Tour
The Ancient Pictish Capital Of Abernethy
The
name Abernethy is an extremely potent name in Scottish history.
Here was an ancient Pictish capital, and then an ecclesiastical
metropolis of the Celtic Church of the Culdees, before St
Andrews, conveniently near to Scone, the one-time Royal
centre of government only 8 miles away across the River
Tay, as the crow flies. Indeed even before that, Abernethy
was important, with a Pictish and also Roman fort, port
and baths, at Garpow just to the north.
Now little more than a village, Abernethy stands at the
foot of its own steeply-climbing Ochils glen, right on the
Fife border, looking out across the level carse to the junction
of Earn and Tay rivers, just where the latter begins to
widen to an estuary, 6 miles south-east of Perth. It is
perhaps now most famous for its Celtic Round Tower, one
of the only two remaining in Scotland, the second being
at Brechin. These are tall, slender, tapering columns, free-standing
and not part of church buildings, although sited in later
kirkyards. The Abernethy Tower dates probably from the 9th
or 10th century, with 11th century alterations. It is 72
feet high and only 8 feet in interior diameter, with
walls 3 1/2 feet thick. There were six stages of timber
flooring, and door and windows are in the Irish style. The
modern clock is somewhat incongruous. These towers served
the Celtic clergy as steeples, watch-towers against Viking
invaders and others, and refuges. There are still 76 of
them standing in Ireland.
With its Tower, Church and Churchyard, new Museum, winding
Glen walks, Mercat Cross and Traditional Houses, Abernethy
village has much to show the visitor, in addition to its
resounding history--although scarcely resounding perhaps
was the sorry day when the great King Malcolm Canmore did
homage to William the Conqueror, in 1072, at Abernethy,
as evidently the only way to get the Norman and his invading
army to go home. It was Malcolm's English Queen Margaret,
later sanctified by grateful Rome, who instituted the pro-Romish
movement in Scotland which was to oust the Celtic Church
not only from Abernethy but from all the land.
Abernethy
was made a burgh of barony in 1476, under the famous Archibald
Bell-the-Cat Douglas, Earl of Angus; and his present-day
descendant, the Duke of Hamilton, bears the style of Lord
Abernethy amongst his many subsidiary titles. The Douglases
had inherited Abernethy by marriage with the heiress of
the MacDuff line of Hereditary Abbots of Abernethy, who
became secularised as the de Abernethy family. To them,
as the second main stem of the great MacDuff house, had
passed the right of crowning the Scots monarchs, after the
end of the senior stem, Earls of Fife--hence the Duke of
Hamilton's presenting to the present Queen her Scottish
crown at St. Giles Cathedral in 1953, at that significant
ceremony.
About two miles east of the village, and actually over the
Fife border above Newburgh, are the remains of MacDuff's
Cross, where once all man-slayers to within the 9th degree
of consanguinity with the Earls of Fife or Lords Abernethy,
could claim sanctuary and gain remission of penalty other
than the payment of a fixed indemnity to the victim's family--a
most useful inheritance in otherwise lawless days.
To the other side of the village, high on a shoulder of
Castle Law hill to the south-west, is the site of a famous
Scots hill-fort, massively built of dry-stone walling with
binding timber beaming, a type of construction noted by
Julius Caesar. These forts were roughly contemporary with
the Roman Invasions. It was in 80 AD that the celebrated
Agricola "opened up new nations, for the territory of tribes
as far as the estuary named Tanous (Tay) was ravaged", according
to the Consul's son-in-law Tacitus. The Carpow Roman fort's
site, unlike the Pictish one, is on low ground near the
Tay. Nearby is Carpow House, and the scanty remains of old
Capow. Here was the ancient seat of the Lords of Abernethy.
Abernethy is ideally located for easy trips to the St Andrews,
Dunfermline, Culross, Perth, Edinburgh, Falkland Palace,
and all of historic Fife and Perthshire.
If you would like to visit this area as part of a highly
personalized small group tour of my native Scotland please:
