Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
Field Visit
Date 14 June 1991
Event ID 1148586
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1148586
NT 0739 0551 NT00NE 11
On Chapel farm (NT00NE 84) there are recorded a fragment of a tower, a traceried window of 13th-century date, and a number of earthworks.
All that can be identified of the tower, which has been of at least two storeys, is a fragment of its ENE wall which has been incorporated into the WSW end of a 19th-century cottage. The surviving fragment measures 6.4m in length from NNW to SSE by 2.3m in thickness at the base, which is battered externally on its ENE side. Central to the wall and on the WSW, there is tall arch-pointed door- or window-opening which is probably of composite construction and has latterly been infilled. This is dressed with ashlar and wrought with a chamfered arris which is 100mm broad on the arris of the arch and 50mm on the jambs. The corresponding arch-pointed head of the opening is also apparent in the attic. A lintelled mural passage extends from the SSE side of the arch-pointed opening. It has been partly built up and the interior is choked with rubble, but the passage may be the remains of a mural stair. At the NW angle of the wall there is a mural recess, perhaps the remains of an aumbry.
About 10m to the WSW of the wall-fragment of the tower, and set on a plinth which is probably of 19th-century date, there are the remains of a three-light traceried window with solid spandrels and a weathered sill on its ENE side. A robber trench on the WSW would indicate the former presence of a small enclosure (measuring 6.6m by 3.8m overall) abutting this side of the wall. Since the window has almost certainly been re-constituted in its present position, it is uncertain where the building from which it came originally stood.
To the NW of the upstanding fragment of the tower and bounded by 19th-century field-walls, there are a number of scarps, low banks and shallow gullies; their date and purpose are uncertain.
The remains are said to be those of a chapel, dedicated to St Cuthbert, which is said to have been founded by the Knights Templar; this association is unproven. Keddie, however, adds that 'there are remains of extensive buildings close by to which the chapel was attached'. The traceried window and upstanding wall-fragment are probably derived from an ecclesiastical building, possibly a church or chapel, but the exact character of the tower remains uncertain.
Visited by RCAHMS (IMS), 14 June 1991.
(W Keddie 1855).
Listed as tower, chapel and hospital (possible).
RCAHMS 1997.
