On Friday, 18th February 2022, Dr. Nicki Scott, Senior Cultural Resources Advisor with Historic Environment Scotland, presented her talk and described how although the survival of so many Pictish carvings highlights the long tradition of Christian worship across Angus, the tradition of monumental display continued in the medieval period, most famously at Arbroath Abbey. But while this royal foundation rightly draws much attention, sites such as Restenneth Priory and Maison Dieu show that it wasn’t just the elites whose lives were connected to the Church. Nicki provided some insight into the lives of these foundations and the people associated with them.
On Friday, 21st January 2022, John Borland presented his talk which provided an overview of the early medieval sculpture of Highland Perthshire, following its distribution from west to east along the glens and straths, highlighting what is rare and unusual. He examined the distribution of the sculpture to see what that tells us about its cultural origins and thus assess just how “Pictish” this part of Perthshire was.
John worked as an archaeological surveyor for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Historic Scotland (RCAHMS) and then Historic Environment Scotland (HES) for 36 years, latterly recording Scotland’s Pictish and other Early Medieval sculpture.
A talk presented on Zoom by John Borland to the Breadalbane Heritage Society on Friday, 21st January, 2022.
In this talk, John gave an overview of the early medieval sculpture of Highland Perthshire, following its distribution from west to east along the glens and straths, highlighting what is rare and unusual. He examined the distribution of the sculpture to see what that tells us about its cultural origins and thus assess just how “Pictish” this part of Perthshire was.
John Borland worked as an archaeological surveyor for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Historic Scotland (RCAHMS) and then Historic Environment Scotland (HES) for 36 years, retiring as Measured Survey Manager in May 2020. In that time, John had the opportunity to survey almost every type of archaeological and architectural monument, from Neolithic chambered cairns to WWII coastal batteries and everything in between, including castles, churches, croft houses and country houses. However, the main focus of his work latterly was recording Scotland’s Pictish and other Early Medieval sculpture.
John has been a member of the Pictish Arts Society for more than 20 years and is the current PAS President.
You can view John’s talk here:
If you wish to view this video at a larger size, click on the ‘full screen’ button at the bottom right-hand corner of the image above:
This talk was presented on Zoom, but unfortunately due to the vagaries of local internet connections, John’s speech was disrupted in a number of occasions. However, the general content of his talk is still discernible during these instances.
Breadalbane Heritage Society talk to be presented on Zoom on Friday, 18th February 2022 by Dr. Nicki Scott, Senior Cultural Resources Advisor at Historic Environment Scotland
The survival of so many Pictish carvings highlights the long tradition of Christian worship across Angus. But the tradition of monumental display continued in the medieval period; the most famous example of this is Arbroath Abbey.
Arbroath Abbey, courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland
But while this royal foundation rightly draws much attention, sites such as Restenneth Priory and Maison Dieu show it wasn’t just the elites whose lives were connected to the Church.
Restenneth PrioryMaison Dieu Chapel
In this talk, Nicki will provide some insight into the lives of these foundations and the people associated with them. This talk follows on from last month’s talk by John Borland on ‘The Early Medieval Sculpture of Highland Perthshire’ but concentrates on the area of Angus.
Please note that, in order to obtain the Zoom joining instructions for this talk, you must contact Ian by email at bhsaberfeldy@gmail.com.
Due to the Covid restrictions in place at the time, we were not able to hold any of our 2020-21 winter season of talks ‘in person’ at our normal venue in the Breadalbane Community Campus. Consequently, in order to offer a programme of talks to our membership, we ventured into the unknown world for us of online Zoom presentations.
From the October talk onwards, we recorded these talks to make them available to a wider audience, but we were not sufficiently prepared to do this for Colin Liddell’s talk on ‘Pitlochry in Threes’ which opened our winter season in September 2020. However, we are delighted that Colin subsequently was keen to present his talk once again, but without an audience in this instance, and have it recorded.
Colin is a local solicitor and historian who in recent years has presented four talks to the Society on Pitlochry and General Wade’s roads. This current talk is an eclectic dip into the assortment box of Pitlochry’s local history, by looking at lots of groupings of three things to show how Pitlochry has been shaped over the years. Topics and artefacts included the Lude Harp, Black Spout toggle and the Clach na Brataich.
The video is approximately 27 minutes long and can be viewed below:
If you wish to view this video at a larger size, click on the ‘full screen’ button at the bottom right-hand corner of the images above:
Breadalbane Heritage Society 
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