RCAHMS Balmerino Abbey Special Survey Project

A programme of survey and recording was initiated by RCAHMS in 2006 and completed in 2009. This was a response, in part, to a request from Scotia Archaeology Ltd, who had been engaged by RonCal Developments to record the archaeology revealed in the course of the conversion to housing of the farmsteading, which lay to the north of the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Balmerino, and, in part, to a request from the Balmerino History Group to carry out a topographical survey of the abbey remains and its surrounding landscape in the hope of defining the abbey precinct. The immediate task was to place the farmsteading in the context of the wider abbey buildings on a plan at a scale sufficiently large to include the details of openings and the different phases of construction. A plan at a scale of 1:200 was drawn up which included the two parts of the site, based upon a Total Station survey. Using this plan as a base, an interpretation of the main phases of activity was produced which identified: the original structure, the conversion of the east range of the abbey to a commendator’s house, the Improvement Period farmsteading and modern repairs to the ruins. A full photographic survey of the conventual buildings was also carried out and there was a Total Station survey of the remains of the mill site in the river gully to the north-east, at the site of the so-called Monk’s Well (NO32SE 20.03) and the eighteenth century mill dam and lade leading to the Abbey mill by the sea shore (NO32SE 30).