Whithorn was not what I expected
Aug. 11th, 2023 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustAfter two days in Kirkcudbright, I have not exhausted the town, though it has exhausted me, more than once. I'll get to that in due course, I hope.
On Monday morning we all departed from the Old Place of Monreith to go our several ways: which was 'homeward' for everyone butdurham_rambler and me. We started the next phase of our holiday by heading for Whithorn. Iona is more famous, but Whithorn does seem to be the first place in Scotland where Christianity was established: The death and burial here of St Ninian are traditionally dated to the year 431; he gets a mention in Bede's History of the church (731), for his white church at Whithorn, his Candida Casa. The priory ruins are twelfth century, but we wanted to see them, the town that grew up about that pilgrimage centre, and the exhibition about it. That was the plan.
We arrived before the Visitor Centre opened, but no problem, it was a fine bright morning, we'd have a stroll aound, through the Pend, the archway which leads to the Priory. Down the lane we found the custodian of a small Historic Environment Scotland museum explaining to a group of would-be visitors that access to her collection was included in the Visitor Centre ticket, and they would be able to visit once they had bought their tickets. Smugly, we produced our English Heritage cards, and she let us in. It's a small but beautifully displayed collection of carved stones. This cross is not typical (it's taller, and made of sandstone):
But it's the Monreith Cross, so, y'know... The custodian was very helpful, and wanted to tell us all about everything; perhaps a little too helpful, as it was hard to focus on what we were seeing. But she did get us onto the guided tour of the roundhouse, when we had left it too late to go back and buy tickets and still catch the 11.30 tour - she vouched for us that we would definitely pay up (and we did).
We hadn't planned to join the guided tour, but then, we hadn't known there was a roundhouse which we couldn't see any other way. And I'm usually a bit suspicious of the 'guided tour of our reconstruction' so I don't know what impulse made us say yes. But I'm very glad we did:
It is, if I've got this right, a reconstruction of a particularly splendid and well-preserved roundhouse excavated not far away, and built adjacent to land on which there were other, not as good, roundhouses. The guide / lecturer was our second fluent speaker of the morning, and he was first rate. Two things particularly stick in my memory, the first a general fact about roundhouses: you don't need to leave a hole for the chimney in a thatched roof, if you make the thatch at the apex thinner the smoke will still get out but the rain won't get in. The second is site specific: there was precisely one piece of iron found in the roundhouse, a plough blade which had been buried under the hearth.
After all this excitement, maybe it was inevitable the afternoon would be a bit flat. There was nothing wrong with the exhibition at the visitor centre (if you aren't bothered by coming across a skull dramatically displayed in the middle of it, and I'm not, really) but mostly it told us at some length things we already knew. Oh, there was one interesting thing - apparently Richard III had a particular devotion to Saint Ninian (link saved for my own reference, since I haven't read it yet). So we spent less time here than we might have done, and set off again down the lane to the priory ruins. Which were closed. When we visited Jedburgh, in June, we were frustrated to discover that the abbey itself was closed for repairs to the masonry; so was Whithorn. Historic Scotland appear to have been poking around their ruined buildings (spoiler alert: the castle here in Kirkcudbright is also closed) and discovering that well, ruins are liable to be a bit ruinous. I'm happy for them to do repairs, but there was no sign of masons actually at work.
We weren't quite ready to head for our night's B&B, so we headed for the coast, and stopped at Garlieston, which claims to be the home of the wartime Mulberry harbour, but which is also a very pretty village which supplied us with a very welcome pot of Early Grey.
ETA: Monday was a Bank Holiday in Scotland (though not in England). I don't know why, except that the Scots seem to observe summer earlier than the English do. We had not known whether to expect any disruption too our plans, but in fact it passed so unobtrusively that I had completely forgotten about it.
On Monday morning we all departed from the Old Place of Monreith to go our several ways: which was 'homeward' for everyone but
durham_rambler and me. We started the next phase of our holiday by heading for Whithorn. Iona is more famous, but Whithorn does seem to be the first place in Scotland where Christianity was established: The death and burial here of St Ninian are traditionally dated to the year 431; he gets a mention in Bede's History of the church (731), for his white church at Whithorn, his Candida Casa. The priory ruins are twelfth century, but we wanted to see them, the town that grew up about that pilgrimage centre, and the exhibition about it. That was the plan.We arrived before the Visitor Centre opened, but no problem, it was a fine bright morning, we'd have a stroll aound, through the Pend, the archway which leads to the Priory. Down the lane we found the custodian of a small Historic Environment Scotland museum explaining to a group of would-be visitors that access to her collection was included in the Visitor Centre ticket, and they would be able to visit once they had bought their tickets. Smugly, we produced our English Heritage cards, and she let us in. It's a small but beautifully displayed collection of carved stones. This cross is not typical (it's taller, and made of sandstone):
But it's the Monreith Cross, so, y'know... The custodian was very helpful, and wanted to tell us all about everything; perhaps a little too helpful, as it was hard to focus on what we were seeing. But she did get us onto the guided tour of the roundhouse, when we had left it too late to go back and buy tickets and still catch the 11.30 tour - she vouched for us that we would definitely pay up (and we did).
We hadn't planned to join the guided tour, but then, we hadn't known there was a roundhouse which we couldn't see any other way. And I'm usually a bit suspicious of the 'guided tour of our reconstruction' so I don't know what impulse made us say yes. But I'm very glad we did:
It is, if I've got this right, a reconstruction of a particularly splendid and well-preserved roundhouse excavated not far away, and built adjacent to land on which there were other, not as good, roundhouses. The guide / lecturer was our second fluent speaker of the morning, and he was first rate. Two things particularly stick in my memory, the first a general fact about roundhouses: you don't need to leave a hole for the chimney in a thatched roof, if you make the thatch at the apex thinner the smoke will still get out but the rain won't get in. The second is site specific: there was precisely one piece of iron found in the roundhouse, a plough blade which had been buried under the hearth.
After all this excitement, maybe it was inevitable the afternoon would be a bit flat. There was nothing wrong with the exhibition at the visitor centre (if you aren't bothered by coming across a skull dramatically displayed in the middle of it, and I'm not, really) but mostly it told us at some length things we already knew. Oh, there was one interesting thing - apparently Richard III had a particular devotion to Saint Ninian (link saved for my own reference, since I haven't read it yet). So we spent less time here than we might have done, and set off again down the lane to the priory ruins. Which were closed. When we visited Jedburgh, in June, we were frustrated to discover that the abbey itself was closed for repairs to the masonry; so was Whithorn. Historic Scotland appear to have been poking around their ruined buildings (spoiler alert: the castle here in Kirkcudbright is also closed) and discovering that well, ruins are liable to be a bit ruinous. I'm happy for them to do repairs, but there was no sign of masons actually at work.
We weren't quite ready to head for our night's B&B, so we headed for the coast, and stopped at Garlieston, which claims to be the home of the wartime Mulberry harbour, but which is also a very pretty village which supplied us with a very welcome pot of Early Grey.
ETA: Monday was a Bank Holiday in Scotland (though not in England). I don't know why, except that the Scots seem to observe summer earlier than the English do. We had not known whether to expect any disruption too our plans, but in fact it passed so unobtrusively that I had completely forgotten about it.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-11 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-12 02:24 pm (UTC)I know it's a large medieval building and I know what I'm looking at and the guide was trying to fill us full of one (mostly inaccurate) interpretation!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-12 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 10:56 am (UTC)