The earliest human settlement discovered around Auchterhouse dates from 3500 to 1000 BC, in the form of stone and bronze tools used by the first farmers to clear woodland.

Wheat and barley were grown, and cattle and sheep kept, while a decorated sandstone spindle whorl found at Bonnyton, north of the village, and now kept at the McManus Galleries in Dundee, indicates that wool was spun into thread.

A possible henge in Dronley Wood has been revealed by aerial photography, and a stone circle at Templelands was destroyed during railway construction in the 19th century.

[2] A stone cairn on West Mains Hill, excavated in 1897, was found to conceal a double burial cist, typical of the period around 2000 BC.

The cist contained burnt bones and a bronze dagger blade with ox-horn hilt, which are now in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Long cists, slab-lined graves in which fully extended bodies were placed, are commonly associated with the period between 1000 BC and 500 AD, and have been recorded at Auchterhouse Park, Leoch and Templeton.

[12][13] The farmhouse at Pitpointie, dated 1883, was built on the site of an earlier steading for George Willsher, a Dundee wine and spirit dealer.

[14] Originally built in 1707, the water-powered corn mill at Dronley was rebuilt during this period, and stone quarries were developed at Leoch and Parkside, but perhaps the greatest change to the village came with the opening of the Dundee and Newtyle Railway, one of Scotland's first passenger lines, in 1831.

Plans were drawn up for the creation of a 30-bed hospital, and a site at Auchterhouse Park was gifted by David Ogilvy, the Earl of Airlie.

Construction started in 1901, and Dundee Sanatorium was formally opened by his widow Mabell Ogilvy, Countess of Airlie[17] on 26 September 1902, at a cost of £20,764.

That this disease is no longer regarded by the medical profession as either hereditary or as incurable - hence the establishment of these sanatoria all over the kingdom - is a circumstance that is calculated to bring an element of hope to those sufferers, and be a source of satisfaction to their relatives and friends.

The Institution so auspiciously opened today enters upon its course of usefulness and will shelter and bring healing to very many of our afflicted sisters and brothers.

By 1907 the sanatorium was making a yearly loss of between £500 and £700, and the annual report complained that although the institution was endowed to help the working classes of Dundee, it was not possible to do this due to the need to accept paying patients to contribute to the costs.

The lower lying southern parts consist of glacial till which, when drained, produces good crops of oats, barley, potatoes and turnips, and is suitable for dairy farming.

Coal and lime were carried from Dundee, while in the other direction, fruit was transported and stone from local quarries provided building material for the rapidly expanding city.

By the following year, just nine children were not attending, and the school board instructed an officer to call and warn their parents that proceedings would be taken if their absences continued.

[23] At the age of 11, pupils transfer to Monifieth High School, located at Monifieth,12.7 miles (20.4 km) south east of Auchterhouse.

Two Norman fonts dating from the original 13th-century church remain, and a stone marked "Ave Maria" is incorporated into the east gable of the present building.

[4][25][26] Underneath the present church is an old burial vault containing remains of the Buchan, Lyon and Ogilvy families, but there are no memorial tablets.

Despite the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland forbidding the practice in 1643, burials continued to take place under the rush-strewn dirt floor.

[4] John Glas, the founder of the Glasite sect in the First Great Awakening, a Christian revitalisation movement that swept Protestant Europe in the 18th century, preached at Auchterhouse in 1721.

[4][27][28] A strongbox containing the poor money, destined to relieve poverty in the parish, was broken into and stolen in 1789, and two men were detained but later acquitted.