Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys

by Dugald Butler

The church occupies a commanding situation, from which the ground falls away on the west and south sides. The monastic buildings were on the south side of the nave, but on a lower level. Of these structures considerable remains still exist. "The ground between the dark walls and the church has, in recent years, been levelled up, the outer portions of the monastic buildings serving as retaining walls. With the exception of these outer walls, the site of the monastery is thus buried."[352]

The refectory stood on the south side of the cloister, and the whole length and height of its south and west walls still exist. The south wall was divided into seven bays, and in six of them there are lofty two-light windows. The eastern bay has a reading desk, from which one of the monks read aloud during meals. It is lighted from the outside by two windows. On the side next the hall there are two lofty openings.[353]

Adjoining the refectory on the south-west is a large tower, beneath which runs St. Catherine's Wynd, through a "pend" or archway, whence it is called the "Pend Tower." "The outside of the refectory and 'Pend Tower' is very imposing, with a simple row of lofty buttresses and windows along the top. The west gable wall of the refectory is still entire, and has a large window of seven lights. The tracery of this window is in good preservation, and is one of the most favourable examples of a kind of tracery developed in Scotland during the fifteenth century. At the north-west corner of the refectory is the staircase tower, which leads down to the offices below, and upwards to the refectory roof, over which access was obtained to the upper story of the 'Pend Tower.' In the north wall of the refectory, near the west end, are the remains of a flue, which may have belonged to a fire-place. The 'Pend Tower' is still entire, wanting only the cape house and roof. It served as a connecting passage between the abbey buildings and the royal palace beyond. A door led from the refectory by a passage into a groined chamber, and from thence into a room in the palace situated over the kitchen. The kitchen is a lofty room, now roofless, having remains of large fire-places and some curious recesses. Below the kitchen, but entering from another part of the palace, there is a large vaulted apartment with central pillars. These pillars were continued up through the kitchen, and probably to the room, now gone, which stood over the kitchen. Another arched passage led from this apartment through below St. Catherine's Wynd and up to the monastery. The building known as the palace was doubtless intimately connected with the monastery, and the kitchen may have been used in connection with both."[354] Within the "Pend Tower" on the first floor is a five-sided room with a fire-place, and it appears to have been a sort of guard room. It is vaulted and has irregularly placed ribs. Over this, and entering from the circular stair adjoining, is another groin-vaulted room, which had a fire-place of good design.

The passage and staircase are additions made at the time when the tower was built, and the arches were thrown between the already existing buttresses of the refectory, and in the second bay the arch is at a low level to permit of the descending stair, while the builders have just managed to save a very beautiful doorway belonging to the earlier building, and now hardly seen in the shadow of the overhanging addition.[355] To the east of the refectory is a narrow chamber with the remains of a two-light window in the south wall, and projecting southwards from this is the lower part of the wall of the fratery, reaching as high as the floor of the refectory. On the east side of the fratery extends the south wall of a building called the Baillery Prison.[356] These fragmentary structures exhaust the remains of the monastic buildings. The chapter-house was on the east side of the cloister garth. The monastery was burned by Edward I. in 1303-4, but Tytler says the church escaped.[357] Froissart states that in 1385 Richard II. burned the abbey and town, and it is doubted if any of the existing monastic buildings belong to an earlier date than that last mentioned.[358] "William Schaw, Master of Works, besides the buildings already referred to,[359] erected in 1594 certain of the immense buttresses which form such conspicuous features in all the views of the abbey. He likewise built, and doubtless designed, the Queen's House and the Bailie and Constabulary House. In connection with the latter houses there are considerable remains of buildings still existing to the north-west of the abbey, and there seems every probability that they formed part of the structures of the abbey and of the Queen's House. They are extremely picturesque as seen from the low ground to the west. The lofty house on the right hand dates probably from the end of the seventeenth century, and is a fine example of the period. The adjoining buildings are considerably earlier, and in the lower parts, where they are buttressed, they are probably of pre-Reformation times. The upper portions are somewhat later, and are very likely part of the work of Schaw. The porch to the latter buildings is on the other side, and is quaint and well known from being seen from the church. William Schaw died in 1602, and was buried in the nave, when the monument to his memory was erected by order of Queen Anne."[360]

