The Reformation of the 16th century embraced Scotland with even greater ferocity than it did England, although somewhat later in time. James V preserved the Church as it was until his death in 1542. The English “Rough Wooing” thereafter, inter alia, imported Lutheran literature and ideas into the country. Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews, was murdered in 1546. James V had one daughter, Mary, who was married in 1549 to Francis II of France; her mother Mary of Guise was regent on her behalf. Protestantism in Scotland spread through the 1550s and in 1560, when Mary Queen of Scots returned to the country, the Scottish Parliament imposed reform on the Scottish Church and instituted the Calvinist Kirk under the guidance of John Knox. In 1567, Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her son James VI, who was brought up as a Protestant.
The Reformation in Scotland was the most destructive in Europe, leading to the unroofing of churches as well as the smashing of shrines, statues, stained glass and art.
Catholicism was made illegal but survived in parts of Scotland under the protection of local clan chiefs such as Clanranald of South Uist, the Earls of Huntly (subsequently Marquises of Huntly and Dukes of Gordon) in Aberdeenshire and the Maxwells in the south west. The 6th Earl and 1st Marquis of Huntly was leader of the Catholic party in the late 16th century. His grandson was created 1st Duke of Gordon in 1684 and married Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the 6th Duke of Norfolk. He and his sons were strong Jacobites and Catholics, being educated on the continent. The 2nd Duke of Gordon took part in the 1715 Jacobite uprising but was pardoned. The ducal line then became Protestant. Henrietta, wife of the 2nd Duke, went to live with the Norfolk family in London. Other branches of the Gordon family such as the Gordons of Letterfourie remained Catholic and were educated at the Scots College in Ratisbon (predecessor of the Benedictine school at Fort Augustus). Bonnie Prince Charlie’s chaplain at Culloden was a Scottish Benedictine.
The Frasers, Lords Lovat, in spite of their Jacobite loyalties, were Protestant in 1745. When the main line died out in 1782, the claim to the title passed to a Catholic cadet branch, the Frasers of Strichen, who married into English recusant families in the 19th century.
The Hay Earls of Erroll lived at Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire. The family was Jacobite – some members of the family fought at Culloden – until the late 1760s when they ceased to be. It is reputed that certain Jesuits were given refuge at New Slains Castle.
The mother of James Drummond, the 4th Earl of Perth, of Stobhall in Aberdeenshire, was the daughter of the 2nd Marquis of Huntly. The 4th Earl converted to Catholicism in 1685 with his brother, the 1st Earl of Melfort. After 1689 he went into exile with James II at St Germain. He was created 1st (Jacobite) Duke of Perth in 1701. The direct Jacobite ducal line died out in the 19th century and the legitimate earldom of Perth was reclaimed. They remained Catholics.
Murthly (Perthshire) remained a Catholic centre after the Reformation. It was then the home of Robert Abercrombie, who held the vicarage of Little Dunkeld, apparently as the treasurer of Dunkeld Cathedral, but he was declared to have lost it in 1573 for being “ane Jesuit beyond the say”. He had hoped to establish a Jesuit College at Murthly in the 1580s in the event of the hoped-for conversion of James VI to Catholicism…
There were various Catholic families that in the past had chapels, but time has by and large reduced these buildings to ruin; these are in the main near Aberdeen. These include such edifices as Caerlaverock Castle (Dumfriesshire – Maxwell Earls of Nithsdale), Craig Castle (Aberdeenshire – Gordons), Craigievar Castle (Aberdeenshire – Mortimers), Delgatie Castle (Aberdeenshire – Hays), Fetternear Castle (Aberdeenshire – Leslies, Counts of the Holy Roman Empire), Huntly Castle (Aberdeenshire – Earls and Marquises of Huntly and Dukes of Gordon) and Towie Barclay (Aberdeenshire – Barclays). As a result of the protection of the Clanranald, the Gordons and the Maxwells, Moidart, Aberdeenshire-Banff-Moray and the south west survived as the most Catholic areas of Scotland in the 19th century.
Many surviving Catholic country-house chapels in Scotland now derive from the activities of converts in the 19th century. These include waves of Kerrs (Marquesses of Lothian) during the century, and John Crichton-Stuart, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, in 1868. He was responsible for the Catholic chapels at Falkland Palace and Mount Stuart as well as Catholic restoration work at Greyfriars Convent and Pluscarden Abbey. His best-known architectural work was the rebuilding of Cardiff Castle by William Burges in Wales. His vast wealth derived from huge industrial activities in South Wales.
<strong>The Chapels</strong>
These are the more important surviving Catholic country-house chapels to be found in Scotland.
