Carnwath

Carnwath Main Street from the East

The Pentland Hills press hard against Edinburgh's south west edge, barely leaving room for the city bypass to squeeze between the slopes and the suburbs. The Pentlands have been crossed for centuries by tracks and drove roads, but in the age of the motor car they have become an impenetrable barrier to movement, uncrossed by modern roads for a distance of 30km south west of the Edinburgh bypass. At the "tail" of the Pentlands is the highly individual village of Carnwath.

Carnwath Cross Garage Skaramanda Jewellery

Its location makes Carnwath an important junction. From here the Glasgow to Peebles road heads along the southern side of the Pentlands, while the Ayr to Edinburgh road flanks them to the north.

St Mary's Aisle

Golf Course and Castle Motte

Graveyard

The village itself comprises a single street ¾ of a mile long, set in open moorland at a height of 220m, and sloping from the east to the west. Its strategic location in relation to the Pentlands and to the Clyde Valley, which curves sharply a mile to the south, led to the development of a castle here in the 1100s.

Little remains of the castle, but the impressive motte on which it was built can still be seen at Carnwath Golf Club, founded in 1907 at the west end of the village. The motte was unusually large and steep, and access to the keep that used to live on top of it was via a tunnel and a set of steps that emerged within the structure.

On the opposite side of the main road from the golf club and motte is Carnwath Parish Church. At first sight this looks like a fairly standard 1800s church with spire. But a stroll round the west side reveals a surprise, an almost separate tiny chapel, of a very much earlier date. This is actually St Mary's Aisle, a surviving part of the collegiate church founded here in 1425 by Thomas, First Lord Somerville and incorporating a church established in 1386.

At the centre of Carnwath is Carnwath Cross, the mercat cross, set back a little where the Main Street widens to form the Market Square. This was erected by the 5th Lord of Somerville in 1516 to celebrate the granting of burgh status to the village in 1514.

Carnwath is an unusual place with a distinctive and attractive character. The functional and largely undecorated one and two story buildings lining Main Street combine with an absence of modern shop frontages to give a strong sense of stepping back into another century, and not the one recently departed.

Carnwath Main Street from the West