Fodderty

Associated Chapels: Croicht-an-Teampul {location unknown}; Inchrory {NGR NH 512596}.

Parish Church: OS Ref: NGR NH 513594 H.E.S. No: NH55NW 13.00 Dedication: St Moluag

The scant remains of the old church of Fodderty lie within its burial ground. But this is a most ancient site whose history may be traced back to the very earliest days of Christianity in the North and one of Scotland's most famous 'missionaries' - St Moluag.

Moluag, who is thought to have died in AD592, had, during his lefetime, founded many churches throughout the Highlands. His chief foundation was the muinntir of Rosemarkyn (or Rosemarkie as it is today). His name also survives in this parish in the name of a parcel of land - Dochmoluog (dabhach Moluag = "St Moluag's land") {NGR NH 512593} D. Macrae suggests, very sensibly, that the 'modern' dedication of the church at Rosemarkie to St Curadan (Boniface) marked a (later) re-founding, along more orthodox 'Roman' lines, of what had been a muinntir of the Early Church dedicated to St Moluag.¹ But here, at Fodderty, the church fiercely maintained its original and ancient commemoration of the intrepid Moluag.

A "vicar of Fothirdy" appears on record in the 14th-century, but it is not known when a church here was first built.

Assigned, sometime c.1236x1238, as the prebend of the Archdeacon of Ross, along with the garbal teinds of Killearnan, Lumlair and Logie Wester, by Robert I. bishop of Ross, the erection of Fodderty into a prebendal church was confirmed by the Pope in 1255/6, with the exception that the prebend now only comprehended the parsonage (garbal) teinds of Fodderty and Killearnan. A 'vicarage' had been erected by 1274 and it continued un-annexed to the Reformation; the 'parsonage', sometimes known as Blaranynich, remaining with the archdeacons.

¹ Macrae, D. (1923) The Romance of a Royal Burgh: Dingwall's Story of a Thousand Years. Dingwall: "The North Star" Proprietors.

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