Skulferatu #144 - Tongland Abbey, Tongland, Dumfries and Galloway

 

On a sunny morning during a stay in Kirkcudbright I decided to pay a visit to Tongland.  Yes, Tongland is a real place.  Sounds made up I know, but it does exist.  It is a small village just outside Kirkcudbright with a few houses, a derelict church, a rather stunning looking Modernist style hydro power station (unfortunately hidden under scaffolding and sheeting during my visit to the area), and the remains of an ancient abbey that I fancied taking a look at. 

 

On leaving the Airbnb I was staying in, I walked along to the harbour and then took the path along by the River Dee.  Passing a small industrial estate area where in one of the units they make all that lovely fake food you see on the tables of various popular period dramas; I reached a more rural area of reeds and muddy banks.  Then making my way up and into fields of cows, past the remains of an old railway embankment and back to a path by the river, I ended up across from the power station.  Here the path I was walking on became narrower and more overgrown.  Wondering if I’d taken a wrong turning somewhere I decided to carry on regardless and thankfully soon came out on a proper, well-trodden path again that led me to a bridge over the river.  A little bit further with a stint along the main road and I was walking down a small residential street and into the grounds of the old and now derelict Tongland Parish Church.  Here in the graveyard, not far from the church, stand the last remains of the old abbey.

 

Abbey ruins in Tongland Graveyard

 

Abbey ruins in Tongland Graveyard

 

Abbey ruins in Tongland Graveyard

 

Abbey ruins in Tongland Graveyard

 

Tongland Abbey was founded in around 1218 by Alan, Lord of Galloway.  He, at this time, was one of the most powerful men in the whole of the British Isles who owned huge tracts of land in Scotland, England and Ireland.  A relative, friend and confidant of King John of England, he was one of the King’s advisers in 1215 negotiating the terms of the Magna Carta.

 

For over three hundred years the abbey was home to the Canons of the Premonstratensian Order who were also known as the much easier to pronounce ‘White Canons’ due to the colour of their habit.  The Premonstratensian Order were founded in 1120 by Norbert of Xanten, later Saint Norbert, at Premontre in France - hence the name.  Once an impressive set of buildings with the tallest spire in Galloway, all that remains of the abbey now are a wall and arched doorway that were incorporated into a later church.  This church, also a ruin, is now no more than some walls and a belfry. 

 

The Belfry

 

Doorway of the old abbey

 

The history of Tongland Abbey is a relatively peaceful one, though in 1235 during an uprising in Galloway against King Alexander II, royal troops killed both the Prior and Sacristan of the abbey.  Then in 1455 King James II used the abbey as his base while his troops carried out a siege on the nearby stronghold of the Douglas family, Threave Castle.  Other than that, the Canons carried on doing the things that Canons do.

 

There was however one rather colourful character who briefly occupied the role as Abbot at Tongland, this being John Damien.  He was an Italian, or maybe French alchemist, though malicious rumours were spread by his enemies that he was actually a ‘Mohammedan’ from Turkey who had murdered an Italian monk and stolen his habit.  On being discovered he had fled to France where still in monks garb, he passed himself off as a man of medicine.  There, he fleeced his patients out of exorbitant amounts of money and killed so many with his pills and potions that he had again to flee and ended up in Scotland.  Probably none of this is true, but he certainly did experiment with alchemy in an attempt to make gold from base metals.  He also tried to find potions that would make old men young, ill men well and one that would kill lice, a huge and itchy problem back then. 

 

Damien became a favourite of King James IV and would often be invited to play cards and backgammon with him.  He regularly took part in shooting matches with the King, using the primitive firearms of the day.   The King liked to wager large amounts of money on these matches, and he usually lost to Damien.  This however did not dampen the King’s affection for him and in 1504 he appointed Damien the Abbot of Tongland.  Whether Damien ever visited the abbey or just claimed a big fat wage from it, we don’t know.  It did appear though that he didn’t have a great deal of interest in carrying out his role and spent most of his time either carrying our various experiments in alchemy or enjoying himself at the King’s court.

