Kingarth ( ; ) is a historic
village and parish on the Isle of Bute
, off the coast of south-western Scotland. In
the
Early Middle
Ages it was the site of a
monastery
and
bishopric and the cult centre of
Saint Bláán (
Anglicized:
Blane).
Located to
the north of Kilchattan
Bay
, Kingarth was the central religious site for the
Cenél Comgaill kindred of
Dál Riata (after which Cowal
is named),
just as Lismore
was for the
Cenél Loairn and Iona
for the
Cenél nGabráin. It
is less than a kilometre from the early historic
hill-fort of "Little Dunagoil", which may have been the
chief secular site of the kindred.
The centre for Saint Bláán's cult had
probably moved to the mainland, to Dunblane
in Strathearn, in the 9th-century, perhaps like the
movement of the relics of Saint
Cuthbert and the bishopric
of Lindisfarne and Saint Columba
and the bishopric of Dunkeld,
because of Viking attacks.
Despite
this, it survived as a religious site to become one of only two
parish churches on the island, the
other being Rothesay
; it was part of the diocese of the Isles
, though perhaps originally in the diocese of Argyll. Alan fitz Walter tried to grant the church
to Paisley
Abbey
in 1204, but this grant does not appear to have
been effective and it remained an independent parsonage until the 15th-century.Cowan,
Parishes, p. 112 In 1463 it became a prebend for the newly created chapter of the diocese of the Isles, but
in 1501 it was annexed to the Chapel
Royal at Stirling
, becoming in 1509 a prebend for the chancellorship
of the Chapel Royal, the latter arrangement surviving beyond the
Scottish
Reformation.
See also
Notes
- Fraser, Caledonia to Pictland, pp. 157, 372
- Fraser, Caledonia to Pictland, p. 157
- Woolf, Pictland to Alba, p. 102
- Cowan, Parishes, pp. 112, 174
References
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