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Tour
Historic Balmerino Abbey
Balmerino
Abbey, a Cistercian monastery situated on the south bank of the
River Tay in North Fife was founded in 1229 by the widowed queen
of William the Lyon, then destroyed during the Reformation. A
Spanish Chestnut tree here is one of the oldest of its kind in
the country.
Balmerino Abbey, was the landing-place of the Lady Ermengarde
--second wife and widow of William the Lyon, daughter of the Earl
of Beaumont, and great-granddaughter of the Conqueror, mother
of Alexander II, and ancestress of the succeeding sovereigns of
Scotland -- when, out of gratitude for the health and the peace
she had found at 'Balmurynach '--there is a choice of 36 ways
of spelling the name--she resolved to plant here a house of Cistercian
monks, dedicated to the Virgin and to her relative 'the most holy
King Edward,' the Confessor.
This resolve, made sometime at the beginning of the second quarter
of the thirteenth century, was promptly carried into execution,
and on St Lucy's Day, 1229, a company of monks from Melrose, under
Alan, their first Abbot, were able to enter and take possession.
The Abbey was a monument of sacrifice, as well as of gratitude,
for the foundress had first to purchase with a thousand marks
the lands representing nearly the whole of the present parish,
to which the Abernethies of Carpow had succeeded as Lay Abbots
of the Culdee seat of Abernethy. It was built of a red stone from
Nydie, beyond the Eden. In its great days it must have been a
beautiful habitation of peace, with a plan conforming to the Mother
Church of Melrose, in having the cloister on the north side of
the sanctuary and in other details.
Ermengarde and her son Alexander, another great benefactor, visited
here repeatedly. They would ferry over from Dundee, or from Invergowrie,
when coming from the royal palace at Forfar; for the Queen much
affected the haunts, as well as the religious example, of her
grandmother-in-law, the saintly Margaret. In 1234 the body
of the foundress was laid to rest here. But, like other landmarks
of Balmerino, the grave will be looked for in vain. Her stone
coffin, containing her skeleton, was supposed to have been found,
on the spot indicated by the records, by the tenant of the farm
while, in the summer of 1831, he was engaged in 'carting away
hewn stones from the piers and south wall of the church' to build
a house in St Andrews. It was covered by a graveslab, which was
'broken in pieces,' while the bones found within were 'dispersed
as curiosities through the country.'
Mary Queen of Scots was certainly a visitor here in 1565, and
more than likely lived in the Abbot's House as a guest of Sir
John Hay, the first Lay Commendator of the Abbey. Later the lands
were erected into a barony, in favour of Sir James Elphinston
of Barnton, the first Lord Balmerino, who after being sentenced
to death, died quietly of a 'fever' at the Abbey. The more ill-fated
Arthur, the sixth lord, who suffered for his part in the 1745
rebellion, is supposed to have hidden in the ruins, after an earlier
adventure in 1715, and before he escaped to a vessel in the Firth
of Tay which took him to France.
Of the Church itself there remains above ground only portions
of the walls of the nave and north transept. Enough of the Chapter-House
is left to show how endowed it was in ornament and proportions.
What remains of Balmerino Abbey is kept now kept in good order
and condition. Although Daniel Defoe, who visited it in 1727,
saw 'nothing worthy of observation, the very ruins being almost
eaten up by time,' it is well deserving this reverent care, if
only for the ancient trees that are gathered around it. Chieftains
among these are a magnificent old Spanish chestnut and a walnut
of like or superior age. Another reason to visit Balmerino is
the beautiful views of the Firth of Tay, the Carse of Gowrie,
and the Sidlaw range of hills, with glimpses of the more remote
Grampians, including Ben Voirlech on Loch Earn - a distance of
about fifty miles in a straight line.
If
you would like to visit this area as part of a highly personalized
small group tour of my native Scotland please:
e-mail
me today
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