 

In 1508, much to the amusement of his enemies…and his friends, Damien decided to experiment in flying.  He had a large pair of wings made with feathers sown into them and had these attached to his arms.  Then, in the first recorded attempt at flight in Scotland, he jumped off the walls at Stirling Castle.  Yup, you guessed it, he didn’t fly.  He went down, down, down and then SPLAT he landed in a dung heap.  He survived the fall but was out of action for a while with a broken thigh bone.  On recovering, Damien carried on much as he had before, but then after the Battle of Flodden in 1513 his name disappears from the records.  It is assumed that he died in the battle along with his friend and benefactor King James.

 

The history of the abbey during the 16^th century appears to have been one of decline with the buildings being recorded as in a poor condition in 1529 when they came under the care of the Bishop of Galloway.  By the time of the Scottish Reformation the religious community at the abbey had gone, and in 1587 the buildings and land around became the property of the Crown.  The abbey is recorded as still standing in 1684 but shortly after this appears to have been dismantled with the stone being used to build a nearby bridge and other buildings.

 

Tongland Parish Church

 

The graveyard in which the remains of the abbey stand is dominated by the derelict building of Tongland Parish Church.  This church was built in 1813 and then abandoned in the 1930s.  Since then, it has slowly fallen to bits and is now a roofless shell.  There was some talk of it being restored and used as an exhibition space, but this has never come to anything.

 

Tongland Parish Church

 

Wandering around the graveyard I came across the slightly creepy Neilson Mausoleum from which three white marble faces stare out.  This is the burial place of James Beaumont Neilson, the inventor of the hot-blast process for smelting iron, his wife Barbara Montgomerie and their son Walter Montgomerie Neilson, an engineer who founded the largest firm of locomotive and marine engine manufacturers in Europe.  All three at one time lived in and owned a nearby estate.  Peering in through the barred gate of the mausoleum I felt that the ivy creeping around Barbara’s face and obscuring her almost seemed to symbolise how the history of her life is lost in that of the two ‘great men’ she sits between.

 

Looking over graveyard to Neilson Mausoleum

 

The Neilson Mausoleum

 

Bust of Barbara Montgomerie

 

After a stroll through the graveyard, I made my way back to the abbey remains and there I left a Skulferatu balancing precariously in a gap in the wall.  I hope it doesn’t fall.

 

Skulferatu #144

 

Skulferatu #144 in a gap in the abbey wall

 

Map showing location of Skulferatu #144

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 54.86302

Longitude -4.030535

 

what3words: homework.eradicate.tour

 

I used the following sources for information on Tongland Abbey -

 

Sidelights on the History, Industries and Social Life of Scotland

Louis Barbe

1919

 

Alan Lord of Galloway the ‘Magna Carta’ and Tongland Abbey

Tongland and Ringford Community Council

 

Canmore – Neilson Mausoleum, Tongland Abbey

 

Skulferatu #143 - Wreck of the Wellspring, River Dee, Kirkcudbright

There is always something sad about seeing the rotting carcass of a boat sitting on the shore or at a rivers edge.  A boat has personality and character with its own temperament and idiosyncrasies, and carries its history around the world along with the histories of the people who travel with it and work on it.  Then, when it is abandoned, all is lost.  With the rising and falling tides, the woodworm and the decay, the character and personality of the boat disappear into a pile of disintegrating timbers and rusting metal.  Like a corpse, all that is left are the skeletal remains.

 

While on a few days holiday in Kirkcudbright, every time I went out walking along the banks of the River Dee I passed the remains of this boat, the Wellspring.  Sitting in amongst the reeds with its stern raised up at a slight angle it always looked as if it was trying to sail up the bank and away from where it had been grounded. 

 

The muddy banks of the River Dee

 

The wreck of the Wellspring

 

The wreck of the Wellspring

 

The Wellspring in the reeds

 

So, one day on my way back from a walk I decided to ignore the biting flies and the squelching, muddy ground and have a wander around the wreck.  In the evening sunlight the blue of the paintwork seemed to shine, though up close it was nothing more than flaking shards on crumbling wood.  Wood so rotten that I could almost push a finger through it.  The deck of the boat had completely disappeared in places leaving the rusting metal of the engine below exposed.  Green shoots of riverside plants grew through the hull while crusted ropes, solid with age, hung down like some weird concrete ornaments and vanished into the mud below.  Quiet and still, the boat sat amongst the rustling reeds and just up from the burble of the river.  

