BILL McALLISTER: Looking at beautiful Beauly, its 750-year-old Priory, and its French Connection
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THIS is the 750th anniversary of the completion of Beauly Priory, where the village which grew round it was called A’ Mhanachainn, or ‘place of the monks’. The once splendid building is now a ruin but retains an aura of holiness and tranquility.
It is also the 370th anniversary of stones from the Priory being taken to Inverness to build Oliver Cromwell’s fortress at the Longman.
The first Prior, Pastor Jairmo, is said to have named the community Boulou, ‘a fair, good place’. Mary, Queen of Scots, was a teenager heading for Dingwall in 1564 when, staying for a night as the Prior’s guest, she gazed at the priory and its fine orchard and is supposed to have said in French that it was a ‘beau lieu’ – or beautiful place. Either way or both, Beauly gained its name.
Pastor Jairmo was part of the ‘French Connection’ under which Beauly flourished. The monks were of the Valliscaulian Order from Dijon, from Val Des Choux, or ‘valley of the cabbages’, seeking a quiet place to live lives of prayer and study. Only the Prior was allowed to liase with local people.
King Alexander II, the Scottish monarch, who in 1230 approved the building of three Valliscaulian monasteries – the others being Pluscarden, near Elgin, and Ardchattan, Argyll.
John Byset, from a leading Norman family, had in 1218 inherited the barony of The Aird, then including the castle and lands of Kilravock, in Nairnshire. He became the Priory’s first patron, subsidising its lengthy construction, completed in 1272.
Its riverside location saw the monks granted fishing rights which produced salmon for food and income, though they would later be rebuked for not sending salmon back to the Order in Dijon!
The original Priory, with its red Tarradale stonework, consisted of a chapel on the north side, a cloister to the south and monks’ accommodation on the east side, the west flank being the Prior’s lodgings.
Byset’s brother Walter formed the Knights Templar preceptory at Culter and the skull and crossbones over various Beauly Priory graves – and again at Chapel Yard in Inverness – denote Templar links.
The name would become Bisset and John’s descendants’ lands would later pass to the Frasers of Lovat, staunch supporters of the Priory until the Reformation.
The Priory was sorely in need of reinvigoration by 1430, when Sir Hugh Fraser invested in its refurbishment, adding a Chapel of the Holy Cross.
Following lightning damage in the early 16th century, Prior Robert Reid, who was to found Edinburgh University, supervised a new west wing of the Priory, whose monks converted to the Cistertian order in 1510.
Hugh, Lord Lovat, killed in a clan fight in 1554, was buried in a tomb in the Priory. John Mackenzie, ninth of Kintail, was buried there in 1561, while his successor Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, who died in the Battle of Langside, followed seven years later.
After the Reformation and the monks’ departure, the lead was stripped from the Priory roof in the 1580s and as well as stonework being taken to build the Citadel in Inverness, other stones were used to build prominent Beauly homes.
Yet another Kintail chief, Colin Mackenzie, was buried inside the church in 1594 after his death at Redcastle.
When William Ross,
son of the Provost of Tain, was killed in the Battle of Glen Affric in 1721, he became another notable whose grave was in the Priory.
The poet John Keats, travelling with his friend Charles Brown, called in at the Priory while on a trip to Cromarty in 1818. Impressed, they combined to write a poem ‘On Some Skulls in Beauly Abbey, near Inverness’.
A very popular visitor attraction today, the Priory is still at its original height despite being a ruin, and ancient Elm trees add to its ambience and character. It continues to be an asset to the village which grew round it.
n Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
