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Site of a church and remains of its graveyard. According to the antiquarians Jervise and Warden and the ONB, the site is of the church of the former parish of Dunlappie, which was united with Stracathro in 1618, when presumably the church went out of use. First recorded about 1280, the church stood near the centre of its graveyard, in which the last burial took place in 1824, although the monuments had been removed long before that date. The remains were surveyed by the RCAHMS in 1989. The church, which lies towards the north side of the burial-ground, has been reduced to little more than a rectangular mound with a shallow depression along its crest. Overall the mound measures 15.5m from east-west by 7.5m transversely and is up to 0.5m high. The burial-ground is D-shaped on plan, its chord formed by the steep west bank of the West Water, and the arc by an earthen bank up to 3.8m in thickness and from 0.5-1m in high. On the south, the bank stops short of the river, but here there are also traces of an external ditch, and this continues across the gap. The interior of the burial-ground measures 53m from northwest-southeast by up to 26m transversely and is heavily overgrown with long grass and scattered conifers. There are no traces of gravestones, antiquarian evidence citing their removal to the early 19th century. In 1999 an archaeological evaluation was undertaken prior to the planned Dunlappie Bridge replacement scheme. The evaluation located and recorded the dimensions of a burial ground enclosure bank and established the position of human remains in relation to this feature. The burial ground enclosure bank was found to be of earth and rubble construction with boulders at its core. Human remains were located 6m from the crest of the bank and possibly mark the southern limit of the burial ground within the enclosure. A further excavation was undertaken, in 2000, in the south end of the graveyard of old Dunlappie Parish Church, prior to renovations on Dalhousie Bridge immediately to the east-southeast. The site was excavated to the subsoil, providing sections through the boundary bank and ditch. Three burials in poor condition were identified to the north of the site and represent the most southerly burials in the graveyard.
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NO56NE0015 - DUNLAPPIE