 

The Wellspring in the reeds

 

The raised bow of the Wellspring

 

Jutting up from the reeds

 

Peeling paint and crumbling wood

 

The rotting deck of the Wellspring

 

Crusted ropes

 

Rust and rot

 

A hundred rusty nails in rotting wood

 

The Wellspring was built in 1950 for Ernest Wood by J. N. Millar & Sons of St Monans in Fife.  Originally named the Wilsheernie KY140, the boat was a fishing trawler constructed of wood.  She was 52 feet long and had an 88hp engine built by Bergius Co Ltd, Glasgow.  The boat then went through several owners and was renamed Wellspring FR406 at some point before being purchased by David Paterson of Campbeltown when she became the Wellspring CN207.

 

Before becoming a pile of rotting wood and rusting metal the boat was for years out in all weathers and in seas rough and calm.  A working boat, it provided men with livelihoods and trawled the seas to feed a growing population.  Some of us, of a certain age in Britain and parts of Europe, may well have eaten fish netted by it.  Why the boat is now abandoned on the riverbank I don’t know.  I imagine it will be the usual scenario of it being bought for some sort of business project, then the money ran out, so it was dumped.  Whatever the reasons for its abandonment, it appears to have been there since the 1990s, a local landmark that is just slowly disintegrating away.

 

Pushing my way through the reeds I made my way to the bow of the boat.  There, between rotting wood and rusting metal, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my walk.

 

Skulferatu #143

 

Skulferatu #143 wedged into the bow of the boat

 

Skulferatu #143 wedged into the bow of the boat

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #143

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 54.843076

Longitude -4.045815

what3words: additives.lobbed.websites

 

I used the following sources for information on the Wellspring -

 

Scottish Fisheries Museum - Wellspring CN207

(Link includes a photograph from 1983 of the Wellspring when it was in use as a trawler.)

 

Caledonian Maritime Research Trust - Wilsheernie

 

 

 

 

 

  

Skulferatu #135 - Dalgarnock Covenant Graveyard, Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway

 

Down some narrow country lanes we drove.  Down some narrow country lanes that had never been designed for cars.  Bumpy and humpy, with few passing places, though thankfully we never met any oncoming traffic or even saw any other vehicles at all.  Through a farmstead and then some lanes that were almost dirt tracks we drove, stopping every so often to open gates and close gates while wondering if we were heading the right way.  Was Google maps playing tricks with us?  And then we saw it.  A small, walled tree lined graveyard surrounded by fields on three sides, and then some woodland on the other. This was Dalgarnock Covenant Graveyard, which had been recommended to me when I’d asked about atmospheric and historic graveyards near to where we were staying in Dumfries.

 

On leaving the car I made my way into the blinding afternoon sunlight and through the heavy iron gates into the graveyard.  Above me the tall trees swayed in the warm breeze.  Trees so old and tall that the branches of one had come crashing down in a recent storm to smash some of the ancient gravestones beneath it.

 

One of the first stones I came across was, however, not that ancient.  It was the Martyrs Cross which was erected in 1925 and is a memorial to fifty-seven Covenanters who died in the 17^th Century, all killed for their beliefs.  Covenanters were followers of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland who rejected the idea of the King being the spiritual head of the church.  As far as they were concerned only Jesus Christ could be the head of their church. The name Covenanter comes from the fact that in 1638 many of those who opposed interference in their church by the King signed a document to this effect called the National Covenant.  The Stuart kings, Charles I and later, after the Restoration, Charles II, were not happy about their roles and their ‘divine rights’ being called into question and saw the Covenanters as rebels.  This led to many hundreds of the Covenanters being imprisoned, transported, or executed.  Platoons of Dragoons scoured the land looking for these rebels and when they found any, they often summarily executed them.

