Muthill Old Church and Tower

In its kirkyard in the centre of Muthill, near Crieff, stands a roofless medieval church with a remarkably complete Romanesque tower. A community of priests was founded here in the later 1100s, probably by the bishops of Dunblane, and the church was important enough that it may have stood in as a substitute cathedral. The tower was built free-standing in the 1100s, its belfry sharing a lozenge pattern with Dunblane Cathedral's tower, and the nave was rebuilt and extended to meet it in the 1400s, with aisles and arcades traditionally credited to Michael Ochiltree, Dean of Dunblane and later its bishop. After the Reformation the church was adapted for Protestant worship, until a new parish church was built in the 1820s and the old one was quarried for stone. The tower's ground floor shelters medieval memorials, including a worn double effigy probably of Sir Maurice Drummond and his wife Ada, though these cannot be seen by visitors. It is a quick, free visit with limited street parking in the village.