St Machar's Cathedral

Listen for a moment. The traffic of Aberdeen has faded behind you. Here, on the northern edge of the city, the loudest sounds are rooks in the old trees and footsteps on the cobbles. Ahead of you rises a wall of grey granite, dense and cool. Twin towers stand above a plain west front, topped by pointed spires. If the sun is out, look closely at the stone. Tiny flecks of mica catch the light, and the whole building seems to glitter softly.

This is St Machar's Cathedral, the oldest working place of worship in this part of Aberdeen. It stands in Old Aberdeen, which was once a separate burgh with its own life, its own church and its own university. Today the area feels like a quiet village inside a modern city. Low stone houses line the streets nearby. Students cross the lanes on their way to King's College. Behind the cathedral, the ground slopes down towards the River Don.

That river is part of the oldest story told about this place. According to a popular legend, Saint Machar was a companion of Saint Columba, the Irish monk who carried Christianity to Scotland in the sixth century. Columba is said to have told Machar to travel east and build a church where a river curved like a bishop's crozier, the shepherd's staff that bishops carry. Locals say the Don makes exactly that shape just below this hill. It is folklore, not documented history, but it is a fine story.

The documented history begins later. In the twelfth century, the seat of the local bishop moved to this spot, and Old Aberdeen became the centre of a large medieval diocese. The first churches here were replaced over time. Most of what you see today was built in the fifteenth century, with important additions in the sixteenth. Builders here worked with granite, one of the hardest stones in Britain. It is very difficult to carve, so the decoration on the outside stays simple and strong.

Now look again at the west front. Many visitors say it looks less like a church and more like a castle. The two towers are solid and heavy, with small openings and battlement-like tops. This was a practical choice in an unsettled age. Medieval Scotland saw raids, feuds and wars, and a bishop's church needed to feel secure. The spires above the towers are a different stone, sandstone, and they were added later in the sixteenth century under Bishop Gavin Dunbar.

Here is something many people miss. The building you are looking at is only part of the original cathedral. In the medieval church, a large central tower stood further east, where the nave met the transepts, the two arms that give a cathedral its cross shape. In the seventeenth century, during the turmoil of the Cromwellian period, soldiers took stone from the site for their own building work. The structure was weakened. In 1688, the central tower collapsed, and it brought down much of the eastern part of the church.

Walk around the outside and you can still see the result. The ruined transepts stand open to the sky at the east end of the nave. Their broken walls and empty arches carry the marks of that collapse. Grass grows where the floor once was. The nave, the long main hall of the church, survived. That is why today's cathedral feels long and narrow, almost like the trunk of a tree without its branches. The ruins and the living church stand side by side.

A second surprise is in the name itself. People call it a cathedral, but in strict terms it has not been one for centuries. A cathedral is the seat of a bishop. After the Scottish Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Church of Scotland came to be run by elected councils of ministers and elders, not by bishops. Today St Machar's is a Church of Scotland parish church. The old title has simply stayed with it, and nobody in Aberdeen calls it anything else.

Step inside, and your eyes will soon move upward. Above the nave is the building's great treasure, a flat wooden ceiling covered in painted heraldic shields. It dates from the sixteenth century, from the time of Bishop Dunbar. Each shield shows the coat of arms of a powerful figure in Europe or Scotland. You will find the arms of the Pope, the Scottish king, other European rulers, Scottish bishops and noble families. The ceiling is like a painted map of power, as one Scottish bishop saw it.

The arrangement of the shields was not random. They are set out in rows, and their order expresses a view of how the world should be ordered. The church and the Scottish crown hold places of honour. It was made shortly before the Reformation changed Scotland completely. In that sense, the ceiling records a world that was about to disappear. Take your time with it. A pair of binoculars or the zoom on your phone camera will show colours and details that are hard to see from the floor.

This church is also closely linked to learning. Bishop William Elphinstone, who led the diocese in the late fifteenth century, founded King's College just a short walk south of here. That college became the University of Aberdeen. The bishop and the scholars shared the same streets, and the cathedral and the college grew up together. If you walk down the High Street of Old Aberdeen, you will reach the crown-shaped tower of King's College Chapel. The two buildings belong to the same chapter of the city's story.

There is one more tale people tell here, and it is firmly a legend. William Wallace, the Scottish leader executed by the English in 1305, was cut into pieces after his death, and parts of his body were sent to different towns. One local story claims that a part of Wallace was buried within the walls of this cathedral. There is no firm evidence for it. Still, the story shows how strongly people in the north-east wanted to connect this building with the long fight for Scottish independence.

Before you leave, spend a few minutes in the churchyard. Old gravestones lean at gentle angles, and their carved names are softened by lichen and weather. From the eastern edge, paths lead down into Seaton Park and towards the River Don, the river of the legend. Turn back once more and look at the twin spires against the sky. The granite is the same stone you will see across Aberdeen. Here, though, it has held its shape for more than five centuries.