<strong>Abbotsford</strong>
<em>Roxburghshire</em>
Abbotsford House was built in Scottish Baronial style between 1817 and 1825 by the novelist Sir Walter Scott to the design mainly of the architect William Atkinson. After the death of the novelist, it was inherited by his grandson Walter Scott Lockhart. After his death in 1853, it was then inherited by his sister Charlotte, married since 1847 to the barrister James Hope. They were both prominent members of the Oxford Movement; in 1851 they were received into the Church along with Archdeacons Henry Manning and Robert Wilberforce in the aftermath of the Gorham judgement. On inheriting the Abbotsford estate, they changed their surname to Hope-Scott. The Catholic chapel to the west of the building was added in 1855. The carved and painted wood altar frontal depicting the Tree of Jesse is late-15th-century Flemish Gothic. The statues of saints are from Bavaria. The 16th-century oil painting of the Madonna and Child over the fireplace is by Ghirlandaio. Cardinal Newman celebrated Mass here while visiting. The last of Walter Scott’s direct descendants was Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott who died in 2004. During her period as chatelaine, there were daily services in the chapel and Monsignor Alfred Gilbey used to visit every year to celebrate Mass. After her death, the running of the house was taken over by a trust which has recently renovated the chapel. Mass is celebrated periodically.
<strong>Beaufort Castle</strong>
<em>Inverness-shire</em>
The Highlands seat of the Frasers of Lovat, Chiefs of the Clan Fraser, was rebuilt as a spectacular Scottish Baronial pile by the 15th Lord Lovat in 1871 to the design of the Edinburgh architects, Wardrop & Reid. Damaged by fire in 1938, when the great hall was destroyed, it was well restored by the Catholic architect Reginald Fairlie, who had previously designed the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at Fort Augustus as a memorial to members of the Lovat family killed in the First World War. He replaced the hall block with a new Georgian-style drawing room. Beaufort remains a highly picturesque composition of red sandstone with two large towers and numerous pepper pot turrets. The original house on the site was razed by the Duke of Cumberland’s army after Culloden, and was subsequently replaced with a small factor’s house which was extended by William Burn in 1834. The present castle is in every way bigger and grander. The Frasers have had an on-off relationship with Catholicism. The duplicitous 11th Lord Lovat who was attainted and executed for treason after Culloden (in which he was too old to take part) told Bonnie Prince Charlie he was Catholic and the Hanoverians that he was Protestant. Both his sons died without issue and the succession to the title passed to distant cousins, the Frasers of Strichen, who were created Lords Lovat in the UK peerage and then restored to the attainted medieval barony, and so became Lords Lovat twice over. Marrying in the 19th century into English recusant families, the Jerninghams and the Weld-Blundells, they were the pre-eminent “old Catholic family” in Victorian Scotland, and the largest Catholic landowners in Britain (although nothing as rich as the Butes or the Norfolks). They were great church builders in the Highlands, responsible for substantial Catholic fanes at Beauly, Eskadale, and Inverness; they also helped found Fort Augustus Abbey, the first post-Reformation Benedictine abbey on the British mainland. It is therefore not surprising that the private chapel at Beaufort was ambitious. It forms a distinctive feature of the river front of the castle where it introduces a whiff of English Gothic amidst the surrounding Scottish Baronial flamboyance. It is two storeys high and four bays long with tall lancet windows. It is more likely to have been designed by Peter Paul Pugin than Wardrop & Reid. Pugin was designing the new abbey church at Fort Augustus at the time and embellishing the pre-Emancipation Lovat church at Eskadale with a new high altar and reredos. Eskadale is now vested in a family trust and remains the burial place of the Frasers of Lovat. The chapel at Beaufort is attached to the private family apartments. The altar and elaborate reredos are of fine white marble, probably by Boulton of Cheltenham, with rich marble reliefs of biblical subjects. Abbot Sir David Hunter-Blair, Bt, described it as beautiful, and admired the Christmas altar decorations of white chrysanthemums and lilies of the valley from the garden glasshouses. He often went to Beaufort to celebrate Mass, especially at Christmas, singing a Missa cantata at midnight and on the next morning. The stained glass windows were inserted by Alice, Lady Lovat as a “thank offering for the safe return of her three sons from the Boer War”. (Her eldest son, the 16th Lord Lovat, founded the Lovat Scouts who played a significant role in victory in South Africa.) “Shimi”, 17th Lord Lovat (1911-95), a hero of Dieppe and D-Day, and a Knight of Malta, was shortly predeceased by his eldest son, a tragedy which led to the sale of Beaufort in 1994. It currently belongs to Dame Ann Gloag, the transport entrepreneur.
<strong>Ben Alder Lodge</strong>
<em>Perthshire</em>
Ben Alder in the Scottish Highlands was acquired as a sporting estate by the present owners in 1996. They have built a new convincingly Scottish Baronial lodge of grey granite. The neo-Romanesque Catholic chapel with spirelet is in a detached out building and has been sympathetically designed to create a tranquil interior. It is surrounded by walls with a gate; the architect was Robert Trembath. It was blessed by Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. Mass is regularly celebrated when the family is in residence.
