Abbot's Tower | |
---|---|
Near New Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland UK grid reference NX972666 | |
Abbot's Tower in 2008 | |
Coordinates | 54°59′02″N3°36′21″W / 54.98376°N 3.605837°W |
Type | Tower house |
Site information | |
Owner | Private |
Open to the public | No |
Condition | Restored |
Site history | |
Built | Around 1580 |
In use | until c.1627; reoccupied in 1990s |
Materials | Stone |
Abbot's Tower is a late-16th-century tower house situated near New Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, that was built by the Abbot of Sweetheart Abbey. The building was restored in the early 1990s and is now used as a private residence and as a bed and breakfast. [1] This structure should not be confused with the Abbot's Tower of Alnwick Castle.
The tower was built in the late 16th century as a refuge by Gilbert Broun, S.O.Cist., the last Abbot of the Cistercian Sweetheart Abbey. Despite the abbey's suppression during the Scottish Reformation, Broun continued to uphold the Roman Catholic faith until he was arrested in 1605 and ultimately exiled. [2]
Abbot's Tower is a L-plan tower house, originally measuring 28.75 by 23.6 feet (8.8 by 7.2 m) with a short staircase wing extending north 8.5 feet (2.6 m). Its rubbled walls were about 4 feet (1.2 m) thick with only one room per storey. Each has a fireplace at one end and there was a garderobe in the south corner. By 1892, it was in a ruinous state, [3] with the portions of the walls still surviving to a height of 32 feet (9.8 m). The west and staircase walls were almost complete, but portions of the other walls had fallen and the hewn stones taken. [4]
Archaeological investigations in the early 1990s revealed remnants of outbuildings and portions of what were probably foundations of the barmkin walls. [4] The tower was restored and converted into a private residence in the 1990s. As of 2020, the owners operate the tower as a bed and breakfast. [5]
The Bishop of Dunkeld is the ecclesiastical head of the Diocese of Dunkeld, one of the largest and more important of Scotland's 13 medieval bishoprics, whose first recorded bishop is an early 12th-century cleric named Cormac. However, the first known abbot dates to the 10th century, and it is often assumed that in Scotland in the period before the 12th century, the roles of both bishop and abbot were one and the same. The Bishopric of Dunkeld ceased to exist as a Catholic institution after the Scottish Reformation but continued as a royal institution into the 17th century. The diocese was restored by Pope Leo XIII on 4 March 1878; it is now based in the city of Dundee.
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