Cross Kirk, Peebles
| Cross Kirk | |
|
Peeblesshire | |
|---|---|
 Cross Kirk, Peebles | |
| Type: | Church |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | NT25064072 |
| Location: | 55°39’15"N, 3°11’33"W |
| Town: | Peebles |
| History | |
| Built 1261 | |
| Church | |
| Information | |
| Condition: | Roofless ruin |
| Owned by: | Historic Scotland |
| Website: | Cross Kirk, Peebles |
Cross Kirk is the roofless ruin of a once grand monastic church in Peebles, the county town of Peeblesshire. The Cross Kirk plays a prominent part in the local Common Riding festival. It stands in a slightly wooded enclosure once at the edge of the town but now in a quiet residential area to the north-west of the centre of Peebles.
The church is today in the care of Historic Environment Scotland.
History
The church was founded in 1261. The legend of its foundation is that in on 9 May 1241 a fine cross was found on the site, and soon afterwards a stone urn which was hailed as containing the cremated remains of St Nicholas. (How a fourth century bishop from Anatolia could have ended up burned and stuffed into a Bronze Age urn in Tweeddale was not questioned at the time, with pilgrim money to be earned.)
The site was soon associated with miracles, and King Alexander III paid for the first church on the site, founding a priory here. The church was built to house the cross and the shrine of the saint, and it remained a pilgrimage centre until the Reformation.
The first record of the priory's existence dates is in 1296 when its prior swore fealty to King Edward I of England at Berwick-upon-Tweed, along with many of the leading men of Scotland.
The priory was established as a priory of Trinitarian friars in 1474. Cloister ranges and the west tower were probably added about this time. In 1549 the Cross Kirk was burnt by an English army during the ‘Rough Wooing’, but seems to have been repaired two years later.
In 1560 came the Reformation: pilgrimages were stopped and the monastic foundation was ended. Thereafter the priory church served as the parish kirk, replacing St Andrew's Church, which had been burned down by war in 1548.
In 1656 the chancel was abandoned, the church continuing in the nave, while the old choir was turned into a schoolroom and a new east gable was built. Galleries and three burial aisles were also added. Around the same time a number of burial aisles were built on either side of the church for important local families. An inscription over a doorway at the east end of the church is dated 1656.
Cross Kirk was abandoned in 1784 when a new parish church was built to serve Peebles. A visitor in 1790 found the church almost complete except for its roof, though it seems that the monastery's domestic buildings had long since been dismantled for their stone. By 1811 much of the south wall had fallen. By the late 1800s Cross Kirk was being described as a fragmentary ruin in a fir plantation on the edge of Peebles, and having a "very desolate appearance".
In 1924 the site was excavated, and the excavation found a stone cist under the shrine of St Nicholas, containing fragments of bone.
The site today
The ruins of Cross Kirk are today cared for by Historic Environment Scotland. Though the town has grown around the site, the church ruin remains within a tranquil grassy glade, and it remains impressive for all its ruin, the bell tower yet standing to full height.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Kirk, Peebles Cross Kirk, Peebles) |
- Cross Kirk, Peebles: Historic Environment Scotland
- Cross Kirk on Undiscovered Scotland