Tour
Innerpeffray, Madderty and Kinkell in Perthshire
Innerpeffray,
Madderty and Kinkell. These areas of the great and wide tract
of mid-Strathearn lie between Gask and Crieff, the first two
on the north side of the Earn, Kinkell on the south.
Although they contain no true villages, they have always had
their own importance in Scotland's story, their names
recurring again and again over the centuries. These are level,
fertile lands, between the Ochils and the Highland hills,
dotted with farms, woodlands and old estates.
Innerpeffray is a strange place to find down at the end
of a mile-long and unmetalled side-road, near the steep
banks of the river, a place packed with history and interest,
yet not even a hamlet. Here, there is a nationally-renowned
ancient library, a pre-Reformation chapel of some distinction,
an early endowed school and a ruined castle. The chapel
was old in 1508, when it rebuilt by the first Lord Drummond,
father of James IV's love, Margaret Drummond, as a Collegiate
foundation, and long used as the burial-place of that great
family, later Earls of Perth. It is a typically long and
low, two apartment building, with stone-slated roof, warm
sandstone dressings and moulded doorways. There is a niche
high on the east gable, and a leper's squint in the north
wall, where the unfortunates could watch the celebration
of Mass without entering the church. Also a stone altar,
part of a painted ceiling and a priest's loft.
Nearby is the handsome whitewashed 18th century building
which houses the famous Innerpeffray Library, the oldest
surviving public library in Scotland, and still open to
the public. There are about three thousand volumes shelved
in a fine, well-lit room on the upper floor, many of great
age and value, one of the most interesting being the great
Marquis of Montrose's personal pocket Bible, in French,
bearing his autograph. The library was founded in 1691 by
David Drummond, 3rd Lord Madderty, Montrose's brother-in-law,
who also endowed the school in an adjoining building. Many
of the books were added, about sixty years later by Robert
Hay Drummond, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had inherited
Innerpeffray and other great estates, and who erected the
present library building.
The castle is not often visited, being not visible from
the rest, on lower ground at a bend of the river to the
east. It is ruinous, but the main features survive, a commodious
L-planned house of the early '7th century, built by James
Drummond, first Lord Madderty, younger brother of the 3rd
Lord Drummond, and whose nephews became Earls of Perth and
of Melfort, and ruled Scotland between them, for James VII
in London. Grazing cattle alone now inherit all this circumstance.
Madderty parish covers nearly five thousand acres in mid-strath,
its comparatively modern church having no village nearer
than the hamlet of St. Davids, a mile away. But this must
have been a highly populous area once, for just to the north-east
is the site of the Abbey of Inchaffray, one of the great
ancient religious houses of Scotland--now, alas, only a
few neglected fangs and fragments of masonry, mostly of
fairly late date, with rubbish dumped around. Yet this was
the most favoured endowment of many Scottish kings, an Augustinian
foundation of great influence and wealth, founded by Gilbert,
3rd Earl of Strathearn in 1200. Its famous Abbot Maurice
was Bruce's great supporter, who celebrated the Mass before
the Scots army at Bannockburn, and carried the Brecbennoch
of Columba throughout the battle. Another Abbot was killed
at Flodden. At the Reformation the huge lands were erected
into a temporal lordship for the infant James Drummond,
aforementioned, who became 1st Lord Madderty. It is shameful
that a people so attached as the Scots to their history
should abandon so many of their ancient monuments to utter
neglect.
Not far to the east is the most attractive small fortified
laird's house of Williamstoun, now a farmhouse and in excellent
condition. It dates from the mid-, 7th century, with stair-tower
and watch-chamber reached by a tiny turnpike in an angle-turret.
It was built for the heir of Oliphant of Gask, who insisted
on marrying the minister of Trinity-Gask's young daughter,
instead of the 45-year-old sister of the Marquis of Douglas,
and so was disinherited of Gask in favour of his younger
brother.
Also in Madderty are two Roman camps, flanking Innerpeffray
on either side of the river; and two of the nine Signal
Stations mentioned under Gask. And there is, not far away,
the oddly-named former railway station of Highlandman, 2
miles south-east of Crieff.
Kinkell is now best known, probably, for its bridge over
the Earn-- for there is not another between Crieff and Dalreoch
on the main A.9, a stretch of nearly a dozen miles. But
it was a place of some importance once--a parish, indeed,
and a notorious one:
Oh,
what a parish, what a terrible parish,
Oh,
what a parish is that of Kinkell;
They
hae hangit the minister, drowned the precentor,
Dang
doon the steeple and drucken the bell!
This alludes to the 17th century Reverend Richard Duncan,
who was convicted of child-murder and executed at Muthill,
4 miles away, much to the anger of his parishioners, and
just before the reprieve they had sought reached Strathearn.
The said parishioners thereupon drowned the precentor in
the Earn--presumably they considered him the guilty party,
though the dead child was found under the minister's fireplace--and
sold the church bell, possibly to pay the expenses of the
reprieve.
The ruined, ancient pre-Reformation chapel of St. Bean is
still there, near the Machany Water's confluence with Earn,
in a cottage garden, with its overgrown graveyard around
it, another typical two-apartment building, with no particular
features. Just across the road is the lumpish and very plain
yellow-washed successor, which was formerly a United Presbyterian
church. The fine bridge itself hump-backed, four-arched
and picturesque, is half a mile to the north-west.
