Glenluce Abbey
Newtown Stewart, Co. Dumfries & Galloway
The sombre ruins of Glenluce Abbey sit in the secluded valley of the Water of Luce in quiet Wigtownshire, an idyllic, isolated location for its Cistercian order.
Very little remains of the Abbey today and little is known of the 400 years of monastic life at the abbey, but what survives hints at the former grandeur of the abbey. Glenluce Abbey was founded about 1192 by Roland, Lord of Galloway, grandson of Fergus who founded the mother abbey at Dundrennan. The Cistercian monks were renowned for their austere and often extreme way of life, yet Glenluce Abbey came to aquire vast areas of land in the the valley and in Ayreshire and was afforded high standing. In 1323 King Robert Bruce confired the abbey lands a free barony and a century later was raised to a Burgh of Regality.
However this land wealth would be the abbeys downfall as greedy disputes errupted around the reformation era and after the abbey's estates were annexed and the Diocese of Galloway moved to Whithorn in 1619, Gelnluce Abbey fell rapidly into disrepair.
The best surviving parts of the abbey are in the south transept of the church and in the Chapter house which was built at a much later date around 1500. Here the glass and some of the tracery were restored around this time and the four bosses in the ceiling, decortated with grotesque carvings and armorial centrepieces date back to this period. Another fascinating feature unique to Glenluce is a run of clay pipes providing a water supply system for the Cistercian monks.
