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The Early Romanesque Tower at Restenneth Priory, Angus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

W. Douglas Simpson
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Extract

In the latter part of the seventh century the power of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria reached its height. Upon its northern frontier, over against the Picts, a vigorous forward policy was adopted; and here, as so often in our early history, the Roman Church revealed herself as the ally of the State. Some part of the Pictish borderlands, south of the Forth, had by this time passed under Northumbrian control; and on the strength of this an Anglian churchman, Trumwin, was planted in 681 at Abercorn, with the portentous title of ‘Bishop of the Picts’. The Northumbrian Church thus intruded at Abercorn has left its monuments today in a hog-backed stone and some cross shafts, one of great beauty showing among its enrichments the characteristic Anglian vine-scroll. These ecclesiastical measures were the prelude to an invasion of Pictland on a great scale, upon which the whole power of the Northumbrian kingdom was bent under its able and warlike monarch, Egfrith. But the High King of the Picts, Brude MacBile, proved himself equal to the crisis. At the famous battle of Dunnichen, or Nechtan's Mere, on Saturday, 20th May 685, he utterly destroyed the Anglian army of invasion—Egfrith and the flower of his nobles being numbered among the slain. This memorable victory dealt a blow at the power of Northumberland from which that haughty and resplendent kingdom never recovered; and its rapid military, political, spiritual, and moral decline is rightly dated from that event.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , September 1963 , pp. 269 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1963

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References

page 269 note 1 As is well known, the primitive Celtic practice was to name a church after its actual founder or at least after the founder of the parent missionary monastery.

page 269 note 2 A good example of a medieval dedication to St. Peter is the parish church of Glenbuchat in Aberdeenshire, founded in 1473. See the circum stances in The Book of Glenbuchat (Third Spalding Club), p. 11.

page 272 note 1 According to Boece (Murthilacensium et Aberdonensium Episcoforum Vitae, ed. J. Moir, New Spalding Club, p. ii) there was originally a munitio at Restenneth. The handing over of a native rath, or sometimes an old Roman fort or camp, to an incoming missionary was in accordance with established practice,

page 273 note 1 The foregoing introductory paragraphs are summarized from the full discussion of St. Boniface's mission in chapter ix of my book, The Celtic Church in Scotland, where the original authorities are cited.

page 273 note 1 G. Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England, 2nd ed., ii, 17, 67, 327, 476: A. W. Clapham, Romanesque Architecture in Western Europe, p. 154.

page 273 note 2 The paucity of comparative material in Scotland helps to make the problem intractable.

page 273 note 3 Archaeologia, xxiii, 57–72.

page 273 note 4 Archaeologia Scottca, v, 285–316.

page 274 note 1 English Romanesque Architecture before the Conquest, p. 100.

page 277 note 1 The idea that the lower part of our tower at Restenneth embodies the remains of an early porch seems first to have been put forward by Dr.Chalmers, P. Macgregor in Scots Lore, i (1895), 197–9Google Scholar. I ought, however, to state that the present paper had already been drafted before I became aware of Chalmers's suggestion.

page 273 note 2 Clapham, op. cit., pp. 121–2; Baldwin Brown, op. cit., pp. 85–86, 193–84. The position of our door at Restenneth could also have left room for a font, the porch in that case serving as a baptistery.

page 278 note 1 Clapham, op. cit., p. 31.

page 278 note 2 Archaeologia, xxiii, 58.

page 278 note 3 The difficulty posed by this chamfer seems characteristic of Anglo-Saxon buildings. Baldwin Brown (op. cit., p. vii) points out that in these the dating evidence is ‘often perversely contradictory, and in placing some of our prominent Saxon monuments, when every reasonable care has been taken to let all the evidence speak so that a conclusion may be established, some little antagonistic fact will spring with malicious intent to light and the whole will be immersed again in uncertainty’.

page 278 note 4 Archaeologia, xxiii, 55–72.

page 279 note 1 See Society of the Friends of Brechin Cathedral, Book of the Society, no. 1, pp. 4–5.

page 279 note 2 Scotland in Early Christian Times, 1st ser., p. 37.

page 280 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 87, 117–18.

page 280 note 2 Ibid., pp. 113, 114.

page 280 note 3 Baldwin Brown, op. cit., p. 20.

page 280 note 4 Ibid., p. 58.

page 282 note 1 Turgot, Life of Queen Margaret, chap, iv; Ordericus Vitalis, Eccles. Hist. bk. viii, chap. 22. The little chapel of St. Oran at Iona, however, which has been credited to St. Margaret, is not earlier than the twelfth century.

page 282 note 2 Op. cit., p. 385.

page 282 note 3 Hectoris Boetii, Murthilacensium et Aberdonensium Episcoporum Vitae, ut supra, p. ii.

page 282 note 4 The earlier date is favoured by A. O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, ii, 114.

page 282 note 5 Hist. Scotland, p. 27.