Showing posts with label Spott Parish Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spott Parish Church. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 November 2023

Skulferatu #108 - Spott Parish Church, Spott, Dunbar, East Lothian


In the tiny village of Spott, near Dunbar, there sits a small, picturesque church.  Though very little, if anything, of the original building remains, a church has stood on that spot in Spott since the early 14th century. 

 

A photo of a one storey, rectangular church with a small bell tower on it.  The church, Spott Parish Church, sits in a graveyard and various old gravestones can be seen around it.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Spott Parish Church

 

I wandered up there on a warm and blustery day to have a look around.  It was a very peaceful place of old gravestones, trees and birds singing away merrily.  While inside the church a few members of the local community had met up for a bit of a get together.  Of course, I wasn’t there for socialising, I was there to leave a Skulferatu in a place with an unexpected dark history…especially if you were one of the early clergymen who preached there.

 

A photo of an old gravestone at Spott.  The gravestone is covered in white lichen and at the top, on each side, sits a carved skull.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Gravestone at Spott

 

A close up photo of one of the skulls on the lichen covered gravestone.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Detail of gravestone at Spott

 

Another photo of a gravestone at Spott.  This one sits against the wall of the church.  At the top is carved the emblem of a skull and crossbones.  There is a large square space in the gravestone where the epitaph would have once been...it is now blank.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Gravestone at Spott

 

Spott Church didn’t have a great deal of luck with several of its early clerics.  Around 1530, Robert Galbraith became the Rector of the church.  He was also a judge in the High Court and Court of Session at Edinburgh.  In 1544 he made a judgement on a case that did not go down well with the defendant.  So, unfortunately for Galbraith, while he was about his business in Edinburgh, the disgruntled defendant spotted him and murdered him.

 

A view of Spott Parish Church from the back of the old graveyard.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View of Spott Parish Church and graveyard

 

In 1559, John Hamilton, the brother of the Earl of Arran, was appointed as the Parson of Spott.  He later went on to rise up the ranks of the church and became the Archbishop of St Andrews.   However, in 1571 he was tried and found guilty of aiding and abetting in the murders of the Earl of Moray and also Lord Darnley, the late husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.  He was hanged by the Mercat Cross in Stirling a few days after his trial. 

 

A small gravestone at Spott with a primitive style skull carved on it.  The epitaph on it reads - Death is not loss but rather gain, if we by dying life attain.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Gravestone at Spott

 

A photo showing a very squint gravestone that has turned to an angle.  The epitaph on the stone is to John Ludgate, a carrier at Gifford who died aged 63 on March 12, 1823.  It is also dedicated to his wife, Agnes Swifton, who died on September 15, 1817 aged 55 years and their son Matthew who died in 1815, aged 18 years.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Gravestone at Spott

 

A photo showing a view over some rolling hills.  On one some sheep graze, while the other has been ploughed showing the red earth underneath.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
View from Spott Parish Church Graveyard

 

In 1567, John Kello became the first protestant Minister of Spott Church.  He is also the most notorious.  John Kello was born in Linlithgow and as a young man married a local girl, Margaret Thomson.  John, who was an ambitious and eloquent man, decided to enter the Presbyterian Church and was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister while attending the first General Assembly in Edinburgh in1560.  He soon required a reputation as a powerful and stirring preacher and in 1567 was appointed to the Parish of Spott.  So, there he moved with Margaret and their three children.

 

At Spott, John’s reputation grew as a preacher, preachers being the rock stars of those days.  However, unlike rock stars, preachers weren’t paid very well. John had soon come to realise this and looked for ways to better himself as he wanted the finer things in life, he wanted land, prestige, and wealth.  When he had married Margaret, she had brought a small dowry with her.  John thought he could maybe use her dowry to make some money and so he used it to buy and sell land.  Unfortunately, a couple of his land deals went wrong, and he ended up in debt.

 

While he fretted about his debts and ways to make more money, John’s sermons still attracted a good crowd to the church.  One of his congregation was a rich young woman who had recently been widowed.  Being a very pious type, she would often seek John out for spiritual advice.  John found that he enjoyed her company and soon his thoughts turned to how his life would be if he was married to her and had her fortune as his own.  She would make him a rich man of some social standing.  If he were married to her, he could achieve his ambitions.  The more he thought like this, the more he began to despise his own wife, Margaret.  He became bitter and began to blame her for his failings.    

