St Mary's Kirk, Auchindoir

St Mary's Kirk stands among old trees above the Water of Bogie between Rhynie and Lumsden, a medieval parish church founded around 1200 and used for some 600 years until a new church was built nearby in 1810. Historic Scotland calls it a rare survival, as few churches of its period remain so complete, with so many medieval features kept through the change to Presbyterian worship. It is a simple rectangle, once divided into nave and chancel by a wooden screen, with a fine south doorway carved with dog-tooth moulding and foliage capitals, a priest's door, a holy water stoop and a piscina. In the north wall is a sacrament house of the early 1500s, carved to look like a great monstrance and paid for by Alexander Spittal of King's College, Aberdeen; it survived the Reformation, perhaps hidden. Reviewers warn not to confuse it with the later roofless church passed on the way, and say roadside parking is tight.