 

The Martyrs Cross

 

Not far from the Martyrs Cross, there is a much older stone from just over three hundred years ago that is dedicated to James Harkness. 

 

Gravestone of James Harkness

 

The inscription reads -

 

Here lyes the body of James

Harkness in Locherben who

died 6th Dec 1723 aged 72 years

Belo this stone his dust doth ly

who in dured 28 years

porsecution by tiranny

Did him persue with eko & cry

through many a lonsome place

at last by Clavers he was tane

Sentenced for to dy

But God who for his soul took care

did him from prison bring

Because no other cause they had

But that he could not give up

With Christ his Glorious king,

and swear alligence to that beast

the duke of york, i mean.

In spite of all there hellish rage

a naturel death he died

in full asurance of his rest

with Christ eternally

 

James Harkness was a local farmer who became a hero to the Covenanters, while being seen as a notorious rebel by the ruling powers.  At the start of the persecution of the Covenanters he, and his brother Thomas, fled to Ireland to seek refuge there.  However, they soon tired of living a life in hiding and decided they would rather return home and fight for their cause.  The brothers were soon involved in various escapades, the most notorious of these being the rescue of nine prisoners during the 'Enterkin Raid'.  They received information that a group of Covenanters who had been taken prisoner, were being escorted from Dumfries to Edinburgh by twenty-eight soldiers.  On their journey they would pass through the narrow Path of Enterkin, and it was decided that the brothers would lead an ambush there to free the prisoners.  In the attack they managed to free nine of the prisoners and killed one soldier while wounding many others.  This attack led to a huge number of troops then descending on the area and forcing many of the locals to help them in their search for those responsible.   Lots of people were seized and imprisoned, including James and many of those who had been involved.  They were all taken to Edinburgh, tried and found guilty, and while awaiting execution locked up in the Canongate jail.  Not relishing the prospect of being hanged, the prisoners hatched a plot for an escape.  Not a complicated plot, they just decided to saw through the bars of the window, jump out and run away.   One night they started, and on sawing through the first bar it fell out onto the street.  They thought the game was up as surely either the patrolling night watchmen would have heard it fall or would find it.  Luckily, the clang of it hitting the cobbles below did not bring the watchmen, and as fate would have it, a passerby who was sympathetic to the plight of those in the jail, saw it, picked it up and took it away.  The other two bars were then quickly cut through, before the floorboards to the cell above were also cut to let comrades in there out.  Altogether twenty five men managed to jump out of the window and escape into the night, including James Harkness.  He managed to make it back to Ireland, where he stayed until the persecution of the Covenanters was over.  He then returned home and died there years later as an old man.

 

Thomas, unfortunately, was not so lucky.  He was captured with two friends shortly after James had escaped.  He and his friends were taken to Edinburgh where, on their arrival, a brief trial was heard.  They were found guilty, sentenced to death and an hour later were taken out and hanged.

 

Gravestones at Dalgarnock

 

The Old Font from Dalgarnock Church

 

Skull and crossbones

 

A fallen gravestone

 

Detail from fallen gravestone

 

Gravestone at Dalgarnock

 

Gravestone at Dalgarnock

 

View of Dalgarnock Covenant Graveyard

 

Skull and crossbones

 

View of Dalgarnock Covenant Graveyard

 

Though the graveyard now sits on its own, this was not always the case.  There was once a church and also the large and busy village of Dalgarnock here, but that is now all gone.  Why the village died I have no idea, but by the late 18^th Century no trace of it remained with the stones of the church and houses having all been reclaimed to build walls, dykes and buildings elsewhere.

 

While walking around the graveyard I came across a rusting, ornate iron fence separating some of the gravestones from the others.  In a gap in a crumbling iron petal, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on my trip to Dalgarnock.

