We visited several standing stones and symbol stones while we were in Aberdeenshire recently, including the stones at the ruin of Saint Fergus’s Church in Dyce.

As you can see from the photo below it was a sunny day, the stones are just behind the front wall which you can see below.

They’ve built a wee canopy to keep the worst of the weather off them. The church itself dates from the 13th century, but the Pictish symbol stones date from the 800s and they’re in remarkably good condition.

Before the 13th century church there was probably a wooden church on the site which would have had these stones as decoration, there’s also part of a broken font. We weren’t the only people looking at the stones, there was a lovely man who was a retired stonemason and he had worked on the church years before, so he pointed out things of interest to us, incuding the ‘green mannie’ on the corner of the building which you can just see in the photo below, he had actually discovered it when he was repointing the church, you might have to click to enlarge it. I always think of the green man as being a Celtic symbol, but he was also popular in England I believe, supposed to be a good luck symbol.

They certainly chose a beautiful location for the church as just across the road from it is the River Don in the photo below, there are just a few houses in this area, what a great view they wake up to in the morning!