St Mary’s Kirkyard, Banff, Aberdeenshire
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I should start by explaining that kirk is the Scottish word for a church. When I first drove into Banff I was amazed to see an old graveyard sitting in the middle of the town. There was car parking space around it and a small supermarket and tyre and exhaust garage opposite the graveyard. Fortunately St Mary’s church dating from 1471 has survived, at least in part, with one aisle remaining.
St Marys Church, BanffÂ
The aisle houses the tomb of the Ogilvy family with stones dates 1558 and 1580. The window has stone mullions or cross bars in the late Gothic style. However you can’t enter the aisle as a protective grille was erected during renovations in 2003.
The Bairds of Auchmeddan TombÂ
The Bairds of Auchmeddan tomb was built in 1636 as the resting place of George Baird, who is portrayed lying dressed in his armour, with his dog at this feet. The detail is so intricate. The tomb combines medieval and Rennaissance elements.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:48 am
Great to find your picture of the Baird tomb in St Mary’s kirk, Banff. You’re right to comment on the ‘intricate detail’ of the tomb - the middle motif copies an emblem from Claude Paradin’s ‘Devises heroiques’ (1577) and is also found on other Scottish decorative carving (and painting) of this period. I’ve illustrated and discussed these in my book: Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland (NMS Publications, 2003), but I didn’t know about the Banff example when I wrote my book, so thanks for this one. One of my ex-students has also discovered the same emblem - showing grain stalks growing up out of heap of bones (and the motto: Spes altera vitae : ‘Hope of another life’) on a tombstone in Wales: This sepulchral slab, set in the parish church of St Mary & All Saints, Conwy, is that of Dorothy (d.1586), wife of Robert Wynn, who built the house Plas Mawr in Conwy, one of the finest renaissance houses in Wales, which you can now visit.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Thanks for your comment with more information about the Baird tomb. I thought that the kirkyard was really interesting and beautiful although in the middle of a rather incongruous build environment.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
“Spes altera vitae” (also found on an inscription dated 1590 above a doorway on Advocates’ Close, Edinburgh) does not mean “Hope of Another Life,” in spite of the number of times it is so translated on the World Wide Web. “Hope of another life” would be “Spes alterae vitae.”
The word “altera” (other) agrees with “spes” (hope), not with “vitae” (”of/from life.”) So “Spes altera vitae” means either “another hope of life,” or, more likely, “Hope [is] next to / second to life.” As in the phrase “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” So I suppose it could be loosely translated as “where there’s life there’s hope.”