Chapel of St Mary and St Nathalan

The Chapel of St. Mary and St. Nathalan is a ruined chapel overlooking the North Sea immediately north of Stonehaven, in the Mearns of Scotland, along the northern shoreline of Stonehaven Bay. (Watt, 1985) The founding of this Christian place of worship is associated with St. Nathalan. who lived circa 650 AD. The structure is alternatively known as Cowie Chapel. The chapel is at the point where the Highland Boundary Fault meets the sea and so is on the dividing line between the highlands and lowlands of Scotland.

The chapel was consecrated by Bishop William Wishart of St. Andrews on 22nd May, 1276.

It was important pilgrimage site, with King James VI in a letter of 1510 describing it as being "vistited by multitudes of the faithful." and that it the site of a "number of miracles,^[1]

The chapel was abandoned after the reformation.

The Chapel of St. Mary and St. Nathalan is one of the oldest surviving structures in Kincardineshire. About one kilometre to the west is the ancient Causey Mounth trackway, which was constructed on high ground to make passable this only available medieval route from coastal points south of Stonehaven into Aberdeen. This route specifically connected the River Dee crossing (where the present Bridge of Dee is situated) via Muchalls Castle and Cowie Castle from the south. (Hogan, 2007) The route was that taken by William Keith, 7th Earl Marischal and the Marquess of Montrose when they led a Covenanter army of 9000 men in the battle of the Civil War in 1639.

• Doonie Point
• Limpet Burn
• Red Cloak

• Archibald Watt, Highways and Byways around Kincardineshire, Stonehaven Heritage Society (1985)
• C.Michael Hogan, Causey Mounth, Megalithic Portal, ed. by A. Burnham(2007)
• Letters of James IV, 1505-1513, Scottish History Society, Series 3, Vol. 45 (1953)

56°58′37″N 2°11′31″W / 56.9769°N 2.1920°W / 56.9769; -2.1920