Archaeology Notes

Event ID 675669

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/675669

NM93SE 1 97099 34911

(NM 97133492) Remains of (NAT)

Priory (NR) (Valliscaulian - founded 1230) (NAT)

OS 1:10000 map (1975)

The Valliscaulian priory of Ardchattan, dedicated to St May and St John the Baptist (D E Easson 1957), was founded in 1230 or 1231, and a church with associated conventional buildings was erected soon after. The church comprised a small choir and crossing, north and south transepts with double transeptal chapels, and a nave having a narrow north aisle. The conventual buildings were disposed round a cloister on the south side of the church, but the west range was represented only by a cloister walk and an outer retaining wall. Of the buildings of this period, there remains today the south transept with its two chapels and some fragments of the nave and crossing.

A major scheme of reconstruction was begun and partially completed during the 15th and early 16th centuries when a new and much larger choir with an adjacent north sacristy was erected, and parts of the crossing, north transept and nave were rebuilt. The south range of the conventual buildings was also re-modelled, a new refectory being con- structed on the site of the original one. All these buildings survive today either in whole or in part.

The priory was secularised towards the end of the 16th century and passed into the hands of the Campbells who converted the south range of the conventual buildings into a private dwelling house, and the choir and transepts of the church were used for parochial worship. The monastic church fell into disuse, except for the purpose of burial, following the erection of a new parish church in 1731-2.

The house was enlarged and re-modelled in about the middle of the 19th century and numerous minor alternations have been carried out since, but the monastic refectory still survives as the nucleus of the present mansion, whose offices and outbuildings now extend over the site of the former nave and cloister. The remaining portions of the choir and transepts of the monastic church passed into the guardianship of DoE in 1954.

Of the many funerary monuments and carved stones to be seen at Ardchattan a stone leaning against the north wall of the Campbell of Lochnell aisle is of especial interest. This is a cross-decorated stone with fine, intricate carvings of early-Christian origin. It was presumably brought to Ardchattan from some nearby early-Christian burial-ground.

RCAHMS 1975, visited 1971