<strong>Dorlin and Roshven Houses, Moidart</strong>
<em>Inverness-shire</em>
Up to the 18th century, Moidart remained staunchly Catholic thanks to the protection of the Clanranald, clan chiefs. Their stronghold was Castle Tioram, the ruins of which still dominate the rugged landscape. The Clanranald holdings included the whole Moidart peninsular as well as South Uist and Benbecula. The clan chief in 1745 was attainted for his participation in the uprising but the Clanranald were restored to their lands later in the 18th century. With the aid of strong-willed priests (often MacDonalds), they continued to protect the Catholic population. Reginald George, the grandson of the Jacobite Clanranald, squandered his birthright during the Regency; the estate was sold piecemeal to pay for his extravagances. Different areas were acquired by Catholics and continued as centres of landed Catholicism. The Dorlin estate at Lochshiel was bought by the MacDonalds of Glenaladale and Rhu, also Jacobites and Catholics, who built a small house and a single-storeyed chapel; the latter survives as a cottage. In 1851 Dorlin was bought by James Hope-Scott of Abbotsford (qv) for £24,000, partly with the aim of supporting Moidart Catholicism. His second wife was Lady Victoria Alexandrina Fitzalan Howard, daughter of the 13th Duke of Norfolk and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. They built a large Scottish Baronial lodge at Dorlin and the granite Gothic church of Our Lady and the Holy Angels at Mingarry, designed by George Goldie in 1862 as a successor to the Dorlin chapel. In 1871 Hope-Scott sold Dorlin to his brother-in-law, the 1st Lord Howard of Glossop, with the intention of perpetuating the Catholic tradition; the latter was made a peer by Gladstone and chaired the Catholic Education Committee. The daughters of the 1st Lord Howard of Glossop married key Victorian Catholic peers, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, the 14th Lord Herries and the 11th Earl of Loudon. The 1st and 2nd Lords Howard of Glossop were enlightened landowners and used their industrial income from Derbyshire to improve Dorlin, building cottages and a school, and reclaiming land for better farming. The 3rd Lord Howard of Glossop served in the Lovat Scouts in the First World War, like most of the men of Moidart. His younger brother Philip was killed in action in 1918. Dorlin was sold in the 1920s but leased back as a holiday home in the summer. Its death knell was sounded by the Second World War when it was requisitioned for commando training and, like many other Victorian west-coast houses, was dynamited. Another Clanranald estate sold in 1826 was Roshven, overlooking Lochailort. It was bought by the mathematics don Professor Hugh Blackburn and his Pre-Raphaelite artist wife Jemima in 1854. They employed the Scottish architect David Bryce to convert the small Georgian house to a substantial Scottish Baronial lodge in the 1880s. The place was a centre for artists and intellectuals who came to stay in the summer. A large room called The Barracks on the ground floor was converted into a Catholic chapel. It was decorated by Jemima Blackburn who painted the door of the tabernacle with an angel. During the 20th century, monks from Fort Augustus Abbey regularly celebrated Mass there on a Sunday. After four generations, Nigel Blackburn sold Roshven in 1997. It has now been restored by new owners.
<strong>Falkland Palace</strong>
<em>Fife</em>
Falkland Palace (and the House of Falkland) was purchased by the 3rd Marquess of Bute (vide Mount Stuart) in 1887 from a Mr Hamilton Bruce at the cost of £192,000. He had been elected Rector of St Andrew’s University, hence his interest in purchasing an estate in Fife, far from his ancestral lands. The palace had become a royal property in 1437 and was rebuilt in Renaissance style from 1501 onwards by James IV. From around 1660 it had fallen increasingly into decay. After Bute’s purchase it was restored by the architect John Kinross. The Chapel Royal dedicated to St Thomas is located in the south range of Falkland Palace. It was built in stylish late Gothic style in 1511-13. It is a six-bay composition with four large rectangular windows in the south frontage, divided by buttresses. Two of these still contain figures carved by Peter Flemisman in 1539. The base corbels are decorated with angels bearing emblems of the Passion. The chapel occupies part of the second floor of the palace. It is rectangular in form. It is entered through an ante-chapel at the west end with a fine oak screen of 1540, thought to be the work of Richard Stewart. The nave of the chapel has a spectacular 16th-century compartmented ceiling originally painted in 1633 for a visit of Charles I, with his arms, strap work cartouches and royal emblems. There are trompe l’oeil friezes. The nave has rows of moveable wooden chairs. The interior walls are lined with fine wooden panelling, some of which is painted. Large tapestries hang on the north wall and depict various biblical scenes. Also on the north wall is the fine canopied “royal pew”, which was constructed in the 1890s but incorporates some 17th-century woodwork. At the east end is the sanctuary, separated by wooden altar rails. The altar (formerly a “communion table”) is in the centre and raised on three shallow steps. It is covered with fabric and a large red and gold wall hanging against the wooden east end forms a reredos behind it. The chapel was consecrated to Catholic worship in 1905. Mass is celebrated every Sunday. In the past the Order of Malta held various of its Scottish services there. It was restored by Guy Elwes in the 1950s. Lord Bute left the “keepership” of Falkland Palace on his death in 1900 to his second son, Lord Ninian Crichton Stuart; this is now in the hands of his grandson Ninian, born 1957. The National Trust has been brought in as “deputy keeper” of the building.
