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Blantyre Priory

Priory (Medieval)

Site Name Blantyre Priory

Classification Priory (Medieval)

Alternative Name(s) Blantyre Farm Road

Canmore ID 44890

Site Number NS65NE 6

NGR NS 68605 59381

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/44890

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council South Lanarkshire
  • Parish Blantyre (Hamilton)
  • Former Region Strathclyde
  • Former District Hamilton
  • Former County Lanarkshire

Archaeology Notes

NS65NE 6 68605 59381

(NS 6860 5937) Blantyre Priory (NR) (Remains of)

OS 6" map, (1958)

Blantyre Priory, a house of Augustinian Canons, was founded by Patrick, Earl of Dunbar and his wife 1239 x 48, and was dedicated to the Holy Rood. It was maintained as a cell of Jedburgh Abbey, and secularised in 1598-9. The fragmentary ruins cover an area some 150' E-W by 115' N-S. The E walls stand on the edge of a precipice; the buildings at this part stand on fairly level ground, but immediately to the W the ground rises rapidly so that the cloister garth and the western enclosing walls are on a considerably higher level than the main buildings. The W wall is 5' - 10' high, the N wall, some 10' high, but the S wall has nearly all gone, except for a part at the return of the buildings at the E and W ends. At the NE corner is a two-storeyed structure, the walls of which, except the S one, are almost entire. This was probably the prior's house. Adjoining this to the S is an apartment locally said to be the chapel. Almost nothing of it remains, except part of the W wall, in which there is a stoup; however the window above it has no ecclesiastical character, and this building does not appear to have been the church. It is more likely that the latter stood somewhere about the line of the S boundary wall. The ruined fragment of a vaulted apartment stands at the SE corner of the monastery.

D MacGibbon and T Ross 1896-7; D E Easson 1957; I B Cowan 1964.

The buildings of Blantyre Priory are in poor condition and are only fragmentary. The remains comprise part of a vaulted compartment on the S, and a fragment of the SW corner of the prior's house. The outline of the remainder of this building can be traced under the vegetation which obscures it. The SW stands 3.6m high and is 0.7m thick. The maximum height of the other walls is only 1.0m. Part of the enclosure wall of the priory can still be traced, but it is overgrown with grass; the maximum height is 0.7m, and width 0.6m. On the N, where the wall turns E, only the face is visible as it forms a revetment against the slope here; it is 4.5m high and composed of rough-dressed stones.

Visited by OS (J L D) 19 August 1953.

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