Thursday, September 10th, 2009:
Afternoon: Abbeys in Southern Scotland

From Threave Castle we continued driving around the peninsula in a clockwise direction, stopping off at New Abbey village to see Sweetheart Abbey, or more accurately the ruins of the old abbey. Sweetheart Abbey was a Cistercian abbey dating back to the early 1200s and was in use until the reformation ended the sway of Roman Catholicism in the area in the 1500s.

Although the roof was gone, many of the graceful arches of the old church remained and they were very pretty indeed. Partly, that was due to the graceful Gothic style of the architecture but partly that was because the abbey had been built with a reddish sandstone quarried from a site across the bay. The deep red of the stones in the walls and arches just kind of glowed red in the bright sunlight, contrasting beautifully with the blue sky and white clouds.

The name "Sweetheart" came from the founding Scottish Queen, wife of John Balliol, who had funded the abbey. After her husband was killed by King Edward of England, she had his heart cut out, embalmed, and stored in a box that she carried around with her constantly and even slept with (!). In the end, she was buried with the "sweet heart" of her husband in the transept of the church, hence the name of the abbey. Romantic in a way, but also to modern perceptions more than a bit macabre, and I must admit I now look at "sweetheart" as a term of endearment in quite a different manner!

After a quick lunch at the coffee shop next to the abbey, we walked through the small town to the New Abbey Corn Mill. The water-powered mill had been first established by the monks back in the 1200s, and subsequent versions of an oat mill were built on the same site using the original mill pond and water supply system.

Inside the mill we found the huge gears turning the big, heavy millstones. It was fascinating to be able to see all the gearing exposed like that and be able to completely track the flow of power from the water wheel to the various places in the mill. While the mill stones were driven by large gear wheels (applewood used for the teeth, curiously enough), power to other devices was delivered by large leather belts. The idea of transmitting power via leather belts was probably adapted for later use in the machine shops of the late 1800s that I have visited at other sites.

Curling around the sea shore of the peninsula, we made our final stop of the day at the ruins of another abbey, Dundrennan Abbey. That abbey had been constructed in a more typical gray stone, and I was surprised how such a basic change in colors could give a completely different overall impression. The ruins of Dundrennan Abbey appeared distinctly more somber than Sweetheart Abbey.

We made a valiant attempt to see the ruins of McClellan's Castle in Kirkcudbright before it closed for the day, but we failed to arrive in time. So we just took pictures from the outside, shopped for some groceries at the Co-op store, and drove back to the Gatehouse of Fleet for the night. After dinner, we walked around the little town finding the original Gatehouse along the Fleet river.