Date of Death – Not known

Feast Day – 12th June

I deal first with St Ternan because some accounts of his life associate him with St Ninian in the 5th century, which would make him by far the earliest Christian Apostle on Deeside. Douglas Simpson, our most loved and trusted local historian said in his Rhind Lectures of 1941, “It is no part of my present purpose to embark upon the stormy waters of controversy that rage in that sea where so many goodly barks have foundered, namely the history of the Celtic Church in Scotland”. So it is with hesitation that I set sail on these waters, particularly on the most stormy waters surrounding St Ternan’s dates. If we accept Fenton Wyness’ account, we will believe that the first of the apostles to bring the Gospel to Deeside was St Ternan, and that Ternan was contemporary with St Ninian at Whithorn who founded his monastery at Candida Casa in the 5th century. There is some archaeological evidence that there was a penetration into Scotland of a sub Roman, pre-Columbian Church in the 5th and early 6th centuries, but that this extended no further north than Fife and the Mearns, with most of the evidence coming from south of the Antonine wall A.S.Waugh writing in his PhD Thesis (2003) dates St Ternan to between 600 and 800, with the likelihood of the 7th century being the time of his work in Banchory which is when most of the rest of Pictland came into contact with Christianity.

Whatever his date, Ternan was probably the first Christian evangelist on Deeside, and the founder of the Christian settlement which was to become the focus of the medieval Parish of Banchory Ternan. But although there are dedications to St Ternan in Arbuthnot, Slains, Findon and Belhelvie there is no doubt that the centre of his operations was the area of ground opposite the Island in the River Dee and just below where the River Feugh joins the Dee. Here he built a religious settlement called by the Britonic word a Banchor similar to the religious settlements in Wales and Northern Ireland both still known as Bangor. This one became known as Banchory Ternan, and while the Parish still uses that name, the township dropped the name Ternan, and became just Banchory.

There are three artifacts which have come down to us which are associated with St Ternan. The first and most famous is the hand bell Ronecht – “The Songster” – which hangs on the inner wall of the East Church in Banchory. Ronecht is said to have followed St Ternan on its own account all the way from Rome to Banchory and subsequently become the apostle’s most treasured possession. Within the Monastery at Banchory his relics were venerated until the Reformation, and apart from Ronecht these included his embalmed head, and his Book of the Gospels enclosed in a costly cumdach (book –shrine) of gold and silver. All three relics were lost at the time of the Reformation. However, about the year 1863 when the Deeside railway line was being built between the Monastery site and the river, workmen unearthed a square iron hand bell which may well have been Ronecht. Nothing more was thought of the discovery at the time, and the hand bell vanished. At least, so Fenton Wyness records in 1968. But that is not the end of the story, for a bell now hangs in the Banchory East Church of Scotland.