 

Margaret, who by all accounts was a cheerful and likeable person, and a loving wife, soon bore the brunt of John’s anger at his thwarted ambitions. She, however carried on in her sunny and loyal way assuming that John’s moods would soon pass, and he would be her loving husband once again.  This annoyed John even more and he began to wish she would just die.  If she were dead, then he could marry again and marry well.  He then began to think about ways to kill her and decided that he could achieve his ambitions in life if he murdered her.

 

Once he had made the decision to murder Margaret, John acquired some poison and used that in an attempt to kill her.  It didn’t work.  She was a fit, healthy woman with a strong constitution and the poison had no noticeable effect on her.   On the Sunday morning after his first attempt at killing his wife, John tried again.  Knowing that she would pray in their bedroom in the morning, he sneaked in behind her with a length of rope in his hands.  As she prayed, he pounced, pulled the rope around her neck, and strangled her.  He then hung her lifeless body from a beam in the room, locked the door from inside, leaving the key in the lock and then slipped out of the bedroom window, shutting it behind him.  As the church bells rang, he walked through the graveyard greeting members of his congregation as they arrived. In the church he stood in the pulpit and gave a passionate sermon.

 

After the sermon was over, John invited several members of the congregation to come over to his house to eat there.  He told them that lately his wife had been very depressed, and it would cheer her up to have some company.  Off they went to the house where John called out to his wife, but there was no answer.  He then went to their bedroom and called out to his guests that the door was locked.  Then in front of them, he kicked the door open, and all saw poor Margaret hanging dead from the beam.  John collapsed to the ground sobbing as they cut Margaret down.  His tears of anguish seemed so real to those guests he’d invited in, that no one suspected anything other than Margaret had taken her own life.

 

For the first few days after Margaret’s death, John was a happy man.  He was free to marry again, maybe in a few months’ time he could propose to his widowed parishioner and then settle down to the life he deserved.  A life with money and property and status.  But then the gnarly issue came up of Margaret’s burial, as a suicide she could not be buried on consecrated ground and so she was instead buried in an unmarked grave in a nearby field.  Her reputation ruined and her soul damned forever, people no longer spoke of her, and her and John’s children were told to forget her.  The guilt of it all began to weigh heavy on John’s mind.  What had he done?  He began to remember the Margaret who he had loved and had loved him.  He remembered her terrified and disbelieving eyes looking up at him as he had killed her.  She had always trusted him, looked after him, believed in him and he had betrayed it all.  He had betrayed her, and he had betrayed his God.  After a few weeks John could take the guilt no more and so he set off to Edinburgh where he called on a judge and made a full confession to him.  John was then taken to the Tolbooth in Edinburgh to await trial.

 

John’s trial was a quick affair where he again made a full confession, was found guilty of the murder of his wife, and was sentenced to death.  On the 4th of October 1570, John was taken to Gallow Lee on the outskirts of old Edinburgh.  There he preached his final sermon where he basically blamed Satan for making him do it, and then he was hanged.  Once dead, his body was cut down and burnt to ash.

 

After John Kello, Spott Church had many more Ministers, though no more who were murderers, murdered or executed.

 

I left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my walk in a gap in a wall outside the church.

 

A photo showing a small ceramic skull (Skulferatu #108) being held up with Spott Parish Church in the background.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Skulferatu #108

 

A photo showing a small ceramic skull (Skulferatu #108) in a gap in a stone wall.  Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Skulferatu #108 in a gap in the wall outside the church

 

A photo showing a closer view of the small ceramic skull (Skulferatu #108) in a gap in a stone wall. Photo by Kevin Nosferatu for the Skulferatu Project.
Skulferatu #108 in a gap in the wall outside the church

 

TomTom Map showing the location of Skulferatu #108
Map showing the location of Skulferatu #108

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –

 

Latitude 55.9722

Longitude -2.524426

 

what3words: masses.flags.settle

 

I used the following sources for information on Spott Parish Church –

 

The Examiner
No.843, Sunday, March 28, 1894

 

Twelve Scots Trials
by William Roughead
1913

 

Spott Church Website