endlessrarities | How Do You Like Your Commendator? Rare, or Well Done??

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist the title line, for reasons which will soon become clear...

More on Crossraguel Abbey now... Yesterday, I waxed lyrical regarding the domestic buildings, so here's some pretty pictures to help you understand why.

The structure below is the gatehouse:-

It's a typically Scottish late 16th century form, with a nice simple tower-house and an adjoining circular stair-tower with a squared-off caphouse - complete with crow-stepped gables- at the top. According to Prof. Charles McKean's recent paper at the Paisley conference (which I blogged about previously) the circular tower is a nod to the French 'donjon'. While the square caphouse is the physical embodiment of having second thoughts - a return to the stolid, square traditional Scots form in Mary's reign when it was more socially acceptable to be an anglophile...

Here's another view from the approach:-

I did have a nice photo of a gunloop, but I don't trust Photobucket sufficiently just now to try uploading it...

And to prove my point about the defensive nature of the site, here's a view of the abbot's house:-

I had a much better photo of the fourteenth century tower-house, but again it's in portrait, so I'd have to load onto Photobucket WHICH HASN'T BEEN WORKING!!! So, I'm sorry about this - the sun was in entirely the wrong place...

Anyway, the abbots had good reason to be paranoid. The abbey was a convenient punchbag for the English armies marauding north in the Wars of Independence, but it's in the late 16th century that its most notorious episode took place.

I'll quote the Historic Scotland version, because it's literal, as opposed to sensationalist. Even so, it's monstrous stuff:-

'Record survives of a complaint by [Alan] Stewart to the Privy Council that on 29 August 1569 he had been captured by the Earl [of Cassilis] and roasted over a fire until he agreed to make over abbey lands and revenue to him' [Raleigh Radford, 1970, 11].

Mmm. Lovely. I told you these Kennedies were pleasant individuals in the medieval and early modern period. This incident was one of a number of squabbles over former abbey lands which were carved up amongst the royal favourites. The Sempills and the Hamiltons argued over Paisley, the Cunninghames and the Montgomeries argued over Kilwinning (and the Hamiltons got it) while Alan Stewart, who was appointed commendator of Crossraguel following the death of the last abbot in 1564 (a Kennedy) found himself facing the ire of the erstwhile abbot's spurned Kennedy kinsman. Stewart was taken to Dunure Castle and tortured there, evidently, and though he went through this dreadful rigmarole twice, he actually survived the experience!

Wow, they made them tough in those days...

And lastly, a view of the Crossraguel Drain. I had to post it, since according to the local press, I'm an expert in medieval drains (!).

So here we are. It's a drain, and it's medieval, and it's quite plain, compared to Paisley's lovely vaulted number...