Gleneagles Chapel is a small and unadorned building, standing near the present mansion-house. The old lairds of Gleneagles are buried within its walls, and the enclosed space about it has been used as a graveyard. The Session Records have an entry showing that the chapel was used as late as March 18, 1705--"Being that the Lady Gleneagles was brought to bed of a child, and the laird was desirous to have his child baptized on the Lord's Day, and was unwilling to bring him out so far as the kirk because of the seasons being yet cold and sometimes stormy. Therefor desired the minr. to preach at his chapel in the afternoon, and to baptize his child, which this day ye minr. did." As far back as 1149[7] there was a church in Gleneagles under the rule of Cambuskenneth Abbey; and, indeed, according to the most likely derivation, Gleneagles is the Gaelic rendering of the monastic "_Vallum Ecclesiae_"--Glen of the Church. The present chapel seems neither of age nor consequence enough to give a title. The first church, if it stood on the same site, must surely have been a larger building. A mile further up the glen, however, there rises a spring of the purest water, once believed to have virtue in curing certain diseases, and still called S. Mungo's Well. The saintly name and the fame of healing point to this spot as the more probable situation of the old church.
Our only glimpse of Blackford at the Reformation shows slight resistance on the part of some to the orders of the new church government. On October 25, 1564, Sir Patrick Fergy--"sir" being equivalent to the modern "reverend"--was cited before the Kirk-Session of S. Andrews[8] as coming in place of the consistorial court, "to underlie diciplyn for takyng upon hand to prech and minister the sacraments withoutyn lawfull admission and for drawyng of the peopll to the Chapell of Tullbarne frae ther Paroche Kyrk." On the same day, "Schyr Johan Morrison efter his recantacion admittit reader in Mithyll, was delaytit and summoned for ministration of baptisme and mariaige efter the Papistical fasson, and that indifferently to all persones, and also for profanacion of the sacrament of the Lordis Supper, abusyng the sam in privat howsis, as also in the kirkyard about the kyrkyard dykis and resavying fra ilk person that communicat ane penne, and in speciall upon Pasche day last was, in the hows of Jhon Graham in Pannalis he ministrat to ane hundreth personis. He oft tymmis called nocht comperand beand of befoir divers tymmis monest to desist tharfra under panis of excommunicacion now wordely mentis the sam to be execut aganis hym and sa decretit to be used."