Kirktown of Auchterless

A hamlet with a church in the Aberdeenshire parish of Auchterless, the Kirktown of Auchterless lies in the North eastern foothills of the Grampians, 5 miles (8 km) south of Turriff. Situated close to the River Ythan, the settlement lies in a valley here known as the Howe of Auchterless, a name remembered in a traditional 17th-century ballad that claimed there was “many a bonnie lass in the Howe of Auchterless’. Today the most eye-catching feature is a Gothic red sandstone church built in 1877-79, with a spire added in 1896. This building replaced the earlier St Drostan’s Church whose ruins to the South West retain a bird cage bellcote with a bell dated 1644. There are marble tablets dedicated to the Duff family in the old Kirk and in the new churchyard stands the Duff of Hatton mausoleum built in 1877. The farm of Chapel of Seggat to the north-east is associated with a former chapel adjacent to the Well of Our Lady and with Peter Garden who allegedly outlived ten monarchs, dying in 1775 at the grand old age of 131. At the nearby farm of Hillhead of Seggat James Leslie Mitchell was born in 1901. Better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, he lived here for the first seven years of his life and used the name Seggat in the first volume of ‘A Scots Quair’, published in 1932. Chief amongst the many prehistoric antiquities in the surrounding parish of Auchterless are the quartzite kerb cairns at Logie Newton which date from the second millennium BC.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell) 1901 – 1935

Journalist turned author, best known for his trilogy "Sunset Song", "Cloud Howe" and "Grey Granite". Born on the farm of Hillhead of Seggat near Kirktown of Auchterless (Aberdeenshire), before moving with his family to Arbuthnott. He left to work as a journalist in Aberdeen, Glasgow then London, before settling in Welwyn Garden City (Hertfordshire).
His writing was rooted in the local area of his birth, known as The Mearns, in what had been the old county of Kincardineshire. His communist sympathies ensured his books criticised the land-owners and the clergy. His writing made him most unpopular in the Mearns across the social spectrum, where even the working people regarded their exposure in his books with embarrassment. Even his mother regarded him with suspicion, constantly deprecating his success and encouraging him to "get a proper job".
Gibbon had an acute sense of social perception and was also remarkably prolific, writing 17 books in just seven years under both his pseudonym and his own name. He worked himself to death, already signed up to his publishers to write a further million words when he died. He is buried in Arbuthnott churchyard. There is now a Lewis Grassic Gibbon Centre in Arbuthnott.