<strong>Ferniehirst Castle</strong>
<em>Roxburghshire</em>
Ferniehirst is a “hidden castle” on a wooded hillside, near the medieval ruins of Jedburgh Abbey. It was founded by the Kerrs of Ferniehirst, a Borders clan reputedly descended from Vikings (like several Scottish families), and descended to the Kerrs of Ancram in the 17th century. Its medieval history shared all the violence of a border fortress, with frequent raids and sackings, and it was destroyed in anger three times. The present castle is a late-16th-century tower house – dated 1598 – with a hall range built over the medieval vaults. In the 18th century the house became subsidiary to the other Kerr seats at Newbattle and Monteviot (qv), and from the 1930s it was let to the YHA. When the 12th Marquess of Lothian handed over Monteviot to his eldest son Michael (now 13th Marquess) on the latter’s marriage in 1975, the former and his wife Antonella revived Ferniehirst as a family house for themselves. It is now the Scottish seat of their younger son, and heir to the marquisate, Lord Ralph Kerr, vice president of the Order of Malta. The castle was scrupulously restored in the 1980s by the architects James Simpson & Brown of Edinburgh, drawing on the skills of Jedburgh builders and craftsmen. At that time the medieval undercroft with its stone vault was made into an appropriate chapel. There is a simple altar and oak furnishings, which create a restful devotional character.
<strong>House of Falkland</strong>
<em>Fife</em>
The House of Falkland is a Jacobean manor of 1839-44 designed by William Burn for Onesiphorus Tyndall-Bruce. In 1887 it was bought by the 3rd Marquess of Bute, who between 1890 and 1900 employed RW Schultz, in the words of Pevsner, “to transform the interior from a display of Early Victorian opulence to one of Late Victorian idiosyncrasy”. Schultz converted three bedrooms at the west end of the service block’s south range into a chapel and vestry. There is a long tunnel-vaulted passage chapel leading to them. On the walls and ceilings, plaster vine paintings give way at the entrance of the chapel to inlaid wood lining. There is a screen at the entrance. The centre of the broad ceiling is tunnel vaulted. The walls and ceiling are lined in oak inlaid with mother of pearl. At the chapel’s liturgical east end there is an apse for the altar flanked by smaller apsidal recesses.
<strong>Keir House</strong>
<em>Stirlingshire</em>
The Stirlings originally acquired the Keir estate in 1448, and a house was built in the 16th century. The Stirlings were firm Jacobites and the estate was for a period forfeited. The present house was built c1760 and funded by revenue from West Indian plantations. In 1847. Sir William Stirling Maxwell inherited the estate and began the remodelling of the house. His son, Brigadier-General Archibald Stirling, married the Hon. Margaret Mary Fraser, daughter of the 15th Lord Lovat, in 1910, introducing Catholicism into the Stirlings. His son, Sir David Stirling, founder of the SAS, was born at Keir in 1915. The house had to be sold in 1975 to the Emirati businessman Mahdi Al-Tajir. The chapel was built in 1911-12 by AF Balfour Paul. It lies east to the approach to the north entrance. It is a little basilica with apse and tunnel vaults. The Russian decorator Boris Anrep, a friend of one of the Stirling daughters, was responsible for the very fine interior mosaic and marble decoration, which predates his work at the National Gallery and Westminster Cathedral.
<strong>Kirkconnell House, New Abbey</strong>
<em>Kirkcudbrightshire</em>
For 900 years, Kirkconnell was the property of the Maxwells and their ancestors in the female line, the Kirkconnells, until sold by Francis Maxwell in 2000. The house forms a charming group of buildings of different dates around a courtyard. The core is a 16th-century tower house to which Georgian brick ranges have been added. The brick frontage is claimed to be one of the first brick-built houses in Scotland. The Maxwells came to Kirkconnell in 1410 when the younger brother of Lord Maxwell of Caerlaverock Castle married the heiress. Like all the branches of the Maxwell clan, including Lord Herries of Terregles (qv) and his descendants, the Earls of Nithsdale, they remained strongly Catholic after the Reformation, and protected Catholicism in the district in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Maxwells continued the heroic work of Dom Gilbert Brown, the last abbot of Cistercian New Abbey, who ministered to the Catholic faithful for over 50 years before being sent into exile for “enticing the people towards papistrie” and dying in Paris aged 100. In the 18th century, successive Maxwells of Kirkconnell were educated at Douai. James Maxwell (died 1772) took part at Culloden but escaped to the continent. He returned to Kirkconnell around 1750, and improved the place as well as writing a good first-hand history of the ’45. The chapel was at first the stone-vaulted room on the upper floor of the house but in the more peaceful later Georgian period, in 1815, a more spacious brick rectangular chapel with tall arched windows was built at the back of the house. It has two storeys and six bays, and a coved ceiling. The apse is framed by marbled and fluted pillars. There remains a family pew. It was served by Jesuits, several of them Maxwell cousins. In 1824, a Catholic church was opened in New Abbey; this succeeded the chapel as the local Mass centre. Neither of the chapels is used now, and the house is let out for short-stay holidays.
