400 Years Ago

The last four hundred years of our history was about to begin. It was in 1550 that Grey Cohn became the fourth laird of the lands of Glenorchy. When he came into his inheritance the first thing he decided to do was to build a new castle. He selected a site on the braes above charn. One day Cohn was watching the workmen clearing the site, when an old woman who kept her goats there, and knew that her grazing would soon be lost, approached the laird. “This is a poor place for your great house, Sir Cohn. Every wind and storm will blow on it”. “And where would you build it, you old callaich?” Sir Cohn humoured her. “Build it, Sir Cohn, where you hear the first mavis
sing in the springtime”. Although treating the matter lightly at the time, Sir Cohn could not get the old woman’s words out of his mind and, in the end, the new castle, known locally as the House of Bahloch, was built in the sheltered valley beside the River Tay, about a mile east of where the river begins its journey to the sea and where the mavis still sings in the Spring.

Sir Cohn Campbell was a member of the Scottish Parliament which, in 1560, passed the laws establishing the Protestant Faith. In line with these laws Sir Cohn was to place a Presbyterian, Mr. William Ramsay, as minister
in the local church at Inchadney,This pre-Reformation Church lay in a sheltered hollow beside the River Tay on the North side opposite the hamlet of Newhall, about a quarter of a mile downstream from the Castle. It was doubtless of early origin. Although today the situation would seem strange and very isolated from the community, it has to be remembered that it was beside an important droving route. Cattle were taken across the river at the lnchadney ford en-route from Blair Atholl to the trysts at Crieff. To the West of the little oblong church lay the vicarage and to the East the Parish Burial ground. In 1551 the Dean of Lismore who made the
earliest collection of Gaelic Poetry was buried there.
After the new church was built at Kenmore in 1579, the Church at Inchadney continued to be used and the vicarage was occupied as the Parish Manse until 1780. In 1760 the burial ground was closed and, some time after, the headstones were all removed. Early in the nineteenth
century all that remained of the Church and Manse was taken down and the whole site planted with trees. Sad to say that holy place has lost every vestige of its ancient and sacred character, save for the Holy Well some four hundred yards to the North of the Church site; a well which still gives cool, clear water to the traveller who finds it. The stone font in Kenmore Church was found at Inchadney, the one remaining link with the pre-Reformation Church.

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