Lincluden is an area of Dumfries. Basically, it’s a large council housing estate (or scheme, as they are known in Scotland). It’s not the most deprived council estate I’ve known (and I knew the Knowle West and Hartcliffe estates in Bristol very well) but it’s got its
share, as they say. The Lincluden Youth Team having been working very hard on local PR, however, spray-painting “LYT” on every fixed object they can including, somewhat delightfully, a parked police vehicle once. Which they also smashed up a bit.
All that aside, I was working there today, and took the opportunity to go and see something you don’t usually expect to find on the very edge of a council estate.
This.
Which is Lincluden Collegiate Church.
The story of Lincluden Collegiate Church begins in about 1160. It was originally a priory for “Black”, or Benedictine nuns, founded by Uchtred, the second son of Fergus, Lord of Galloway.
But towards the close of the 14th century, Archibald, 3rd Earl of Douglas and Lord of Galloway, (better known as Archibald the Grim) expelled the nuns, for “insolence” and other irregularities, and converted the establishment into a collegiate church, with a provost and 12 canons - later, a provost, 8 canons, 24 bedesmen, and a chaplain. He was granted permission by the Pope to do all this, and the college took over the buildings of the priory, which comprised a priory church with a range of domestic buildings to its north.
Extensive building works to make Lincluden a much grander establishment were under way through most of the 1400s. Part of the renovation was to accommodate the spectacular tomb of Princess Margaret in a rebuilt choir after her death in 1450. She had been the daughter of King Robert III of Scotland and was the widow of the 4th Earl of Douglas (another Archibald).
And this would be a good point to interpose the excellent Hugh McMillan's poem, The Stone Princess. Hugh is one of Scotland's finest poets, and blogs at http://drumsleet.blogspot.com/
The Stone Princess
In a landscape of mud
past sentry posts of gutted fridge
sandstone rises dead
like a city from the sea.
Water from lintels
and shattered frets of window
pools in her tomb.
Once an intricate miracle of carving,
she’s smooth as a fish, her head a grape
but there are still priests
to chalk ghosts on stone,
teats and eyes.
They sit and drink,
touch her belly for luck,
fuck here.
Like her, they’ve lost all
their Anglo-Norman angles on life.
It's thought that a lot of the finer rebuilding of Lincluden in the early 1400s was done by Paris-born John Morow, who produced similar work at Melrose Abbey and Paisley Abbey.
The Reformation of 1560 inevitably brought change to Lincluden Collegiate Church, as it did to all religious communities across Scotland. Lincluden was attacked and badly damaged by Protestant reformers. Repairs were quickly completed by William Douglas, the younger brother of the last Provost of the college, for the considerable sum of £3,000. This proved a sound investment when he was then granted the college and associated "mansion" (probably the rebuilt north range) by his brother.
After passing through various hands the buildings of Lincluden Collegiate Church were abandoned by 1700, and then used as a quarry until 1882 when the laird stepped in to consolidate and tidy up the ruins. The church was later passed into State care and is now looked after by Historic Scotland. And entry is completely free.
The rest of the pictures are annotated with extracts from the History of the Burgh of Dumfries, by William McDowell (2nd edition, 1873).
"Of the tracery of the windows, enough only remains to show how rich, beautiful, and varied it had been. The patterns, with a tendency to the French Flamboyant character, are strictly geometrical. "
"The provosts of Lincluden were in general men of considerable eminence; and several held high offices of state. Among them were John Cameron (d. 1446), who became secretary, lord-privy-seal, and chancellor of the kingdom, archbishop of Glasgow, and one of the delegates of the Scottish Church to the council of Basel; John Winchester (d. 1458), afterwards bishop of Moray; John Methven, secretary of state and an ambassador of the court; James Lindsay, keeper of the privy seal, and an ambassador to England; Andrew Stewart (d. 1501), dean of faculty of the University of Glasgow, and afterwards bishop of Moray; George Hepburn, lord-treasurer of Scotland; William Stewart (d. 1545), lord-treasurer of Scotland, and afterwards bishop of Aberdeen; and Robert Douglas, the eighteenth and last provost, a bastard son of Sir James Douglas of Drumlanrig, who was appointed in 1547, and was allowed to enjoy the benefice for 40 years after the Reformation."
"So late as Yule tide 1586, Lord Maxwell had mass sung openly in the church on three days running. Robert Douglas's grand-nephew, William Douglas, the heir of Drumlanrig, obtained a reversion of the provostry, and, after Robert's death, enjoyed its property and revenues during his own life. Succeeding to the family estates of Drumlanrig, and created afterwards Viscount Drumlanrig, and next Earl of Queensberry, he got vested in himself and his heirs the patronage and tithes of the churches of Terregles, Lochrutton, Colvend, Kirkbean, and Caerlaverock, belonging to the college, and also a small part of its lands."
Any historical inaccuracies or omissions will soon be corrected/added by the pedant up the road.
Simply have to add this link in order to relieve a rather dry, historical post. I suggested as a marketing ploy for her new book, Secret Graces, that Kathryn Magendie should read butt-naked. Hot dang, as she would say, she's only gone and done it.
http://tendergraces.blogspot.com/2010/02/nekkid-reading-of-secret-graces-so-let.html