<strong>Letterfourie House</strong>
<em>Morayshire</em>
The Gordons of Letterfourie were descended from George, the fourth son of the 2nd Earl of Huntly (died 1501). Like their clan chiefs in the 16th and 17th centuries, they were fervent Catholics. The cadet branch remained strongly Catholic in the 18th century, and they were active Jacobites. Alexander Gordon of Letterfourie took part at Culloden in 1746 but escaped to the continent after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Highland army. He joined his elder brother James in the wine trade in Madeira. They replenished their fortune and on their return to Scotland were then able to rebuild Letterfourie as one of the most beautiful neoclassical houses in Scotland. It was designed by Robert Adam in 1772 and was among his earliest works when he returned north from London. It is beautifully situated overlooking the Buckie Burn and is constructed of granite ashlar. It comprises a main block flanked by connecting links and lower pavilions. One of the latter was the purpose-built Catholic chapel. It has a beautiful interior designed by Adam, with a plaster-ribbed, groined vault ceiling and walls delineated by fluted pilasters. The altar and fittings have gone, but the space, the original painted marbling and the Adams architecture survive. The heir Sir James Gordon revived the family baronetcy, the premier baronetcy of Nova Scotia, and became the 8th Baronet. He was succeeded by his sons who in turn maintained the Catholic traditions of the house throughout the rest of the 19th century. The younger, Sir Robert, died in 1908 when the baronetcy fell dormant. He was educated at St James of the Scots, the Benedictine school at Ratisbon (Regensburg), and was a scholar of Jacobite and Highland history. He gave his library to Fort Augustus Abbey (the successor of Ratisbon), whence some of the books passed to the National Library of Scotland. In the 20th century, after the extinction of the family, the estate was absorbed by the Grants, Earls of Seafield. The house has subsequently been resold, most recently in 2010. The chapel is no longer in use but Letterfourie is a fine architectural monument to the Gordons and their long Catholic tradition.
<strong>Mayshiel</strong>
<em>East Lothian</em>
The Chapel of St Rita of Cascia at Mayshiel is by the leading contemporary classical architect Craig Hamilton, and was the first of three distinguished private Catholic chapels designed by him; it is one of the most remarkable new classical buildings in Britain. It was a 50th birthday present from the late owner to his Catholic wife, and is dedicated to St Rita of Cascia (near Spoleto in Italy) (1381-1457), whose relic is inserted in the altar, and whose bronze bust by Alexander “Sandy” Stoddart (Sculptor in Ordinary to the Crown in Scotland) looks down from the entrance pediment. It forms part of a group of estate buildings in the “policies” of a new country house amidst a wide landscape of seemingly untamed hills and moors. Construction began at Easter 2005 and the chapel was consecrated by Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, on the feast of the Assumption on 15 August 2006. The ceremony was a remarkable occasion. The Archbishop used the mitre and crozier made for an earlier predecessor following the restoration of the Scottish Catholic hierarchy at Fort Augustus Abbey in 1878. The clergy and congregation processed from the house to the new chapel where Bruckner’s motet “Locus Iste” was sung at the entrance, and the solemn liturgy was accompanied by Gregorian chant and polyphony. The chapel is a small but monumental free-standing basilica, which seems larger than it is, thanks to its perfect proportions. The exterior is stuccoed ochre with dressings of Stanton Moor sandstone including a bellcote and a Florentine door-case. The panelled entrance doors are carved with the Scottish thistle and the rose of St Rita by Houghtons of York, an introduction to the specially commissioned craftsmanship, to the designs of the architect, which distinguishes the building; these also include the silver altar plate made by Inches in Edinburgh and Roman vestments. The interior is divided into a columned narthex, nave and apsidal sanctuary. The Illisus Ionic order was chosen for the attached columns which line the nave. The Roman barrel vault has plaster coffers containing rosettes modelled on those of the temple of Mars Ultor in Rome by the late Dick Reid and executed by Yorkshire stuccoists. The floor is paved in coloured marbles from Carrara as is the marblework in the apse. The sanctuary follows the guidelines of the Second Vatican Council for new churches, with a free-standing altar, lectern and “president’s” chair but is enclosed by marble altar rails with panels of gilt bronze anthemia. The tabernacle behind is placed in a niche lined with (red) Rosso Impero marble; it is a little tempietto of white marble and coloured porphyry, the gilt bronze door sculpted with St John the Baptist by Alexander Stoddart, who also modelled the two large flanking reliefs of the Annunciation and Visitation in the apse. They were carved of white marble in Carrara. Mass is celebrated regularly when the family is in residence, usually during the shooting season from August onwards, and around Christmas.