Paisley Abbey (Renfrewshire).—In his history of this great abbey, the Very Rev. Dr. Cameron Lees thus describes its situation:—

"In the heart of the busy town of Paisley stands the Abbey, its venerable appearance contrasting most strangely with its surroundings. Many chimneys—so many that it seems impossible to count them—pour forth their smoke on every side of it; crowds of operatives jostle past it; heavily laden carts cause its old walls to tremble; the whirr of machinery and the whistle of the railway engine break in upon its repose; while within a stone's throw of it flows the River Cart, the manifold defilements of which have passed into a proverb. But it is not difficult, even without being imaginative, to see how beautiful for situation was once the spot where the Abbey rose in all its unimpaired and stately grace. It stood on a fertile and perfectly level piece of ground, close by the Cart, then a pure mountain stream, which, after falling over some bold and picturesque rocks in the middle of its channel, moved quietly by the Abbey walls on its course to the Clyde. Divided from the Abbey by this stream, rose wooded slopes, undulating like waves of the sea till they reached the lofty ridge called the Braes of Gleniffer, from the summit of which the lay brother, as he herded his cattle or swine, could get views of the Argyleshire hills, the sharp peaks of Arran, and the huge form of Ben Lomond. To the north, on the other side of the Clyde, were the fertile glades of Kilpatrick, and beyond, the Campsie range. Gardens and deer parks girdled the Abbey round; few houses were near except the little village of dependants on the other side of the stream; and no sound beyond the precincts broke the solitude, save the wind as it roared through the beech forest, the bell of a distant chapel, or, on a calm evening, the chimes of the Cathedral of Saint Mungo, seven miles away. It was a well-chosen spot, answering in every way the requirements of the Benedictines, who, we are told, "preferred to build in an open position at the back of a wooded chain of hills.""[361]

Paisley illustrates what was said by Dr. Cosmo Innes regarding the country as a whole.

"Scotland of the twelfth century had no cause to regret the endowment of a church.... Repose was the one thing most wanted, and people found it under the protection of the crozier."[362]

The Church became the great factor in the development of civilisation throughout the district. Had not the monastic system been good, it would not have lasted so long; had it not had within it the elements of weakness, it would not have come to such an untimely end. And even while we criticise it is well to recall the words of Newman: "Not a man in Europe who talks bravely against the Church, but owes it to the Church that he can talk at all."[363]

The great abbey of Paisley was much to its neighbourhood, and its history is the history of its district. It is a memorial of the coming to Scotland of the great family of Stewart, which has left such a deep impress on Scottish history. Walter, son of Alan of Shropshire, joined David I. at the siege of Winchester, and the king showed to him great favour, taking him into his household, and conferring on him the title of Lord High Steward of Scotland. King Malcolm was even more generous, ratified the title to Walter and his heirs, and bestowed on him a wide territory, chiefly in Renfrewshire.[364] The Steward soon colonised after the fashion of the time, built a castle for himself in the neighbourhood of Renfrew, and gave holdings to his followers throughout the wide territory of Strathgyff, as his Renfrewshire property was called. But in those days no colonisation was complete without a monastery, and this the Lord High Steward proceeded to found, entering into an agreement with Humbold, Prior of Wenlock Abbey in the native county of his family, to establish at "Passelay" a house of the Cluniac Order of Benedictines, being the same order as the house at Wenlock. Humbold in 1169 brought thirteen monks from the parent house, and, having settled them at Renfrewshire in an island of the Clyde called the King's Inch, returned to Wenlock. There was at this time in Paisley an early church, dedicated to St. Mirinus, an Irish saint of the sixth century, and a disciple of the great school of St. Congal at Bangor. St. Mirin was a contemporary of St. Columba, and must have been a friend of the great apostle of Scotland. He was probably the founder of the early Celtic church at Paisley, and seems to have been an itinerant preacher round the district, regarding Paisley as his centre, where at last, "full of miracles and holiness, he slept in the Lord." It matters little whether these legends regarding miracles are historically correct, for the value lies in the moral of them. "The falsehood would not have been invented unless it had started in a truth, and in all these legends there is set forth the victory of a good and beneficent man over evil, whether it be of matter or of spirit."[365]