Morning Services11am – 12noon
Sunday morning Services are usually fairly standard Presbyterian style.
Children are always welcome but local children go out to their classes after the second hymn. For visiting children who stay ‘Happy Bags’ are available containing colouring sheets, crayons and a bible story book – just ask the elders on the door.
For special occasions such as Thinking Day, Harvest, Prizegiving etc. the service is less formal and more child friendly.
Hymns are from the 4th. edition of the Church hymnary. The choir sings an Introit and Anthem every week and during their winter break in February the Handbell ringing group often takes part.
On the last Sunday of the month tea and coffee is served after the service and we always like the chance to meet visitors there.
Dowally, at 2pm. is a small congregation, friendly and traditional Presbyterian style
Evening Services
6.30pm
During the summer there are occasional ‘Songs & Silence’ services. These are reflective in nature, using Taize music and other similar styles. They last 45 minutes. Details will be published on the homepage.
Celebration of the Sacrament of Communion
Communion is celebrated 4 times a year. At the 11am. service individual glasses are used serving non-fermented wine.
There is also an evening communion at 6.30pm on the same day where the common cup is used with fermented wine. At this service we sit in a circle round the table and serve each other.
Sacrament of Baptism
The Church of Scotland practices infant baptism as well as baptism of adults where a person has not been baptized in infancy.
Anyone in the parish interested in enquiring about baptism for themselves or their children should contact the minister.
Dunkeld Cathedral
Building work starts on the exterior of the eastern part of the Cathedral in the mid 13th. Century and was finished in the time of Bishop William Sinclair (1309-1337). The last part of the building constructed was the tower, started by Bishop Lauder (1452-75) and finished by Bishop Livingston (1475-83)
The lower part of the tower was used as a court house and its walls have paintings of the judgement of Solomon and the woman taken in adultery – still faintly visible high up on the walls.
Now, the choir end of the cathedral is used as a parish church as it has been since the Reformation. Regularly, visitors comment on the sense of peace and prayer in the grounds and within the walls of the Cathedral and worshipping here gives a real sense of belonging to a long heritage of faith and being part of centuries of prayer which local Christians still carry on in this place.
Little Dunkeld
Little Dunkeld Kirk gets its name from the area in which it is situated and not from the size of the building. (It can actually seat more people than the Cathedral.)
The building is a typical Presbyterian design with a large pulpit on the long wall and three sided gallery so it was designed very much as a preaching station.
It has gone through several alterations in its lifetime, the most recent being a few years ago when some pews were removed to open up the area around the pulpit and to the sides giving it a much more user friendly appearance and allowing for multi purpose use at other times in the week.
St. Anne's Dowally
There are indications that Dowally may well have been a site of pre-Christian worship. Later the Culdees had a chapel or mission station nearby at Kilmorich, probably an outstation of Dunkeld.
In the late 14th century The Bishop of Dunkeld, Bishop Brown, built and endowed a church, in honour of St Anne. Little is known of this building but by 1755 the church had become ruinous and was then repaired and reseated. In 1797 it was described as “a long, narrow, inelegant structure and very incommodiously seated”.
In 1818 the present church was erected, probably to the design of John Stewart, almost on the site of the bishop’s earlier building and incorporating a number of stones from it, including one on the South wall which bears his coat of arms. It seated 222 people and had a gallery of which no trace remains. There have been many alterations since then. The most recent, in 1985, was the rebuilding of the porch which had become unsafe. There is evidence that the belfry and the bell come from a church standing before 1797.
The interior is very simple and plain. The carved screens in the chancel once formed the screens round the Duke of Atholl’s pew in Dunkeld Cathedral. They were removed at the time of the restoration of the Cathedral in 1909 and installed at Dowally. The organ also came from the Cathedral at the same time. The two North windows have been blocked up and the position of the door in the South East corner has been moved at some time.