Culross Abbey

Culross Abbey from the South East

Culross Abbey stands on the hillside above the beautiful and fascinating village of Culross. It's about a third of a mile walk from the centre of the village and a 165ft climb, but the narrowness of the roads at the top of the hill still mean that you are best advised parking in one of the car parks in Culross. and walking from there.

Rose Window in South Transept Entrance to the Abbey The Lay Brethren's Refectory Vaulting in the Refectory Stonework on Display Chapter House Arches

A visit to Culross Abbey can be a slightly puzzling experience, because a number of factors conspire to make it more difficult than you might expect to make sense of what you are seeing. One of these is the steep slope of the site, meaning that you are tending to be looking uphill from a basement level perspective much of the time. The second is that the cloister has been made into a garden for the manse, which itself has been made out of the north end of the west range.

The third is that the configuration of the church is no longer what it was in its monastic days, giving a very false impression when you try to line other remains up with it. And the last, and perhaps most important, is that the only interpretation board on the site shows the ground plan of the original abbey, but does not help relate that to the ruins you see around you.

Structure to East of the Church

The Bruce Vault

Base of the Church Tower

Nonetheless, a visit is also a fascinating experience, in part because you need to think about what you are looking at. Access to "the Abbey" leads you past the now open south end of the west range of the cloister, complete with its vaulted ceilings at basement and ground floor level, and past the outside of the inner wall of the south range of the cloister at basement level. You end up in the remains of what would once have been the meeting of the east and south ranges, looking up past the foundations of the chapter house to the south transept of the abbey church.

To continue your investigation you need to exit the gate giving access to the abbey grounds, and go up the hill, past the garden to the west of the manse to the corner of the street beyond it. Here the north wall of the manse leads continuously to the south west corner of the 84ft tower that stands at the west end of what is now the parish church, though still called Culross Abbey.

What you need to realise at this point is that the tower originally stood in the middle of the abbey church. To its east stood the chancel, now used as the parish church. But to its west stood a similarly sized nave which, except for parts of its south wall, has disappeared entirely. Stone from the nave and other parts of the abbey would have been recycled into the manse, built in 1647, and its western extension, built in 1840: and, doubtless, into other buildings on view in the neighbourhood. The church itself has also been extensively remodelled on a number of occasions since the demise of the abbey in the Reformation in 1560.

Attached to the south east corner of the church is the Bruce Vault, while at the east end of the church is an arched construction that seems to be more inspired by the abbey heritage of the site than actually form part of it. In the graveyard is the black marble gravestone of Colour Sergeant Stewart McPherson, who won the Victoria Cross at Lucknow in India in 1857 but survived to see out his days in Culross where he died aged 73 in 1892.

Culross Abbey was founded in 1217 by Malcolm, 3rd Earl of Fife, who brought Cistercian monks here from Kinloss Abbey. The sloping site is not an easy one, and it is said that Malcolm picked this spot because it was believe to have been the site of a monastery associated with St Serf and St Mungo in the 500s.

The Abbey Church from the West, with Manse on the Right