OS1/19/9/61A

Continued entries/extra info

[Page] 61A

Ordnance Survey Office
ABERDEEN 1st Septr [September] 1863

Sir,

I trust you will kindly excuse
me for troubling you with a question
which I am most anxious to solve,
and which I doubt not you could
elucidate for me, but the wish not
to allow any error to creep into the
Plans of the Ordnance Survey must
be my excuse for now writing to you.
The question I wish to ask is this: -
There are said to be the foundations of
a small friary in the glen, called
Friar's Glen, above Drumtochty, in the
Parish of Fordoun: This friary is thought
(& by many considered) to have been a
"Carmelite Monastery", & this presumption
appears to be founded chiefly on the fact that
the lands of "Glensaugh", heareabouts, were
granted by charter to the Carmelites in
1402, to which lands Friar's Glen belonged,-
Other facts lend their assistance in
favouring this idea, viz: that Fordoun
Church was "the Mother Church of the
Mearns", that the ruins of a building
of some description are still visible
in [continued on page 61B]

Drum Castle, by Aberdeen
4. September 1863.

Sir
Your letter addressed to me
at the Register House, Edinburgh, has
been forwarded to me here. I could
have wished before answering it
to consult some of the public
records, but at the same time
the case seems to me so clear
that I have little hesitation in
at once replying to the question you
ask, trusting to your statement
and to my own recollections of the
circumstances.
The Carmelite Friars or
some other order of Friars may possibly
have had a grange or dwelling
house in the Friar's Glen above
Drumtochty, but I do not believe
that there was any "Friary" there -
that is to say any church and convent.
We have lists of all the religious
houses in Scotland and in none
of these is there any mention
of a Friary at or near Drumtochty.
[continued on page 61B]