Abernethy Round Tower

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Introduction

Scotland has exactly two Irish-style round towers. Brechin has one. Abernethy has the other, and it has stood in the village churchyard for the best part of a thousand years. The tower dates to around 1100 and served as the belfry for a monastery that once stood here, home to a community of Culdee monks whose way of life came from Ireland. The doorway sits well above ground level, which tells you it doubled as a bolthole when trouble arrived. And trouble did arrive. In 1072, Malcolm Canmore met William the Conqueror at Abernethy and swore an oath of loyalty, though historians still argue about what exactly he thought he was promising. A Pictish symbol stone, carved around AD 600 and dug up in School Wynd, is mounted at the base. A modern spiral stair takes you to the top, where the view runs out over Strathearn to the Firth of Tay.

Location

The tower stands on School Wynd in the centre of Abernethy, in the churchyard beside the parish church. The village sits in rural Strathearn, eight miles south-east of Perth, on the northern edge of the Ochil Hills near the point where the River Earn meets the Tay. It's just off the A913 between Bridge of Earn and Newburgh. The churchyard is open year round; access inside the tower is seasonal, with the key held at the Museum of Abernethy during opening hours. The museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so there's no tower access those days.

What's nearby

The Museum of Abernethy sits a few steps from the tower and holds the key to it. Volunteer-run and open May to September, it covers the village's long history, which goes back further than most. A short circular walk from the village leads through Abernethy Glen, with an optional steep pull up Castle Law to the remains of an Iron Age fort and a wide view over the Tay. Four miles east in Newburgh, Lindores Abbey Distillery makes whisky on the site linked to the earliest written record of Scotch, from 1494, and runs tours daily in summer. Elcho Castle, a well-preserved 16th-century tower house built by the Wemyss family, is around five miles away on the south bank of the Tay. Perth is a 15-minute drive.