—15 included stabilisation of the ruined nave, and it was presumably for this that the government contribution was intended, but the main effort was naturally on the eastern limb. From the few surviving drawings and photographs which show this part as it was restored in 1814-15 it can be seen that only the three western bays were used for worship, with the pulpit prominently placed below the central window on the south side and surmounted by an elaborately canopied sounding board. Directly facing it, on the north, was the Atholl pew, a large box-like construction with curtained sides, and with three arched openings looking towards the pulpit. Wide galleries provided additional seating for the congregation at a higher level to east and west.

Considerable portions of the carved and moulded stonework of the eastern limb were renewed at this time, and it is likely that most of the window tracery we now see was inserted by Elliot in an attempt to create a more medieval appearance than had been left after the 1762 operation. An even more conspicuous piece of ‘re-medievalising’ was the construction of a plaster imitation vault over the whole of the eastern limb, where there had never been a vault before. It was carefully painted to give it the appearance of dressed stone.

 Elliot’s restoration had left those parts of the cathedral still in use well furnished according to the ideas of worship which were current in the early nineteenth century. But that was a period when appreciation of the qualities of medieval architecture was still in its infancy and, as understanding of the importance of Dunkeld’s architecture developed in the course of the nineteenth century, it came to be felt that much of what Elliot had done was out of sympathy with the true spirit of the building.

A scheme for a further campaign of restoration was drawn up by the architect Peter MacGregor Chalmers in 1900, but was rejected by the duke, for reasons which are no longer clear. Some years later Sir Donald Currie, the shipping magnate, agreed to restore the cathedral at the request of his nurse who had cared for him through a long illness and was the daughter of a minister at the cathedral. Currie had built some extremely fine buildings on his estate at Glenlyon to the designs of the Arts and Crafts architect James MacLaren, and for the restoration of Dunkeld he chose the architects Dunn and Watson, who had also worked at Glenlyon. (Robert Watson had earlier been James MacLaren’s draughtsman).

The restoration was carried out in the course of 1908, and the church was reopened for worship on 16 October of that year. A bust of Sir Donald was placed in the chapter house to commemorate his contribution, within a mural tomb which had originally been made in the seventeenth century for a member of the Atholl family but had never been finished.

The work undertaken for Sir Donald included the removal of the galleries, the plaster vaults and all of the furnishings of 1814-15. The focus of the arrangement was the communion table, which was placed a little to the west of where the high altar would originally have been, and set against a carved and panelled screen which linked the table with the pulpit. This scheme was much more in sympathy with the architecture of the cathedral, although it did not go far enough for some critics. The architects were walking a difficult path between those who wished to preserve what they saw as ‘the presbyterian tradition’, and those for whom beauty of worship was more important.

The Rev. Professor Cooper of the influential Scottish Ecclesiological Society for example, who visited with that society in 1909, would have preferred something more medieval in spirit. He said of the architects that ‘they have . . . given us something distasteful alike to the best of our old traditions and our modem attainments’. Most visitors, however, will feel his strictures were too harsh, and that they were perhaps an excessively partisan response at a period of controversy. Although there have been several later campaigns of repair, largely necessitated by the softness of the stone from which the cathedral is built, it has been found necessary to make few major changes to the structure or furnishings of the eastern limb since the restoration of 1908.

For those who worship in this famous building, there is a great satisfaction in being aware that their church is one of the most eloquent witnesses to the continuity of Christianity in Scotland. Nevertheless, the problems of maintaining the building can sometimes be daunting, and there is always work to be done, either to keep the historic fabric wind and watertight, or to adapt the furnishings to changing ideas of what is most appropriate for current liturgical needs. The congregation of the cathedral hopes that its own delight in this fine building will be shared by visitors and would, of course, be most grateful for any contributions to help them in their work of maintaining it for the future.