Buckie - Religion

Religion

As a traditional fishing community Buckie has always had an active religious life. However the casual observer would be excused for imagining that Buckie has an absolute obsession with Christianity, so numerous are the town’s churches representing almost every branch of Northern European Christian faith. The largest church is St. Peter's which stands on St. Andrews Square in Buckpool. This twin-spired red sandstone construction was originally planned to act as the cathedral for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Aberdeen when it was opened in 1857. This never came to pass and Buckie was left with what is arguably one of the grandest churches in NE Scotland outside of Aberdeen. The basis of this reasoning was that the Roman Catholic population per capita in the area around Buckie was one of the highest in post-Reformation Scotland. St. Gregory's, built at Preshome near Buckie in 1788, was the first post-Reformation church to be built in Scotland that looked like a church — prior to that date post-Reformation Roman Catholics worshiped in clandestine churches designed to look anonymous. These sometimes resembled farm buildings or ordinary houses, a superbly preserved example of this is St. Ninian's (1775) at Tynet about 4 miles to the west of Buckie which looks like a long, low barn. The largest Church of Scotland congregation in the town worships in the North Church in Cluny Square. This building houses the town clock and was opened in 1879. There are other Church of Scotland congregations in addition to Methodist, Salvation Army, Episcopal, Baptist, Plymouth Brethren and other congregational churches.