 

Rusting, ornate iron fence

 

Skulferatu #135

 

Skulferatu #135 on a crumbling iron petal

 

Skulferatu #135 on a crumbling iron petal

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #135

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 55.224032

Longitude -3.768752

 

what3words: seatbelt.twisty.benched

 

I used the following sources for information on Dalgarnock Covenant Graveyard –

 

Inscriptions on the Tombstones and Monuments Erected in Memory of the Covenanters

James Gibson

1879

 

The Martyr Graves of Scotland

J. H. Thomson

1903

Skulferatu #134 - Derelict Farm Buildings, Scaur Water, Penpont, Dumfries and Galloway

 

On a sunny evening, I took a stroll around the outskirts of the village of Penpont.  A rural and sleepy, little place in Dumfries and Galloway.  Walking down a dirt track through the trees I could hear and see nothing of the modern world, and it made me think that the world must have looked much like this a couple of hundred years ago in the days of the fictional character Samuel Scrape.  He was a man from Penpont who played a brief role in, what in my opinion is, one of the greatest Scottish novels ever written – The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg.  The book, published in 1824, is satire on the Calvinist doctrine of predestination: in which it is believed that God sits outside of time and therefore has already preordained who is saved and who is damned.  The main character, Robert Wringhim is a staunch Calvinist who believes that he is one of those guaranteed Salvation.  He falls under the influence of a mysterious figure called Gil-Martin who can transform his appearance at will.  Gil-Martin leads Wringhim to believe that he is justified in killing those that he thinks are already damned by God, including his own brother.  At one point Wringhim has locked himself away, with his only company being his manservant, Samuel Scrape, a peasant from ‘Penpunt’.  However, Wringhim has no memory of having hired or paid Scrape and the suggestion is either that he was hired by Gil-Martin taking on the appearance of Wringhim, or that Wringhim is losing his mind. It all ends messily, and we are left wondering who Gil-Martin was, the devil, or maybe an aspect of Wringhim himself, a devilish figure of his own imagination.

 

I kept an eye out for a Gil-Martin type character on my walk, but met no-one.  Once, in the distance, I did spot a solitary dog walker, though they vanished down another path before I could get close enough to see if they had cloven hoofs and horns. 

 

A horned bush

 

As I walked, all was quiet around me, apart from the crunching of my feet on the gravel path, the bubbling of the Scaur Water flowing nearby and the birds singing up above.  Following the path around a tree lined corner I came across some derelict farm buildings that were collapsing in on themselves.  DANGER – KEEP OUT was painted in dripping white paint numerous times on the sagging walls, but being a curious type I had to go for a little nose around. 

 

Derelict buildings

 

Falling down

 

The empty eye of decay

 

Danger

 

Keep out - Danger

 

On peering through broken windows, I could see that the buildings were pretty much kaput.  The roofs were caving in, and the walls were tumbling down.  Electrical wiring hung down listlessly from broken beams and everything smelt of damp and decay.  Everything was in a creaking collapse, just waiting for a strong wind to take it all down.

 

A dragon, or maybe a pig?

 

A wire dangles

 

Collapsed

 

In the undergrowth

 

Walking around the back of the buildings my ears were assaulted by a sudden frenzy of squawking and cawing from what sounded like hundreds of rooks in the trees above me.  I then spotted several of their young fledglings bopping around in a panic at my approach.   Not quite having mastered the art of flight, they jumped in a flapping wing fall around the high grass by the trees.  As I got nearer the rooks above became louder and louder while the young dashed for cover.  One of the young ones stuck his head into a gap between some logs, as if like an ostrich, it was closing its eyes to approaching danger. I walked quietly away and let it be.

 

I have a vague memory of walking past these buildings several years back, and I think they may have been workshops or something like that, but I could be wrong.  I don’t imagine for a minute though that they’ll still be standing next time I pass by this way.  Man, or nature will have taken then down by then.

 

Before leaving I placed a Skulferatu in a knothole in the wood of the owl like building where it could keep an eye out on the young rooks dancing through the grass and the undergrowth.

 

Skulferatu #134

 

Skulferatu #134 in a knothole

 

Skulferatu #134 in a knothole

 

Map showing the location of Skulferatu #134

 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -

 

Latitude 55.22821

Longitude -3.82229

 

what3words: robots.unloaded.slug