Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
NORTHEAST SCOTLAND
ABERDEEN
St Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral
King St • May to mid-Sept Tues-Fri 11am-4pm, Sat 10.30am-1pm, Sun for worship • Free
he sandstone
St Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral
, where Samuel Seabury, America's first
bishop, was ordained in 1784, offers welcome relief from the uniform granite of central
Aberdeen. Inside, spartan whiteness is broken by florid gold ceiling bosses representing
the (then) 48 states of the USA and 48 local families who remained loyal to the
Episcopal Church during the eighteenth-century Penal Laws.
10
Provost Skene's House
45 Guestrow • Mon-Sat 10am-5pm • Free
Tucked away between Broad Street and Flourmill Lane,
Provost Skene's House
is
Aberdeen's oldest-surviving private house, dating from 1545. he house is now a
museum, with a costume gallery, archeological exhibits, period rooms and a café-bar.
Don't miss the Painted Gallery, where a cycle of beautiful religious tempera paintings
from the mid-seventeenth century shows scenes from the life of Christ.
Marischal College
On Broad Street stands Aberdeen's most imposing edifice, and the world's second-
largest granite building after the Escorial in Madrid - exuberant
Marischal College
,
whose tall, steel-grey pinnacled neo-Gothic facade is in absolute contrast to the
hideously utilitarian concrete o
ce blocks opposite. his spectacular building, with all
its soaring, surging lines, has been painted and sketched more than any other in
Aberdeen, though it's not to everyone's taste - it was once described by a minor art
historian as “a wedding cake covered in indigestible grey icing”. he college was
founded in 1593 by the fourth Earl Marischal, and coexisted as a separate Protestant
university from Catholic King's, just up the road, for over two centuries. It was long
Aberdeen's boast to have as many universities as the whole of England, and it wasn't
until 1860 that the two were united as the University of Aberdeen. In 1893, the central
tower was more than doubled in height by A. Marshall Mackenzie and the profusion of
spirelets added, though the facade, which fronts an earlier quadrangle designed by
Archibald Simpson in 1837-41, was not completed until 1906.
St Nicholas Kirk
Just north of Union Street • May-Sept Mon-Fri noon-4pm; Oct-April contact church office • Free •
T
01224 643494,
W
www.kirk-of-st-nicholas.org.uk
Between Upperkirkgate and Union Street stands
St Nicholas Kirk
. It's actually two churches
in one, with a solid, central bell tower, from where the 48-bell carillon, the largest in
Britain, regularly chimes. here's been a church here since 1157 or thereabouts, but as the
largest kirk in Scotland it was severely damaged during the Reformation and divided into
the West and the East Church, separated today by the transepts and crossing; only the
north transept, known as Collinson's aisle, survives from the twelfth century. he
Renaissance-style
West Church
, formerly the nave of St Nicholas, was designed in the
mid-eighteenth century by James Gibbs, architect of St Martin in the Fields in London.
he
East Church
was rebuilt over the groin-vaulted crypt of the restored fifteenth-century
St Mary's Chapel (entered from Correction Wynd), which in the 1600s was a place to
imprison witches: you can still see the iron rings to which they were chained.
Aberdeen Art Gallery and around
Schoolhill • Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 2-5pm • Free •
W
aagm.co.uk
he first-rate
Aberdeen
Art Gallery
was purpose-built in 1884 to a Neoclassical design
