 The
name Abernethy is an extremely potent name in Scottish history. Here was
an ancient Pictish capital, and then an ecclesiastical metropolis of the
Celtic Church of the Culdees, before St Andrews, conveniently near to
Scone, the one-time Royal centre of government only 8 miles away across
the River Tay, as the crow flies. Indeed even before that, Abernethy was
important, with a Pictish and also Roman fort, port and baths, at Garpow
just to the north.
Now little more than a village, Abernethy stands at the foot of its own
steeply-climbing Ochils glen, right on the Fife border, looking out
across the level carse to the junction of Earn and Tay rivers, just
where the latter begins to widen to an estuary, 6 miles south-east of
Perth. It is perhaps now most famous for its Celtic Round Tower, one of
the only two remaining in Scotland, the second being at Brechin. These
are tall, slender, tapering columns, free-standing and not part of
church buildings, although sited in later kirkyards. The Abernethy Tower
dates probably from the 9th or 10th century, with 11th century
alterations. It is 72 feet high and only 8 feet in interior
diameter, with walls 3 1/2 feet thick. There were six stages of timber
flooring, and door and windows are in the Irish style. The modern clock
is somewhat incongruous. These towers served the Celtic clergy as
steeples, watch-towers against Viking invaders and others, and refuges.
There are still 76 of them standing in Ireland.
With its Tower, Church and Churchyard, new Museum, winding Glen walks,
Mercat Cross and Traditional Houses, Abernethy village has much to show
the visitor, in addition to its resounding history--although scarcely
resounding perhaps was the sorry day when the great King Malcolm Canmore
did homage to William the Conqueror, in 1072, at Abernethy, as evidently
the only way to get the Norman and his invading army to go home. It was
Malcolm's English Queen Margaret, later sanctified by grateful Rome, who
instituted the pro-Romish movement in Scotland which was to oust the
Celtic Church not only from Abernethy but from all the land.
 Abernethy
was made a burgh of barony in 1476, under the famous Archibald
Bell-the-Cat Douglas, Earl of Angus; and his present-day descendant, the
Duke of Hamilton, bears the style of Lord Abernethy amongst his many
subsidiary titles. The Douglases had inherited Abernethy by marriage
with the heiress of the MacDuff line of Hereditary Abbots of Abernethy,
who became secularised as the de Abernethy family. To them, as the
second main stem of the great MacDuff house, had passed the right of
crowning the Scots monarchs, after the end of the senior stem, Earls of
Fife--hence the Duke of Hamilton's presenting to the present Queen her
Scottish crown at St. Giles Cathedral in 1953, at that significant
ceremony.
About two miles east of the village, and actually over the Fife border
above Newburgh, are the remains of MacDuff's Cross, where once all
man-slayers to within the 9th degree of consanguinity with the Earls of
Fife or Lords Abernethy, could claim sanctuary and gain remission of
penalty other than the payment of a fixed indemnity to the victim's
family--a most useful inheritance in otherwise lawless days.
To the other side of the village, high on a shoulder of Castle Law hill
to the south-west, is the site of a famous Scots hill-fort, massively
built of dry-stone walling with binding timber beaming, a type of
construction noted by Julius Caesar. These forts were roughly
contemporary with the Roman Invasions. It was in 80 AD that the
celebrated Agricola " opened up new nations, for the territory of
tribes as far as the estuary named Tanous ( Tay ) was ravaged ",
according to the Consul's son-in-law Tacitus. The Carpow Roman fort's
site, unlike the Pictish one, is on low ground near the Tay. Nearby is
Carpow House, and the scanty remains of old Capow. Here was the
ancient seat of the Lords of Abernethy.
Abernethy is ideally located for easy trips to the St Andrews,
Dunfermline, Culross, Perth, Edinburgh, Falkland Palace, and all
of historic Fife and Perthshire.
Information
kindly supplied by Scot Travel |
