Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017456
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017456
Although a mere fragment of its former grandeur, the architecture of Dundrennan Abbey is the most accomplished piece of medieval workmanship in the province. The first two of its three main building phases are almost a text-book demonstration of the transition from round-arched Romanesque to pointed Early Gothic styles. How building work of this quality was organised and funded in the heart of semi-independent Galloway in the middle and later decades of the 12th century are questions to which we can only dimly perceive the answers. Its foundation in about 1142 as a daughter-house of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire must have been to the mutual political advantage of King David I, Fergus, Lord of Galloway,and the Cistercians themselves.
A letter of 1165 refers to Dundrennan 'as the abbey which the brethren of Rievaulx built', no doubt perpetuating the skills developed in the completion of the church at Rievaulx itself The later 12th century work, however, shows closer stylistic affmities with other Yorkshire Cistercian monasteries, and these operations were presumably afforded by the wealth of its own estate. It probably enjoyed a generous landed endowment (including lands in Ireland) from the native lords of Galloway, the last of whom, Alan (d. 1234), was buried here, but our knowledge of the abbey's history is negligible. We can only infer that the creation of two further major dependencies (nos 71, 72) shows that Galloway was to the Cistercians' liking.
The last stages of the monastery's existence are better charted: in 1529 the abbey buildings were reputedly in a state of collapse, and at the Reformation in 1560 the convent comprised at least twelve monks. The ownership of the abbey and its estate was fully secularised in 1606 when it was formed into a lordship for John Murray, later 1st Earl of Annandale.
Like many monastic ruins, Dundrennan demands an effort of imaginative reconstruction. The gateway through which the visitor enters the abbey precincts used to be the central doorway at the west end of an 8-bay aisled nave, now reduced mainly to its foundations. Those portions that survive practically to full height are the north and south transept and adjacent portions of the unaisled chancel. These tell us that the first church was two-storeyed, incorporating a range of clerestorey (upper level) windows. The crossing, the eastern walls of the transepts, and the chapels behind them, were then remodelled in the last quarter of the 12th century. Giant three-bay arcades gave access to the chapels which were redesigned with rib-vaulted ceilings; above the arcades a triforium (middle) stage was introduced, the refmed and spacious effect being a step further away from original ascetic ideals. Primary and secondary work alike was wrought in ashlar masonry of local extraction.
Of the claustral buildings only parts of the east and west ranges are now clearly visible. Their chief glory is the late 13th century arcaded frontage of the chapter house which has a cusped doorway and flanking two light windows. It possessed a grand aisled and vaulted interior, sub-divided into twelve vaulted compartments. The west range, like that at Glenluce (no. 72) originally provided all the accommodation and services required by the community of lay brothers, but at a late stage was rebuilt to form a series of vaulted cellars. Parts of the cloister arcade are among the architectural fragments housed in the vaults.
Early and mainly abbatial grave-slabs, including those with matrices for brasses, have been set into the renewed floor of the chapter house. Two other monuments found in the chapter house, one an effigy of an abbot and the other (dated 1480) commemorating a cellarer, have been mounted in a recess, formerly a doorway, at the north-west end of the nave. A tomb recess at the north end of the north transept contains a mutilated effigy of a knight, possibly of 13th century date and said to represent Alan of Galloway.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Dumfries and Galloway’, (1986).