<strong>Moniack Castle</strong>
<em>Inverness-shire</em>
Moniack is a 16th-century tower house of the Frasers, enlarged in the late-Georgian period to make it an L-shape. It is situated close to Beauly and Beaufort Castle, in the heart of the Fraser territory, in the Highlands. The tower was built in 1580 and was crenellated; a pepper pot was added in 1804 to give it more of a castle air. The major extension dates from 1830 and added a new front with a central Doric doorway flanked by two ample bow windows. The whole is white-harled and charmingly unpretentious. Historically, it was the seat of the Frasers of Strichen who inherited the claim to the Lovat barony in the 18th century. In the 19th century, it belonged to successive Lords Lovat who were strongly Catholic. It was given in 1926 by the 16th Lord Lovat to his younger son Alastair and now belongs to his descendant, Rory Fraser. Moniack has developed a successful food business and winery which supports the estate. The low-ceilinged Catholic chapel is a classical Georgian interior. It is situated on the ground floor, approached off the entrance hall. It has an attenuated Ionic reredos.
<strong>Monteviot House</strong>
<em>Roxburghshire</em>
The chapel at Monteviot was created in 1963 to the design of Schomberg Scott for Peter, 12th Marquess of Lothian, and his wife Antonella, as part of their reconstruction and revival of Monteviot as the principal Lothian seat. Monteviot replaced Newbattle Abbey, near Dalkeith, in an area encroached on by coal mining in the 19th century, which was given away by the 11th Marquess (Liberal, Christian Scientist, appeaser, ambassador to the United States, who also donated the 6000-acre Blickling estate in Norfolk to the National Trust) to an education trust. The estate surrounding Monteviot had belonged to the Kerrs for centuries and the beautiful site overlooking the River Tweed had attracted the 3rd Marquess to build a small Palladian fishing lodge there. This was hugely extended in 1832 in Jacobean style to the design of Edward Blore, whose full scheme was never completed until Schomberg Scott pulled the disparate parts into a well-planned house. The chapel is two-storeyed and occupies the site of the old servants’ hall in the Blore wing. It is excellently proportioned, with fine fittings, and is dedicated to the Borders Saints. The interior is arranged college-wise with panelled stalls, and is correctly orientated with the altar under a wooden tester at the east end. There is a fine timber screen at the west end with turned balusters and carved figures of Borders Saints: King David of Scotland, St Waltheof, St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, St Drychthelme and Duns Scotus, the medieval theologian. They were carved by Norman Forrest in Edinburgh and the joinery was made by Messrs Anderson of Melrose. The large mullioned west window has engraved glass of an angel choir by Anne Robertson of Haddington. The works of art by modern Scottish craftsmen are completed by the metal crucifix by George Wylie which hangs over the altar against a hanging of gold brocade. The altar is flanked by Italian, gold ground quattrocento triptychs. The chapel has been further embellished by the present 13th Marquess of Lothian, and is regularly used for services such as the wedding of his daughter Clare, heiress to the Baroness of Terregles and the ancient Catholic Maxwell estate of Caerlaverock in Dumfriesshire, in 2010. The first Kerr convert in 1851 was Cecil, the widow of John Kerr, 7th Marquess of Lothian, and most of her male descendants followed her in due course.
<strong>Mount Stuart</strong>
<em>Bute</em>
John Patrick Crichton-Stuart was born as Earl of Dumfries in 1847 at Mount Stuart on Bute. He was the great grandson of George III’s prime minister, the 3rd Earl of Bute. His father died when he was six months old and he succeeded as 3rd Marquess of Bute. The heir to vast estates, particularly including Cardiff, he was educated at Harrow and Christ Church. In 1868 he converted to Catholicism and spent the rest of his relatively short life furthering Catholic causes. He was the original of Disraeli’s Lothair. Mount Stuart was originally a Georgian house of 1719 but was badly damaged by a fire in 1877 and rebuilt at its centre in Gothic Revival style by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson and others. It is a magnificent Gothic palace, unlike anything else in Britain. It possesses three chapels: the first of these is a small oratory in a converted guest wing. It was constructed in 1872-5 before the fire by William Burges and dedicated to St John and St Margaret. It is built in neo-Romanesque style. The inspiration is from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. A pillared colonnade runs down the side of the tiny nave, whose columns support flat Constantinian architraves. The ceiling is made of moulded and gilded coffers. The metal pillars are painted to look like polychrome marble. The striking altar is made of cast metal with pillars, above a carved relief of Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. On the altar is the Jerusalem cross. A procession of saints by Harland and Fisher is painted down the walls of the central nave. These include Elijah and Moses, Constantine, St Magnus, St Winifred, St John the Evangelist and St Margaret of Scotland. Christ sits enthroned on the tympanum.
