Whithorn & St. Ninian (24/08/16)

During 2016 I have been unable to get back to Frómista to continue walking on the Camino. My annual leave year at work runs from April – March each year and the plan had been to use my remaining leave days after Christmas to return to the Camino in March, however in December 2015, at short notice, my friend Ben Jonas (mentioned earlier in this blog) announced that he was getting married and invited me to attend his wedding in Brasília, an invitation I couldn’t really refuse, especially as I had never been to South America. The decision turned out to be a good one as the trip was fantastic, the wedding wonderful and the food and weather perfect!

In addition to this, the Parish where I am a church member, had been invited by the Archbishop of Central Africa, Albert Chama, to partner with the Diocese of Northern Zambia and in July, I as part of a team of 12 from Cork, Bray and Belfast had travelled out to the city of Kitwe for two and a half weeks to take part in mission trip organised by the Irish charity CMSI. The Camino would have to wait until 2017 (I am already formulating plans!) and yet it is amazing how much I have missed walking on the Camino and how often I think about it. It has very much entered my heart and expanded my horizons in so many ways and I have a longing to get back!

Isle of Whithorn harbour

In the meantime, after I returned from Zambia, my family and I enjoyed a week’s holiday in August in a National Trust Scotland cottage at Threave Gardens in Dumfries and Galloway. Apart from enjoying seeing the wonderful Ospreys, Red Kites (Matthew would have loved it!) Peregrines and other wildlife, I also planned a visit to the Machars of Galloway for a mini pilgrimage to sites associated with St. Ninian; a kind of Scottish Camino Day to keep me enthused about ancient pilgrim trails!

St. Ninian's Chapel

The Machars of Galloway are situated on a peninsula jutting into the Solway Firth, south of the town of Newtown Stewart. Machars is a Scots Gaelic word referring to a coastal area of sandy, fertile soil and the Machars are a distinctive area of small grassy hills that seemed to me very different from the rest of Galloway and reminiscent of the West of Ireland. Nowadays there is a remote, isolated feel to the area, but of course in past centuries, when travel was largely by sea, the peninsula was connected with trade routes that ran between England, Ireland, the Isle of Man and beyond.

Stones left by pilgrims at St. Ninian's chapel

These trade connections are important from a historical point of view; the main town I wanted to visit on the Machars was Whithorn and archaeological investigations, mainly in the late 1980s and early 1990s have shown that by the 300’s AD Whithorn was already an established centre of trade for the local British population and fell within the trading sphere of Roman Carlisle.

Whithorn is famous however for its links with St. Ninian. Traditionally Ninian is said to have been a Roman bishop who founded a famous church there called “Candida Casa” or “Shining White House” and died in AD 431.

The Anglo Saxon Monk, Bede writing in AD 731 says of Ninian that:

“The southern Picts…abandoned the errors of idolatry…and accepted the true faith through the preaching of Bishop Ninian, a most reverend and holy man of British race, who had been instructed in the mysteries of the Christian Faith in Rome. Ninian’s own episcopal see, named after St. Martin and famous for its stately church, is now held by the English and it is here that his body and those of many saints lie at rest. The place belongs to the Province of Bernicia and is commonly known as Candida Casa, the White House, because he built the church of stone, which is unusual among the Britons”.

Some scholars have questioned Bede’s account and whether Ninian actually existed and hasn’t in fact been confused with Finnian of Moville; St. Columba’s mentor who died in AD 589. They argue that Whithorn was already an important place, maybe even a royal settlement and wasn’t founded by Ninian at all as a large amount of high status imported coloured glass drinking vessels have been excavated and these are inconsistent with a monastic settlement, although one would wonder if the glass may not have been for use in the creation of cloisoinné enamels, famously created in early Irish monastic sites from the same period? It is also argued that it was the Anglo Saxon Northumbrians who created and promoted the legend of St. Ninian after they conquered Galloway in the AD 700s. Personally, I haven’t heard any compelling evidence that proves that Ninian was not a real person. Maybe he came to found a church in an already important royal site, rather than founding Whithorn itself, but this is no different to the activities of Irish missionary monks from the same period who focussed their evangelism on important royal sites such as Tara in Meath or Emain Macha in Ulster.

The ancient pilgrims path leading to

St. Ninian's Cave

What is indisputable however, is that the cult of St. Ninian lasted over 1000 years and Whithorn became the most important site of pilgrimage in Scotland. The importance of St. Ninian’s shrine endured and a succession of increasingly elaborate churches replaced the original Candida Casa, as Whithorn came under first British, then Northumbrian Saxon, Viking and finally Scots control. These churches culminated in a vast Premonstratensian cathedral priory, extended and finished in the 1200s with a crypt below the high altar for the shrine housing the relics of St. Ninian.

As one of the most important places of pilgrimage in the British Isles, Whithorn attracted many pilgrims; some very illustrious. Edward II visited the shrine in 1302 while commanding an army occupying Scotland. In 1329, Robert the Bruce, who was dying of leprosy came to pray, as did his son David II, whom tradition says had two arrow heads lodged in his body from the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346, which could not be removed until he visited St. Ninian’s shrine in 1357. In 1427, James I issued safe conduct passes lasting two weeks for pilgrims travelling from England and the Isle of Man and James IV regularly came on pilgrimage with a large entourage in the early 1500s, when an additional chapel was added next to the crypt containing the shrine, so that more pilgrims could worship and the crowds of pilgrims could be managed more effectively. It is also thought that the English king Richard III may have visited the shrine as he had a personal devotion to St. Ninian as evidenced by a handwritten prayer inscribed in his personal prayer book.

