Paisley Abbey

Paisley Abbey rises at the heart of the town of Paisley, a foundation that traces back to 1163, when Walter fitz Alan, the first High Steward of Scotland, brought a community of Cluniac monks north from Much Wenlock in Shropshire. Begun as a priory, it was raised to the status of an abbey in 1245. Its early centuries were far from settled: in 1307 the buildings were burned during the wars with England, on the orders of Edward I, and much of what stands today was rebuilt through the fourteenth century. The abbey holds a particular place in the royal story of Scotland. In 1316 Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert I, is said to have died here after a fall from her horse, her infant son surviving to become Robert II, first of the Stewart kings. Generations of the High Stewards were laid to rest within its walls. Fire and the collapse of its tower left the eastern end ruined for centuries, and a full restoration in the Gothic Revival manner was only completed in the early twentieth century, under architects including Robert Lorimer. One curiosity of that later work is a modern gargoyle whose face bears an uncanny likeness to the creature from the 1979 film Alien.