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history |
Prior to year 1768, the inhabitants of Down, being without their own local place of worship, had to make a 7 mile journey each Sunday to St John's church in Gamrie, which served as their Parish Church. In that year however a building in Schoolhill in Down was fitted out for use as a Chapel-of-Ease. The town of Down was later re-named Macduff in 1783, by the second Earl of Fife when King George III declared Down a Burgh of Barony, and in 1805, due to a need for more commodious accommodation to house the ever expanding congregation, the church of Macduff was built on its present day site. The new church continued to function as a Chapel-of-Ease, under the parish of Gamrie, until 1864, when it was disjoined from Gamrie and erected as a parish, quoad sacra, and in the following year the parish church was enlarged and altered. After the 1929 union of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church, Macduff Parish Church became known as Macduff Doune Church and some years later in 1989 it united with former United Free Church congregation of Macduff Gardner, reverting once more to the title of Macduff Parish. The kirk session sat within the Presbytery of Turriff, until the restructuring of the Presbyteries in 1976, when it became part of the Presbytery of Buchan. |