The Market Cross Woodhead

    Rebuilt  1846

Renovation of the Church Steeple at Woodhead.

Work commenced during the summer 2005. A major task for the steeple jacks.

All Saints Episcopal Church - Woodhead Fyvie.

Extracts from a leaflet written by  Canon Mac Gillvary

An Episcopal church has existed at Woodhead since the revolution of 1688.

In 1726 bishop Gadderer of Aberdeen ordained a young man called William Badiechel to the diaconate in the meeting house at Woodhead. This meeting house[the first church] existed until the Battle of Culloden in 1746 during the Price Charlie uprising. At the time, Alexander Gordon, Laird of Gight, ordered the congregation to leave in case he should be accused of harbouriing Jacobites on his land. The church was dismantled.

The faithful congregation travelled three miles to Macterry and there, they pitched their tents. A wooden chapel or meeting house was erected and a substantial house was built for the encumbent. The wooden erection has long since disappeared, but the house remains and is still occupied. It is known as "Mansefield". The congregation worshipped at Macterry for forty years and when the penal laws were repealed in 1796 they returned to Woodhead and re-erected their church [the second church]. It was a very simple church, its erection paid entirely by two members of the congregation, James Hay, Bridgend, Laird of Monkshill, factor to the Earl of Aberdeen and Gordon of Fyvie, and by James Wilson of Fetterletter, the grandfather of the incumbent David Wilson, afterwards so widely known as Dean Wilson.

The congregation continued to increase and in 1849, with stones from a local quarry the building of a more substantial church began, [the third and present day church].The foundation stone was laid in April 1849 and in December the church was completed and consecrated by Bishop Skinner. The graceful spire, which is a landmark for many miles in Central Aberdeenshire was erected in 1870 by James Mathews.

All Saints is described as an early English box church with a south porch, a simple tower with a two-light clock face and a powerful broach spire. The organ was built by David Hamilton of Edinburgh and installed in August 1850. 

The font is made of Peterhead granite and was a gift of the Hon.A. Gordon. Mr Wilson of Fetterletter gifted the tiles. The carved stones which are built into the outside walls are said to have come from the Priory of St. Mary at Fyvie. There is a stone cross above the porch and three crosses in the east wall.

A quiver of arrows, carved in red sandstone is recessed on the north tower wall, above the vestry window.

Woodhead boasted two schools, the Free Church School and All Saints Episcopal School. In 1881 a new school was built in Woodhead which absorbed the Free Church School. the Episcopal School remained open until 1905.

Kathleen Noble Remembers
 The Farm Steading at Woodhead.

I was born at Woodhead farm house in December 1918 and spent the first 18 years of my life there. It was a lovely life and from an early age I was interested in every aspect and prospect of things around me, from nature, to the circle of the farming year, from seed time to harvest.

The design and lay out of the farm steading was very well done. The neep shed, with its big doors, so that a cart could be reversed in and the neeps tipped out.The neeps [turnips] were pulled from the frosty ground using a click in one hand and a tapner in the other. The neep shed led to the byre through a vertical sliding door. The byre was divided into stalls by trevises, made of lovely pine wood. Each stall was suitable for two beasts standing or lying side by side. The beasts were tied by the neck with chain binnin's or sells. The stall had a heck [hay rack] in front, and under it, a troch [trough] for bruised oats or barley and neeps. The water supply, was piped from a spring in Alec Robertson's park to the neep shed and carried by pail to the beasts.

The diamond patterned central aisle in the byre, known as the greep, had drains which led to the midden. After the cattle had been fed, watered and bedded, the byre was swept and then the greep was sweeled with a bucket of water. Vetilation was through vents, high in the walls and the byre was a lovely cosy place to be for man and beast in winter.

The barn was through another raised door, from the byre and was in two sections. The bottom half held the straw 'beddin' and the 'caff hoose' and the upper barn had the threshing mill and space for a cart. The horse reversed in the cart load of corn sheaves through the big double barn doors.

 From the top barn, the loft stairs led to the corn loft and winnister. This fanning machine blew out the chaff, short bits of straw and weed seeds and graded the grain seed. A trap door in the floor, opened above the cart shed so that grain could be lowered directly into a horse cart, and hay forked up to the hay loft, which was next to the grain loft. From the grain loft a chute led down to the stable, and the hay was pulled out for the horses. There was a bruised corn bunker in the stable and two double stalls for the horses. The horse troch was outside the stable, the water pumped by hand. A double cart shed with open arches was next to the stable under the loft.

The pigs and hen houses were opposite the stable. Behind the barn was the engine house. The engine drove the threshing mill in the barn, the winnister in the loft and also the circular saw behind the barn.

The old farm house had become a washing house and oatcakes were baked on the girdle at the open fire. There was a chaumer for the men who worked on the farm. They had fine chaff filled matresses on their beds.

We had also a very productive garden with rhubarb, gooseberry bushes and an apple tree - every vegetable you could want and a beehive for our honey.

We gathered rasps, brambles and hazelnuts from "The Braes" a wooded area which sloped down from the farm to the river Ythan.

Wild flowers were everywhere, Anemones, Primroses, Marsh marigolds, Violets and Star of Bethlehem - a Paradise. Happy Days.

Kathleen Noble [nee Philip]