Archaeology Notes

Event ID 717072

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/717072

NT36NW 14 33349 66021

(NT 3335 6602) Newbattle Abbey (NAT) and site of Abbey (NR)

OS 6" map (1968)

The Cistercian Abbey of Newbattle was founded in 1140; its church was dedicated (to St Mary) in 1233/4, and it was secularised in 1587. Its remains are very scanty, only a portion of the vaulted substructures of the E range of conventual buildings standing above ground. These are incorporated in the mansion of Newbattle Abbey, a seat of the Marquis of Lothian, which occupies the position shown by the dotted line on the plan by MacGibbon and Ross (1889).

Extensive excavations conducted 1878-1895 by the late proprietor enabled the plan published by the RCAHMS to be drawn. When the excavations were filled in, the outline of the buildings was defined externally on the turf by gravel, and within the mansion by inlay of the parquetry floors. Such work as remains is of early 14th c and 15th - 16th c date.

The abbey was burned by the English in 1385, 1544 and 1548. The conversion of the buildings was begun in 1580, the mansion being extended in the 17th century and altered to castellated style in the 18th century. Further alterations and extensions to the mansion are of 19th century date.

RCAHMS 1929, visited 1920; D E Easson 1957; SDD List 1964

Newbattle Abbey is as described.

Visited by OS (JFC) 13 September 1954 and (BS) 30 October 1975

NT 3310 6587 to NT 3373 6666 Archaeological works along the line of a sewer pipeline discovered significant archaeological remains.

A medieval/post-medieval cemetery associated with Newbattle Abbey was found in Newbattle Abbey College Annexe, near Dalkeith. Excavation involved the removal of 125 inhumations lying along the course of the proposed pipeline. Evidence of early industrial activity pre-dating at least part of the cemetery was also uncovered. Nine stone-capped graves, probably of relatively late date, were discovered to the W of the abbey church. These graves were recorded but not excavated as changes to the route of the pipeline meant they would no longer be disturbed. To the NE of the abbey, the remains of a stone-built structure have been provisionally identified as belonging to an infirmary attached to the abbey.

Sponsor: M J Gleeson Group plc.

J Gooder 2001

NT 331 658 A watching brief was undertaken in September 2003 while contractors cut a cable trench through the gatehouse and road to the W of the abbey. No road surface was detected below the present tarmac road. The layers in the trenches all appeared to be levelling horizons of ash, coal cinders and imported soils. It is possible that the entrance and road have been extensively modified in order to take heavy traffic concerned with the old military store located within the grounds.

Archive to be deposited in the NMRS.

Sponsor: HS

G Ewart 2003

NT 3333 6597 (centre) To the E of the house and beyond the hedge surrounding the garden, at c NT 3348 6604 in a clump of bushes, is a small traceried gothic window. It is not clear whether this is attached to walling or has been repositioned.

According to staff in the Abbey House, at some time in the past, a tractor crossing the lawn to the W sank into the ground at around NT 3330 6592, revealing a vaulted chamber. The space was filled in and levelled.

According to Michael Donnelly, river erosion of the N bank of the South Esk, SW of the Abbey House, near NT 3320 6597, revealed fragments of tile. Some were glazed while others were plain. Unfortunately, these had been removed before they could be recorded in 1994.

C A-Kelly 2004

NT 333660, NT 336665 A conservation plan for Newbattle Abbey and its designed landscape was commissioned by Newbattle Abbey College as part of an assessment of further development on the site. Work was undertaken between February 2005 and June 2006. The mansion house at Newbattle Abbey is an exceptionally complicated building, incorporating as it does the remains of a 12th-century Cistercian Abbey, with major post-Reformation remodelling by each successive Earl or Marquis of Lothian, members of the Kerr family. The designed landscape was developed from the 12th century onwards, and contains a number of important structures, including the medieval Maiden Bridge.

A more thorough documentary analysis in the Lothian papers and elsewhere than has hitherto been undertaken allowed the compilation of detailed phase plans of the plan of the building. We identified 12 major building phases for the main house, and several phases in the development of the designed landscape. A notable historical find detailed a specification of 1650 for a substantial classical gatehouse that seems to have been similar to the centrepiece of Rosehall House, Lanarkshire (published in William Adam's Vitruvius Scoticus). Another significant find was the attribution of the late 17th-century archway to the ice-house to the architect James Smith. It is possible that this feature formed an original entrance to the main house, perhaps part of a major building scheme of the 1690s, and closely related to similar designs by Smith at Drumlanrig. The importance of the mid 18th-century ruined orangery was highlighted as one of only three of its date in the country. A small arch on the lawn made up of medieval masonry fragments was assessed as being part of 18th-century romanticising of the landscape.

Conservation plan to be deposited in NMRS.

Sponsor: Halcrow Group Ltd.

C McFarlane, J Sanders, T Addyman and J Austin, 2006.