Deer Abbey
A home for a small community of monks for around 340 years, Deer Abbey found it difficult to keep the same Abbot for any length of time. The weather was blamed, as was the 'unworthy flock' of the area!
Little is left of the actual Abbey today. Can you trace the remains of the walls in the grass, and recognise the religious shape it formed? The better preserved buildings were the refectory, the Abbot's house, and the kitchen. If you look at the walls you can see where the beams went into the walls for the floor above. Some of these ceilings were vaulted, can you find traces of this shape?
The Book of Deer
There was an earlier monastery, evidence of which has been found not far away in the village of Old Deer. This is where the Book of Deer is believed to have been written. Written around 900AD, and later added to in Gaelic, it is famously known as the earliest known written Gaelic. It is kept in Cambridge, but you can see some of it's beautiful pages here: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-II-00006-00032/4 Look for the Gaelic notes in the margins of the pages. There is a local Book of Deer project http://bookofdeer.co.uk/ that aims to promote the book and written Gaelic.
Later...
The reformation saw the end of the community of monks here in the 16th Century. It then belonged to the Fergusons of Pitfour, who used much of the stone of the Abbey to turn the site into a walled garden - the wall that still surrounds you today! Then in 1854 they built a family mausoleum at the east end of the church. Ironically, the grand entrance to this is the one you entered to view the remains of the Abbey...
There are a number of interesting carved stones in a corner of the site. The site holds a lot of history. Can you find the man-trap...?