The second chapel is the former Presbyterian chapel on the seashore a kilometre away, surrounded by beautiful bluebell woods. It was built originally in 1727-30. It was refurbished in 1881 as a Catholic school and, in 1901, Robert Weir Schultz turned it into a mortuary chapel. It has roughcast walls with red stone dressings and pediments with belfries at the east and west ends. The interior is simple and currently in some state of disrepair. The laird’s loft has survived, its panelled front intact above stone vaulting, arches and columns introduced by Schultz. The chapel was beloved by Bute for its wild and romantic setting. Here he was buried in 1900 by Abbot Sir David Hunter-Blair, Bt, summoned from St Benet’s Hall in Oxford. His heart was taken by his widow to Jerusalem. Their bodies both lie in white marble sarcophagi.
The third is the towering Marble Chapel added as a north wing to the house by Rowand Anderson after 1897, raised up over a crypt and entered through the state rooms on the piano nobile of the main block. It is probably the most magnificent Catholic chapel in Britain. It is based on Burgos Cathedral with octagonal crossing and spire. The interior is faced in white Carrara marble by Farmer & Brindley and contrasts with both the red sandstone masonry and the crimson stained glass of the windows; the latter splash blood-like puddles of coloured light on the Cosmati marble and mosaic floor to superb effect. The craftsmanship of the bronze altarpiece, designed 1911 and cast in the 1920s, is of the highest quality; it has silver gilt figures of Scottish saints by Louis Deuchars. Painted saints on the vault of the chapel by Tom Errington were added in 1990 at the behest of the 6th Marquess (1933-93), the completion of a scheme intended but never executed by the 3rd Marquess. Mount Stuart is now owned by the Mount Stuart Trust. The unmarried 8th Marquess, who succeeded in 2021 and lives in London, owns the collections within the house.
<strong>Murthly Castle</strong>
<em>Perthshire</em>
The original castle was built in the 15th century by the Abercrombies. The house was remodelled in the 17th century by Sir William Steuart of Grandtully. In 1890 the estate passed to a cousin, Walter Fothringham of Pourie. His great grandson Thomas Steuart-Fothringham lives in the castle today. The stone detached turreted chapel of St Anthony the Eremite was originally built c1600. A new chapel, abutting the western wall of the original chapel, was added in a neo-Romanesque style by James Gillespie Graham (assisted AWN Pugin) for the Catholic convert Sir William Drummond Steuart of Grandtully in 1845-6. The chapel was the first Catholic place of worship to be dedicated in Scotland since the Reformation. It has a hammerbeam roof with a blue ceiling and spectacular interior decoration by Alexander Christie, with lavish use of gilding, marbling and carved woodwork. There is a huge mural above the chancel arch of the Vision of Constantine. The stained glass is by Ballantine & Allan. The pews have come from the closed Fort Augustus Abbey.
<strong>Old Place of Mochrum</strong>
<em>Wigtownshire</em>
The Old Place of Mochrum is a romantic restoration of a ruined medieval tower house by the Marquesses of Bute, comparable with their better known architectural restorations at Falkland and Mount Stuart. The estate of moors and lochs was inherited by the 3rd Marquess from his Crichton ancestors, who had acquired it in the 18th century. He restored it, partly as an architectural exercise and partly as a remote getaway where he could work undisturbed on his translation of the Roman breviary. His friend Abbot Sir David Hunter-Blair of Fort Augustus (of which the 3rd Marquess was a munificent benefactor as part of his campaign to revive monasticism and Gregorian chant in Scotland), and who often acted as Bute’s unofficial chaplain, described camping-out in “a queer two-storied tower set in the middle of a wild Wigtonshire moor, on the edge of a gloomy lake….In the evenings… we sat in slippers after our frugal meal, over a good peat fire…” The 3rd Marquess restored the ruins to make a complete courtyard house, between 1873 and 1878, to the design of the local architect Richard Park. It was transformed and made comfortable by the 4th Marquess between 1902 and 1908, using the distinguished Arts and Crafts architect Weir Schultz and Cotswolds craftsmen like Ernest Gimson, who were responsible for the formal garden, and finishing the interiors with panelling, carved and moulded heraldry, chimneypieces and specially designed furniture. A new dining hall was created in the north wing, and the site of the old hall between the two medieval towers was reconstructed by the 4th Marquess as a spacious chapel. It has a low pitched roof, rough stone walls, plain panelling and Arts and Crafts furniture. In 1912, Lord Bute wrote he was in touch with Schultz about the design of the altar. This takes the form of a projecting stone slab set in a niche of the east wall. The chapel was completed in 1920. The house and 16,000-acre estate was bequeathed on her death in 2004 by Flora Stuart to her cousin David Bertie (a grandson of Lady Jean Bertie, daughter of the 4th Marquess of Bute and nephew of Fra’ Andrew Bertie, former Grand Master of the Order of Malta).
