Field Visit
Date July 2006 - March 2009
Event ID 884626
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/884626
The East Range of the Abbey:
The east range of the abbey is preserved because it was converted to a house, presumably for the commendator, in the 16th century. The following will describe first the abbey structures and then the features of the 16th century house.
The sacristy was accessed directly from the N transept by a door in the S wall. The opening was 1.5m in width, with broad chamfered voussoirs of grey sandstone. The springer for a Gothic arch still survives on the E, but the head of the arch had been truncated when the entrance was blocked. The sacristy is lined on the S with stone benches, and a square hole sunk in the bench on the W side of the entrance, may indicate a timber partition that was inserted to divide the sacristy into a library accessed from the cloister and a sacristy from the church. A shallow circular hollow has been cut into the bench on the E of the entrance. It was presumably lit to E and W by window lights and accessed from the cloister by an entrance, none of which have survived. The present entrances to N, E and W are secondary (see commendator’s house below). The walls are of ashlar, as was the barrel vault in its original form. While some of the lower courses of the vault are ashlar, for the most part it had been reworked with thin sandstone wedges, set end-on in the vault.
The chapter house has clearly undergone a major transformation in the late-medieval period on the evidence of the ribs of the vaulting and the decorative work on the capitals of the pillars in the vestibule. The chapter house in its present form comprises a square vestibule and chamber of matching size (8.3m across internally) to the E. The vestibule had two pillars on the line of the E wall of the E range and two narrower ones in the middle, the W wall having been dilapidated. The six bays or spaces are roofed with ribbed quadripartite vaults. In the extension to the E the vaulting was carried on corbels set high on the walls in the corners and midway along the side walls. These springers suggest it was supported in the centre by a central pillar now gone. This arrangement can also be seen at Crossragual and Glenluce Abbeys. In addition the walls of the extension to the E are not truly aligned at right-angles to the main structure and have thinner walls at 1.1m in thickness as opposed to the 1.5m of the N wall that matches that of the sacristy/transept wall. The quality of the external stone work of the N and E walls of the chapter house extension uses the same dressed ashlar sandstone stone as in the N transept and sacristy, and suggests that it was taken from elsewhere to reuse in the walls. The S wall of the extension consists of rough coursed stone with three evenly spaced joist holes 1.9m apart that presumably supported the weight of an external structure such as a lean-to. The lack of any dressed stonework in this wall suggest it was completely rebuilt on a different occasion to the rest of the chapter house, such as the collapse or removal of the vault that occupied the business end of the chapter house. The broken remains of bench seating may be seen along the E and S walls and fragments along the N and S walls of the vestibule, but no sign of any architectural feature to emphasize the Abbot’s status. The chapter house was lit by two large mullioned and transomed windows that fitted within the ambit of the ribs of the vault. Similar mullioned windows are to be seen at Dunfermline Abbey and Dunblane Cathedral. That this was a stone vault is indicated by the raggle of rough stone above the corbel in the NW and SW corners. Its absence in the E wall is due to a re-facing of the wall after the removal of the vault.
The slype or passage lay N of the chapter house. Its walls on the S, N and W were 1.5m thick except on the E where they were 1.2m. This is a clue to the reworking of the N end of the range in the 16th century. The passage originally had openings at either end. That to the W has been robbed of its quoins and blocked off, but the E end has been rebuilt and the architecture of the opening suggests a late-medieval date with the shallow segmented arch taking the weight of the wall and a gothic arch comprising a quirked roll moulding surmounted by a hood decorating the exterior. Broken traces of benches can be seen along either side and at the W end of the S wall at the springing of the vault there are the ends of the steps of the night stair that led up from the cloister to the dormitory. Above this the rises a barrel vault which may be original since it is made with dressed stones, though not all of similar size. The first five steps of the night stair may be seen on the S of the wall, where they have been used as the starting point for the reconstructed stairs up to the first floor from the chapter house. The bottom step is broader than the rest and marks a landing just inside the door, the stop for which is visible in the face of the wall on the slype side the stair. The modern stair turns at right angles to descend to the floor of the chapter house from this landing. Originally the stair must have been built into the thickness of the wall.
Beyond this point there is little of the structure that can be considered original. The walls are thinner than the standard for the monastic structure and are faced with rough coursed rubble (see below for a description of the cellars), which has been covered with a cement wash in modern times.
The 16th century House:
With the destruction of the Abbey in the War of the Rough Wooing in the 1540s and by reformers in 1559, the house may have ceased to have any function as an abbey, although some monks remained in residence. It passed into the hands of a commendator, John Hay, in 1560 and latterly to Henry Kinneir in 1574. With the erection of the barony of Balmerino in respect of Sir James Elphinstone in 1603 the estates of the abbey formally became a lay estate. At some point in this period the ruins were converted into a house. The church seems to have been demolished apart from the N wall, perhaps to be reused as a yard or garden wall, and the N and W ranges, although Campbell reports that a large building used as a stable stood where the modern farmhouse now stands until the 19th century (Campbell 1899, 298). The E range, however, became a core part of the new house. This was conceived it seems as a central block with two wings.
The ground floor or basement became the kitchens and stores for the house with a stair added onto the SE corner of the chapter house, providing access via a newel stair to a hall at first floor level. This hall was heated by a great fire in the middle of the E wall between two mullioned and transomed window openings of which that to the S had a window seat. There appears to have been a press in the NE corner beside the N window in the E wall and two glazed windows were also opened in the N wall, but apparently none in the S wall, although the broken stonework towards the W end of the hall may be due to an opening for a window. The S light in the E wall of the chapter house at ground level was modified with the insertion of a round arched entrance with a filleted roll moulding below a mullioned window of three lights. It is not clear if there was direct access from the hall to the rest of the first floor, although there is an opening on the S of the chimney stack from the kitchen fire that might be where access was gained. However, an engaving of 1797 by Grose show a blocked squared opening in this location beside a blocked round-headed one (Campbell 1899, 285). Cardonnel’s view of 1788 shows that there was an attic floor lit by small windows in the two gables of the roof.
The upper floor of the E range appears to have been used as domestic space. Here, two window openings have been detected, one in the E wall at the join with the N wall of the chapter house and the other in the N wall of the building, and there is a garderobe in the NE corner which is accessed via an opening with a chamfered stop from the main chamber. The window in the N wall must be coeval with the 16th century house since this wall is a shortening of the original east range, but the other may be an original dormitory window that has been respected in the extension of the chapter house. The presence of a row of corbels on the N wall indicate that there was a wall walk along this side, but this may be a pre-Reformation feature since there is no sign that the building has been raised.
The kitchens comprised three separate rooms. The bakery with its oven and dough mixing trough in the former sacrity, the actual kitchen with the great fireplace that was cut through the stone vault of the vestibule and, a partition wall having been inserted between the pillars of the arcade, a basement room in the main part of the chapter house heated by a fireplace in the northerly bay of the same wall. The three broad presses cut in the base of the N wall are an indication of its use as a store. In addition to these rooms a cellar was created that was accessed via steps down from the cloisters to the N of the kitchens. What the slype was used for in this new house can only be guessed since the W door was blocked and it was reduced to being a store as it remains to this day. The other two cellars are accessed via traps at the first floor; the one on the E is lit by a slit window and is very deep at 4.65m. That to the W is entered by steps down from the W and may have been a wine cellar. A small cavity above it could not accessed.
The garderobe block is served by a drain that runs off to the dene to the NE via a stone lined culvert capped with large flat roughly dressed slabs, excavated by John Lewis and Sam Scott (2010). This block has been washed with dark grey cement and its stonework is unclear and no open chute is now evident.
