Canon Galloway's Calvary

Mrs Talpa will be a year older tomorrow and so this morning I headed off to Inverurie, our local market town, in search of a suitable birthday card and offering. I also managed to source a local delicacy for my lunch, a Cullen Skink Pie! Not nearly as lethal as a fried Mars Bar, that other great Scottish contribution to the modern scourge of obesity, but a 100 times more tasty!

I partook of my lunch in the graveyard of the old Kinkell Parish Church, situated on the banks of the River Don. The church is late mediaeval in age and dedicated to St Michael. It became redundant in 1771 and is now a roofless ruin.

On its North wall is this pre-reformation bronze Calvary of 1525. The Virgin Mary stands on one side of the crucified Christ and an angel on the other. It also bears the initials of Alexander Galloway, Canon of Kinkell, not once, but twice on the bronze and once on the stone surround. He was clearly a pious man, modest and prone to hide his name under a bushel!