<strong>Stobhall Castle</strong>
<em>Perthshire</em>
The barony of Stobhall was granted to Sir Malcolm Drummond by King Robert I after the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. In 1488, the Drummonds moved their principal residence to Drummond Castle some 20 miles away. They have continued as proprietors of Stobhall Castle until almost the present day. The 18th Earl of Perth and his son Viscount Strathallan had a major sale of contents in 2012 and sold the castle subsequently. The original chapel and the attached buildings seem to have been built by the 2nd Lord Drummond in 1578. In 1690, the 4th Earl of Perth (and subsequently Jacobite 1st Duke) turned the great hall into a chapel for Catholic worship. The chapel has an usual tempera ceiling depicting eight 17th-century European Christian kings riding horses and the king of Mauritania on an elephant. There is generally much painting, an aumbry and a medieval stone altar slab.
<strong>Terregles House</strong>
<em>Dumfriesshire</em>
The apsed chancel of the parish church was built by Agnes, Lady Herries, of the Catholic Maxwell family, in 1588 as a private mortuary chapel, with a vault beneath, separate from the Presbyterian kirk in the nave (a smaller-scale version of the Catholic-Protestant arrangement of the Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel). It was restored in 1875-8 by the architect James Barbour for Captain Alfred Constable-Maxwell of Terregles. The interior is largely of that date with a timber roof, encaustic tiled floor, stained glass of the Resurrection and a stone altar supported on polished granite columns. The most important exciting feature is the large open well in the middle of the floor with a wide flight of steps down to the vault, which is dominated by a life-size white marble statue of the Resurrection by John Birnie Philips. The family memorials are upstairs and include wall monuments to William Haggerston Constable Maxwell of Everingham, Yorkshire (died 1797), who married the heiress Winifred Maxwell and founded the Constable-Maxwell family, and to her father, titular 6th Earl of Nithsdale (died 1776), designed by Atkinson of York. Mass is still said every year in the chapel on the memorial day of the 5th Earl of Nithsdale, the Jacobite hero who was taken in arms at Preston in 1715. Attainted and condemned to death, he was heroically rescued from the Tower of London on the night before his execution by his wife, a Herbert of Powys, who smuggled him out disguised as her lady’s maid to a waiting boat. He died peacefully in Rome in 1744. The Maxwells were created Lords Herries of Terregles in 1489, a title that after the attainder was reversed, descended through the female line via the Constable-Maxwells and the Fitzalan-Howards to Jane, present Marchioness of Lothian. Terregles House was inherited by the Traquair family and demolished in 1962.
<strong>Traquair House</strong>
<em>Peeblesshire</em>
The house is a building of very considerable antiquity near Innerleithen, built in the style of a fortified mansion and painted white. The estate was purchased in 1478 by the Earl of Buchan who gifted the estate to his second son, James Stewart. The seventh laird c1600 extended the house. He became the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland and was made the 1st Earl of Traquair. His son reconverted to Catholicism. His descendants were involved in the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745. The 8th and last Earl died in 1861 and the house was inherited by his sister Lady Louisa Stewart. On her death, Traquair passed to a cousin, Henry Constable-Maxwell of Terregles (qv). He changed his family’s name to Maxwell Stuart. Traquair is now owned by his descendant Catherine Muller. The house had a secret chapel in penal times but after Catholic Emancipation in 1829 the former billiard room above the brewhouse was converted into a chapel by Thomas Sanderson and James West. The white-painted chapel contains an important Italian marble altar (Genoa, 1870), with a panel depicting the Passion by the sculptor Brumidi. There are paintings either side of the altar. There are 12 good 16th-century wooden panels carved by Scottish craftsmen in Flemish style; these were originally in the Chapel of Mary of Guise in Leith. There are pews for the servants and estate workers and a separate screened area at the back for the family. The marble altar rails survive. There is a moving memorial to the various sons who died in the First World War. Mass is usually celebrated towards the end of each month.
In conclusion, it is interesting to note that the current 10th Duke of Buccleuch married Lady Elizabeth Kerr in 1981 but by special exemption it was not required that the children be brought up as Catholics – hence no need (yet) for a Catholic chapel at Bowhill or Drumlanrig. The Duchess followed the wife of the 5th Duke as a Catholic, the latter being the convert Lady Charlotte Thynne. The current Earl of Mansfield married the Catholic Sophy Ashbrooke and their children have been brought up as Catholics. The son Viscount Stormont acted as ADC to the late Fra’ Matthew Festing, Grand Master of the Order of Malta. Let us hope one day for a suitable Catholic chapel at Scone Palace.
The chapel was beloved by Bute for its wild and romantic setting. Here he was buried in 1900 by Abbot Sir David Hunter-Blair, summoned from St Benet’s Hall in Oxford. His heart was taken by his widow to Jerusalem. Their bodies both lie in white marble sarcophagi.
Attainted and condemned to death, he was heroically rescued from the Tower of London on the night before his execution by his wife, a Herbert of Powys, who smuggled him out disguised as her lady’s maid to a waiting boat.
