Visit 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.
( Map of this area )

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.

A Woman of Dreams

The clash of steel, the thunder of hoofs, the cries of the dying on the bloodied field. These strident sounds, it would seem, were the very tune of life in those far-off days. From north and south and west great rivals thrust into battle, and all the fair land of Scotland was the prize inflaming their ambitions. The good, rich earth was torn with the paths of war and rebellion, the careful harvests smoked in ruin to the sky, the homes of lord and vassal were laid waste.

Only a miracle, one would say, could preserve any fine and noble thing amid such clouds of hatred and war. Only a miracle. But the miracle was there, it was there in the fact that while those armoured contestants fought out past quarrels in present angers, there were others who bravely moved through the embittered scene holding close their faith and hope and dreams of a finer life.

Such a one must have been that Queen-Mother of Scotland, Ermengarde, widow of William the Lion, who came down to a spot on the banks of the Tay, to this spot where we stand now, more than 700 years ago and looked out upon a landscape of gentle shore and wide river and hills beyond, as we do, and there, deciding that the place was gracious indeed, dreamed a dream that came true. "How beautiful it is," she said, and knew that there it was she would build the religious house she planned.

So it was that in 1225, while her son King Alexander II was facing the invader of his Kingdom, we find her buying for 1,000 merks from one Adam de Stawel the lands and patronage of the parish of Balmerino. Strange indeed to think of those negotiations. The messages, the letters, the preparation of deeds and the passing of money. All the simple domestic matters that went their course on Tay banks in those warring days.

Coming of the Monks

Almost immediately the building of the abbey began. Almost immediately the dream of Queen Ermengarde began to grow into the reality of groined arch and cloister and granary, and then on a morning in 1229 from the great abbey of Melrose, the "Lamp of the Border" where the barons of Yorkshire had sworn fealty to Scottish King Alexander, there set out on their northward journey to the banks of the Tay a little band of white-robed monks, at their head Alan, first superior of the Cistercian abbey of Balmerino.

They found it indeed a lovely spot, this Balmerino that Ermengarde had chosen for them. There was the broad Tay for their fishing and its sleek banks for their orchards and grain. Alexander gave generous gifts to further his mother's plan, and the abbey grew graciously. It must have already been a beautiful abbey when, seven years after she had purchased the lands, Ermengarde died. She found her last resting-place in the spot she had loved: she was buried under the high altar of the abbey of Balmerino.

That Ermengarde had chosen well is shown by the advice King James V's physicians gave to his first consort, Magdalene. "Go to Balmerino," they said to her when she sought a temporary residence during ill health, "go to Balmerino, for that has the best airs of any place in the kingdom."

The abbey nourished for more than 300 years. Then on Christmas night in 1547 the now mellowed building suffered the ravages of war. The English Protector Somerset had invaded Scotland, and an English Admiral landed 300 men on Tay banks to attack Balmerino. The monks rallied to its defence, seized arms and brought out horse-men to beat back the invaders, but the attackers overwhelmed them and set fire to the abbey and the neighbouring villages. Some restoration was done later, but in 1559 the Reformers marching down from Lindores delivered the final blow to the abbey.

Queen Mary's Tree

Still remaining are some of the pillars and the groined roof of Balmerino's cloisters and the walls of the chapter house. Where was the monks' orchard a mighty Spanish chestnut tree, believed to have been planted by the monks and to be about 700 years old, which makes it one of the oldest of its kind in the country, spreads its ancient boughs over the lawns. A walnut tree planted in the grounds of Balmerino Abbey by Mary, Queen of Scots, on a visit there, provided the wood which lines the Secretary of State's room at Edinburgh's St Andrew's House. The Prior's Well, from which the monks of Ermengarde's monastery must have drunk 700 years ago, still runs, and in fact provides the water for the manse of Balmerino church.

After the Reformation the abbey became a temporal lordship, but a strangely unlucky one. Both the first and second Lords Balmerino were sentenced to death, and the sixth and last was beheaded as a Jacobite in 1746.

Not far from the abbey is handsome Naughton House, which stands on the site of Naughton Castle, vestiges of which are still discernible on the rock. Naughton, a stronghold of the Hays, was built by Robert de Lundin, natural son of William the Lion, and tradition has it that in this castle on the rock a lamp burned in the keep to serve as a guiding light for shipping in the Firth. The Hays came back to Naughton early in the 17th century, when another branch of the family purchased it, and among the church silver is a Communion cup dated 1669 bearing the arms of Hay and the initials of George Hay and his wife, Mary Ruthven.

Close to the abbey is a block of houses recently built by Mr Henry J. Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, Hereditary Standard-bearer of Scotland, in memory of his brother killed at Anzio. Each house has a plaque on which is inscribed the last message Lt.-Col. David Scrymgeour-Wedderburn sent to his men before the battle. The houses stand in a beautifully formal square surrounding a lawn and facing the Tay. With their white walls and blue doors, their simple architecture and central pediment and pillars, they represent an enlightened and imaginative attempt to give to modern rural buildings some of the form and dignity loved by those who built on these banks so many centuries ago. One thinks that the Queen-Mother Ermengarde, were she to see this building, would not be displeased with the thought of families living happily and well housed on the land she loved.

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