After the Reformation, pilgrimage of course went out of fashion and was banned in Calvinist Scotland and the great cathedral and other monastic buildings were torn down, apart from the nave which was used as a Protestant cathedral and then a Presbyterian church until it was superseded by a new Georgian Presbyterian church built in 1822 nearby. Enough remains, however at Whithorn itself and at other sites on the Machars to provide whispers of the area’s important pilgrim past and to remind us of early Christianity in these islands and so we set off to visit them on a mini pilgrimage.

Stone cross from St. Ninian's Cave

We started our trip at the picturesque fishing village at the Isle of Whithorn. This small port is where trading goods bound for ancient Whithorn would have arrived, however, more importantly from our perspective, it is where pilgrims travelling by sea would have disembarked en route to St. Ninian’s shrine. Near the harbour on a raised area below the headland are the remains of St. Ninian’s Chapel.  Built about 1330, it replaced an earlier narrower chapel and stands within a perimeter wall like many early Christian churches. The enclosed area also probably contained a priest’s house and cemetery. Pilgrims arriving at the harbour would have stopped at the chapel to pray and give thanks, before walking the few miles to Whithorn. It was a fine sunny day when I visited, with good visibility and the mountains of Cumbria and the Isle of Man could easily be seen from the site. Nearby, modern pilgrims have left stones and other momentoes in a pile inside the 19^th C lifeboat enclosure in much the same way that pilgrims do at the Cruz de Ferro near Foncebadon on the Camino.

St. Ninian's Cave

We had a very nice lunch (steak and chips for me!) in The Steam Packet Inn and then set off to visit St. Ninian’s Cave. This is the site where reputedly St. Ninian would withdraw on retreat for prayer and contemplation. It has been a site of pilgrimage for centuries and is still the site of an annual Catholic pilgrimage each year at the end of August. Ancient crosses have been found inscribed inside it and several cross slabs and an altar slab were found in excavations in the 1880s and in 1950 in the cave, that have more recently been moved to The Whithorn Stones Museum beside the remains of the Cathedral.

We parked in a small car park and walked the approximately two miles to the cave along the delightful ancient pilgrim path; first alongside some fields and then through mainly Ash woodland which then became a narrow valley with a small burn which finally opened up onto a pebbled beach. The cave was a short walk to the right along the beach and was marked by a wooden cross on the hillside above it.

Today the cave is around 7m deep and 3m high but in the medieval period before several roof collapses, it would have been larger. The walls were inscribed with crosses and graffiti – some from what I could see dating back to the 1700s. Some small wooden crosses had been fixed into cracks in the rock and some Bumble Bees had even made their nest at the back of the cave! Sitting on the pebbles in the cave and looking out at the beach with only the rhythmic of the small waves breaking on the shore, I could see the appeal of the site for contemplative prayer and imagined St. Ninian looking out on the same scene as he withdrew to seek God all those centuries ago.

The Pend with coat of arms of James IV

Walking back to the car, we travelled on to Whithorn itself. This sleepy Scottish town gives little hint of its former importance and looking up the wide main street not a single human or even dog seemed to be stirring! The Whithorn Trust has opened a very interesting visitor centre called the Whithorn Story to display the artefacts found in the archaeological digs and provides much information with a multimedia presentation, information boards, reconstructed models and even a café selling excellent scones!

Close by is The Pend – the original Priory gatehouse which leads into what was once the monastic enclosure with the cathedral placed on a small plateau at the end. The gatehouse still has the royal coat of arms of James IV who made Whithorn into a royal burgh in 1511.

Cathedral Nave with Georgian Presbyterian Church

Passing through the gateway we visited the Whithorn Stones Museum where we saw the cross slabs excavated in St. Ninian’s cave along with a large and impressive selection of other stone crosses and fragments of crosses dating from 400 – 1100s. As physical reminders of Whithorn’s former power and episcopal authority, they were very impressive; especially the Monreith Cross which stands over 2.3m tall and is the largest free standing cross in Galloway. The remnant of an iron ring set into the cross suggests that it may have had an iron chain and collar for punishing offenders and served a similar role to the Rollo or judicial pillar we saw at Boadilla. The Stones Museum, although situated in an old house, has been very cleverly modernised with a glass roof that allows sunlight to flood in and highlight the carvings on the stones.

Interior of Nave

Situated on a small hill above the museum are the remains of the Cathedral surrounded by a graveyard which covers the remains of earlier monastic buildings. Only the roofless nave of the cathedral remains standing, but there are hints of the cathedral’s former importance; a Romanesque doorway, the base of the medieval stone screen that separated the nave from the choir under the gable wall built at the Reformation, and projecting corbels on the north side which once supported the roof of the cloisters.

Romanesque doorway

At the end of the churchyard stands the Georgian Presbyterian church with a lovely stained glass window portraying St. Ninian fitted in the 1950s.

The most evocative part of the site for me however, was across the graveyard from the nave; the site of the east end of the cathedral where the high altar would have been situated. This area was excavated in the Victorian period and the enormous buttresses at the east end were reconstructed, giving an idea of how massive the cathedral once was. The foundations of earlier churches were also revealed beneath the 13^th C cathedral.

Reconstructed east end and remains of earlier churches

Also excavated was the site of the stairs that pilgrims would have descended inside the cathedral to pray at the shrine of St. Ninian in the crypt beneath. A modern metal staircase has been fitted and we descended this, entering the small crypt where the shrine once stood, before passing through the large adjacent chapel built by James IV and back out into the sunshine.

Stairs to crypt

I felt my mini pilgrimage was complete – all being well I will get back to the Camino in 2017, but I felt I had walked in the steps of medieval Scottish pilgrims in the meantime!

Crypt where shrine of St. Ninian stood